If Vahinkovakuutus Story End of Day 7 Summary

Well End of Day 7 and sorry for not posting this last night as i had a cray day yesterday and the blog had to take a back seat so that i could actually spend some time with my girlfriend.

So the main thing today has to definitely be that after two days away If vainkovakuutus have re-engaged me. I wonder why this is. Did they realise i would not just go away? Where they thinking about what to say? Did they get annoyed by my action and decide to re-enter the forum. I guess i will never know.

Well i will post the discussion from yesterday here again and let you decide for youselves how to interpret it. My thoughts are discussed in this post.

I especially like my link to how to deal with upset customers on social media.

That made me smile ;-) Here is that link for anyone who is interested.

In other News.

I am sorry but i did add advertisements to my blog. I am sorry if this annoys you but the purpose is not to profit but to present viewers with advertisements related to the blog such as insurance offers from providers other than if (although i did see one If advert appearing yesterday). You can read the entire story from this post.

As for the other time i could spend on the blog yesterday i have spent it trying to SEO (Search Engine optimise my blog) i.e. make it appear higher in search results and also have google index it in a more accurate way so as more insurace adverts will appear on the site. Man is this a time consuming endeavour and frankyl i am not sure that it is worth it in terms of hours spent agains benefit especially for a blog that is not going to be active forever. BTW this blog will end with the story i you had not guessed that already. Of course the existing content will still be there though. I will write a post about SEO later when i get a chance.

Well that is all for now. Keep reading and feel free to comment whether you agree, disagree or are impartial this is a totally open forum.

IF Vakuutus Seem to have lost their opportunity.

As i mentioned previously If vakuutus had a great opportunity when this case was first started. They could have turned this into a true success story of customer engagement.
However they have chosen not to take that route. Their line is simple this is how it seems to me.

Yes we admitteldy made a mistake but those additional costs you incurred because of our mistake are your problem not ours.

They are sticking to the line that our terms and conditions tell us not to pay when airlines go bankrupt. This is not in question and never was, even though i do not agree with that policy.

There current strategy seems to be: We are not going to talk to you now and hope you go away.

What does this strategy mean for If Vakuutus?

1. IF are not participating in the engagement process this means that they lose all control of the conversation they are unable to defend themselves.
2. IF further dilute their own messaging as i will continue to dirsrupt their own social media marketing channels. They have lost control of their own media.
3. They will continue to incur costs for having to deal with this claim which are actually way above the original costs of the claim.
4. They risk alienating their own customer base themselves through their own actions or inaction in this case.
5. There is day on day damage to their brand image and reputation. The interest in this story is growing day on day.

This is a very nice strategy well done ;-)

What does this strategy say about If Vakuutus?

1. They do not care that their customers have to pay for their mistakes. That is a nice message to send out. They are also promoting this message themselves on their own social media by not responding to the claim.
2. They do not think that they have to engage with their customers on social media even on their own Facebook group in particular. That is great Social CRM.
3. They do not see what i am doing as a risk to them. They do not understand the power of social media. I thought Insurance companies were all about risk.
4. They risk being perceived as childish and stubborn. If Vakuutus refuse to even outline their case what else can it say? I am happy to engage them in discussion why are they afraid to do this publically?
5. Do they know what to do? Does their crisis communication strategy include social media channels.

I actually welcome this strategy because it reinforces what i thought about them. They do not care they do not help despite what their slogan says.

Very Quick Recap of Story Thus Far

For those who are too laxy to read the entire story thus far ;-)

Here is a recap and for you readers. I hope this is where the story starts to get more interesting and away from my rantings and consumer frustration and more towards social engagement. Let's see what happens.

1. Malev went bankrupt
2. We got trapped in Istanbul
3. Called IF Emergency number who promise to pay claim
• IF have outsourced this to a third party who do not have detailed knowledge of IF's policies
• IF do not take responsibility for this third parties actions
4. Make online Claim
• Online service sucks
5. Received Mail saying claim not to be paid.
6. Went to IF shop.
• IF shops only have customer service for Sales.
• IF customer support service in shops is by phone and did not work
7. Called IF to explain situation. If promise to listen to phone call and get back to us
• IF refuse to accept that the Elisa agent at least implied that IF would pay. They never say they will not pay.
8. I quit IF and have moved all my insurances over to Pohjola.
9. I decide to attempt to engage IF through social media as social CRM is supposed to empower the consumer and in short all else has failed. Let's see how succesful this is. There are lots of examples across the web but none i can find in Finland. See the next post for the plan :-)

The Last Straw and another channel Email

After the phone call IF promised to look into the situation and listen to the phone call which apparently had been recorded. 

In any case this is a translation of some of the text sent by IF and cut and pasted from my email.

"Elisa's customer service representative checked the Malev web pages and saw that they had said to use other airlines to get home."

"After this he has read to you insurance examples and terms and condtions."

"The Elisa representative advises you to pay yourself and then to make the claim afterwards".

I am sorry IF but we interpreted this as you will pay and based our behaviour upon this.

It seems to me that

IF do not take responsibility for their third party partners in critical positions.

This is absolutely discraceful and this is where i gave up on IF in the conventional channels. Hence this social media experiment was born out.

IF you want customer service don't bother come here

As previously mentioned we embarked on the arduous trip into downtown Helsinki in all sorts of freezing weather conditions and blizzards that are for Finns a normal part of daily being even in what i would deam Autumn or Spring.

Having succeeded in reaching the IF office we looked for the customary Finnish service process of taking a number and waiting in line. But wait, FANTASTIC we are the next number, there is no line!!

Having lived in Finland perhaps too long i should have been suspicious but me in my ever naive state just thought that we were lucky!

Well we sat down with the IF agent and within 10 seconds we knew why there was no line. IF offices only sell insurance. There is no "customer service". The if agents cannot even see the data related to the customer such as claim history or current status of claims.

As such we were directed to a phone where we could call their customer support. Nice touch i thought, well that is service. Guess what, the phone service was out of order!

To be fair the agent in the shop tried to help us the best that she could with the limited resources available to her.

As such we explained our story to her. In short we said that we had called the emergency number and that they had said that they would pay but then didn't.

She was clear on one point though. IF do not pay travel insurance claims when companies go bankrupt. This is as Malev did in our case.

I must say i found this very strange, i personally would think that this is one of the things that you would absolutely want insurance for. I guess it would be too expensive if a Finnish company like aurinkomatkat went bankrupt and they would have to fly 10 000 finns back from Phuket. That might actually affect their profitability ;-)

Again though even with this point clearly stated in the small print the agent assured us that as IF had promised to pay by phone when we were in Istanbul that they would probably honour that claim.

Again reassured, but now more than a little annoyed, tired but still hopeful we went home knowing that we would again need to try and make contact with IF again via their phone number as there was once again no info on their web service regarding the claim or how to contest it and we could not get service in their shop.

WTF Am i just bad at Finnish?

Well thus the plot thickens. About a week later i received through the post a large envelope from IF.

Me being me, my first thought was OMG not another bill! I am sure i only just paid the last one!!

Well it was not a bill it was "even with my Finnish ability" a refusal to pay the claim. Included in the envelope was a "large" attachment of all the "small" print that no-one reads.

Well of course you can imagine my shock having hopefully also read the previous posts in this blog. IF had agreed to pay and now were refusing. What was going on?

After having waited for my girlfriend to come home to confirm what my poor Finnish had already implied we decided of course to take this up with IF. The next day we went to visit IF's office in downtown Helsinki to see if we could get to the bottom of this.

Making the Travel Insurance Claim

In the beginning of February upon returning home and as instructed by IF's emergency phone agent we made the travel insurance claim.

I wont spend too much time on this point but OMG what a painful user experience that was. Seemed to be using a web service that looked and behaved like something from the stoneage or at least late 90's. With my poor English education i am not sure which came first ;-)

Anyway after the second attempt and after having their service crash i managed to submit which admittedly was a shortened version of the original claim. It was without the receipts as attachments because i could not figure out how or if it was possible to attach them to the message but it was done and i expected them to contact me for the other relevant info such as the receipts.

In any case i decided to sit back throw my arms in the air, wrap them around the back of  my head and relax. I had that nice warm feeling inside because i had been smart to enough to get travel insurance and that everything was going to be ok. The gamble had paid off.

The End of The Trip and Start of the Story

Most stories start at the beginning but this one starts at the end of a fantastic romantic weekend getaway to Istanbul with my Finnish girlfriend.

Upon arriving back at Istanbul's airport with the intention of returning to Helsinki, where we live, we immediately were greeting by the in itself unpleasant site of seeing that our flight had been cancelled. We took the usual steps of walking around the airport trying to find out information and eventually discovering that as Malev had gone bankrupt they would not be flying anyone home.

Of course the expected questions arrive, what are we supposed to do? what should we do, how are we going to do that?

As we could not get home that day we decided to go back to the hotel. Upon arrival at the hotel we thought it best to call IF's emergency number to see what we should do.

During the phone call we were led to believe that IF would pay for the return flights and additional night in the hotle as well as other costs. With this in mind we relaxed booked quite expensive flights the next day so that we could get home faster and checked back into our very nice hotel in Istanbul.

End of a lovely trip to Istanbul

With this in mind we simply relaxed and enjoyed what remained of an additional day in Istanbul, went to bed and returned to Finland the next day.

After returning home we made the travel insurance claim through IF's web service and this is where the plot began to thicken.