His nick is “V”. He’s about the same age as me, just months older. Being a marketing executive as he is, he also take up some ‘side-income’ job aka insurance agent. Yeap. You heard me rite. He is an insurance agent. Well, his old man is quite a successful insurance agent himself. I guess V somehow got influenced/forced into doing this. Again, I’d like to stress that it’s just my wild guess on the forcing/influence part, I might be wrong.
Seriously, a man with double job? A marketing executive & an insurance agent at the same time, it’ll needs lotsa speaking skill, lotsa interaction skills with others, ranging from 18year old to 81 year old will take place on a daily basis should he needs to increase his personal record/income. It needs very good time management above all. Yeap, it ain’t easy, in my point of view that is.
A simple question here: What is essential in an insurance agent?
His outlook? How he dress himself out when meeting up with potential customer? OR;
His product knowledge? Knowing every single details inside out?? OR;
His contacts? In case of emergency, who/where should he be referring it to? OR;
His after-sales service? Will he come to you off and on to check out on your current condition?? And not just when it’s due for payment?
I don’t know about you lots. It differs from person-to-person basis. For me, I’d say his product knowledge comes above all else. 2nd will be his after-sales service.
You wanna know why I’m bringing this up?? Main reason because something just happened recently that made one of my mates almost cancel off her insurance policy with V. Here’s the story.
One fine day, my mate, let’s call her “L” shall we? Yes, it’s a she, in case you wondering. Yes, I’ve got loads of female friends as well. *evil grin* Her rear car bumper fells off after a minor incident involves a company lorry. The said lorry driver attempted to escape after hitting the bumper (L’s car was parked in orderly fashion in front of her office premise, and the lorry driver hit the rear bumper while negotiating a double parking), luckily a good Samaritan who witnessed the whole incident managed to stop the b-tard. Only then L managed to get all the details and proceed with the necessary with the company later.
Due to the fact that she purchased her car insurance from my aforementioned friend, V. Therefore, she passed every details to V for him to the necessary follow-ups. V even introduce L to one of the panel car workshop to get her car fixed up ASAP.
Everything went smooth as silk as L retrieved her car couple of days later. Talk about efficiency eh? *evil smile* More to come.
A week later, L received a call from the car workshop, requesting her to pay for the car-repair fee that they charged onto her. L was shocked as hell when she received this phone call as it is agreed between L and the company that she will claimed her repairs from the lorry’s insurance company, and this in fact has been told to V. She told the workshop staff that shouldn’t it that they claim the car-repair charge with the third party insurance company?? Instead, the workshop staff replied L with a bunch of bullshit excuses that they failed to do so due to insurance cannot claimed using knock-to-knock procedure if it involves a lorry and now L gotta pay ‘em directly, and she will have to claim from the third party insurance by herself.
Shockingly, L made a call to V, who is in charge of her insurance policy to settle it for her. Imagine this. A working lady, who know nuts about car *and rightly so*, got called up by a car workshop demanding for $ on the car-repair-charge, anyone will get panicked. V said ok. He’ll deal with it. Few hours later, V called L back. To her surprise, V said the same thing like what the workshop told her upfront: she gotta pay up.
WADAFAK!?!?! L bought her insurance policy from this big MNC company, her less-than-2 year-car just got its rear bumper fell off, and she gotta pay up for the repair charge?
NO FUCKING WAY!!!! Where’s the insurance coverage gone to then?? Hence, L made a call to her hubby, K, which is our high school friend as well. (gotcha, L is someone elses’ wifey, you perv! You lads may stop your wild imagination now!) This time around, V told K that he’ll pay the workshop first, maybe K or L can pay him back later whenever it’s convenient to them, so that V can escape all the inconveniences.
You see, after the call, the couple has been arguing (verbally) with V that the whole thing doesn’t make any sense at all to them, and L even asked around other insurance agents, which their replies totally contradict with what the workshop people are claiming.
Eventually after the first call, L just doesn’t care about the payment, because in no way she is going to pay to the workshop first. More than 2 months later, the workshop people calls her again asking about the payment.
Furiously, L bombarded V on the supposed coverage on the vehicle. V didn’t utter a single word, but kept on saying the claims made by the workshop people is true and he’ll pay for them upfront first as he sensed that L will not budge on her decision.
Reluctantly, L told me this incident via MSN. I suggested her to speak to my insurance agent as he is a goddamn good agent I’ve met so far, which is a full-time insurance agent. Due to the fact that L’s insurance policy is not handle by my agent, the best my agent can do is to provide her all the contact numbers as well as the person-in-charge to check on her ‘case’ over the phone.. *Funny eh? Shouldn’t all these checking and phone-calling suppose to be done by the insurance agent? Owh, the ‘insurance agent’ is on a ‘meeting’ in his marketing executive job. Aahh, how can I forget this? He’s having a double job.* **sarcasm spotted**
Reason being because the report stated L’s car was hit by lorry, and refer to some insurance new policy bla-bla-bla, collision with lorry are considered as public transport and therefore cannot claim from third party insurance. So L set to do research on her own, i.e. calling up the insurance company to verify the car-lorry situation and speaking to other insurance agents. And then the workshop people let slip that lorries with 3-tonne and above only are not subjected to third party claim. Suspect that something is amiss, L had called up the company (where the lorry belongs to) to inquire about the weight. And, voila! The lorry is a 1tonne lorry, and definitely can be claimed under third party insurance. L called back the workshop and bombarded them with the new information.
After all the hassles, L finally found out some peculiar thing on the workshop. Reason why the workshop was asking $$ from L is because the workshop staff never submit the insurance claim to the insurance company. They never bother to check the weight of the lorry. They just assume that it cannot be claimed to avoid the hassle, and to get money first, knowingly that most customers is dumb in this area.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!??! How can they do this???!!!! If the customer were to report this incident to the insurance company, this particular car workshop’s name will be removed from the panel list of workshops forever. And L let V know that the whole thing in fact can be claimed, and the workshop people ain't doing their work. But being a good person as L & K is, both of them decided to give V one more chance to redeem himself. Any more similar incident after this, they’ll terminate the insurance policy with V with immediate effect already.
This case has been dragged on almost 3 months. And it’s finally settled already. About a week ago. 4 of us ( L & K, me & V) went out for dinner. We didn’t mention about the case during the whole trip to & from dinner as it might cause embarrassing/discomfort moment. When we return to V’s house after dinner, his father told us that he went to the workshop personally and told them off about this incident. And V’s father also assure us that such incident will not happen again, ever.
Owh, on a side note. Just right after dinner, when V was about to get his car, the below happen.
Yeap, his car’s side mirror got smashed off. I pitied him, but at the same time I was thinking to myself, “Karma??”
This ain’t the first time that V has got things screwed up. Few years back, my cousin’s in-laws have bought quite a few policies *erm, if I’m not mistaken, the total was 5 insurance policies bought in one-go* But due to his recklessness, he lost all 5 policies on the same day.
Now, like I mentioned earlier, V’s father is quite a successful insurance agent back in his days. V inherited all the policies from his dad. All he needs to do is just maintain the after-sales service and he’ll get a hefty sum of side-income on a monthly basis. What about his dad, you might ask? Well, his dad is on a semi-retire mode right now. It doesn’t matter to him anymore.
See the difference between a full time insurance agent and a part-time insurance agent now? One is with all the knowledge & is able to answer any kinda question within a snap of a finger, like those answer is just written at the back of his hand. One is a pretender, a wanna-be, a good-for-nothing-actor, whereby his favourite quote will be:"I'll get back to you tomorrow after I double confirm it with my dad."
I can tell you lots the story of 'V' but I'm afraid the length of the story will be faaaaar lengthier than those of Harry Potter's. I tired of typing now. Gonna doze off already. Be back for more!.
Stay tuned, boys and girls!
No comments:
Post a Comment