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Bem Ikyanyon -
3 months ago
HAD I KNOWN. I usually do not put organisations on blast but I've had it to my neck with this one. I started off as an advocate for Reliance before I began to use the service myself. Why? Because of their packaging and the few testimonies I had heard. I signed up my wife, my dad and myself. It was going ok until I had to make an adjustment to my dad's package, there was little flexibility. I ended up having to cancel that account and create a new one to suit his needs.
The service was not fantastic but I brushed it off as one of the challenges Nigerian businesses face. I started having experiences with un-informed representatives on their customer care line that turned to rudeness instead of admitting they did not have a solution handy.
Our accounts were set to auto-billing so everything would run smooth. Despite the not-so-great service we were still accessing care and supplementing it with out-of-pocket expenses.
There is a package available to people with pre-existing conditions as an add-on to your base package which was the basis of me signing my dad up. When the billing cycle arrived last month, the add on plan was renewed but the base plan did not renew. I did not pay it any mind because I was notified of a charge for renewal of the plan and assumed everything was renewed. When my dad had his next appointment, the hospital asked for cash claiming his plan was not active. I called Reliance to find out what was going on and they realised there was a glitch on their end. I paid out of pocket for this visit. When we got the list of medication, we waited because we thought everything would be resolved promptly. After 2 days I asked for permission to buy the medication because my dad needed it. I was asked to go ahead and keep the receipt. It ended up taking over a week of back and forth before the issue was resolved. I applied for a refund for the consultation I paid for and it was processed. However, when I asked for a refund for the medication we bought out-of-pocket as a result of Reliance's glitch, I was told they could not process it because his plan was not active. Mind you, this plan was on auto-billing and part of the money had already been charged. At this point I explicitly told the reps to take off all our accounts from auto-billing so we do not land in the same mess again.
Today, 05/07/2022 I saw a charge for 6,000 naira which was really confusing. I called to find out why I was charged and their response was my account is on auto-billing; the same thing I had explicitly told them to remove from all accounts.
Reliance is great at marketing and giving you the illusion of taking away the stress from healthcare. After my experience using them for my wife, my dad and myself, I've been forced to migrate everyone off this service due to the following reasons:
Lack of competence within the customer care team - these are the frontline officers that should have foundational knowledge about healthcare and how it works in Nigeria. Even if they are not health workers, they can be properly trained so they can provide the necessary support.
Rigid service offering - the ability to address things on the backend of the app/system simply does not happen. The willingness to adapt to customer needs does not seem to exist.
Dysfunctional Management - there is no proper and timely way to escalate issues. You can have a problem looming for over a week and you have to keep calling to follow up. Unfortunately, they do not take accurate notes so you may need to repeat the whole story a million times.
I was excited to have found an organisation that seems to understand the pain points of healthcare in Nigeria, especially for the elderly accessing it. I have come to learn that Reliance knows very little about the complexities of the healthcare system in general and lacks the capacity to guide customers through the rigours of the Nigerian system. I am so disappointed having recommended family and friends to sign up to such a broken service. I would not recommend Reliance to anyone that actually needs to access healthcare.
