Beware of Royal Sundaram Insurance Company


An insurance agent fetches your personal details from your credit card company and calls you to market his health insurance company’s offerings. The deal does not interest you, so you decline to subscribe. You thought it was all over here with this one telephonic conversation. But in a few days the Insurance company calls you, informing that they have charged your credit card company a yearly premium and have mailed you the required documents. And there starts yet another struggle to retrieve your hard earned money that this Insurance company and your credit offering company have ripped off from you…

This is exactly what happened to my Dad and probably to many others. My dad has a GE Cash Card, Royal Sundaram is affiliated to. He declined subscribing to any health policy offered by Royal Sundaram. But the agent went ahead and issued it while also charging my Dad’s GE Cash Card. GE also proceeded with it without confirming of whether there has been any written consent from our side. According to GE and Royal Sundaram, they do not require processing of any documents for such a purchase and the whole process is completed over phone. They proudly call this fatuous idea…”Tele Marketting”! Since then we had been paying the interest to GE towards an amount of 4.8k which was the yearly premium charged by Royal Sundaram. And in no way both parties were ready to refund the money.

Even if we cancel the policy, the following are their short term cancellation charges:

Within 1 month: 75% refund

1-3 months: 50% refund

3-6 months: 75% refund

After 6 months: No refund

Which means, we would be charged a minimum of 25% of the premium towards a health policy we never committed to.

And the best part is, they do not respond to your complaint emails, give you phone numbers to contact which never worked, do not give you contact numbers of higher authorities in the organisation and play around with you as though you were a tennis ball… Bouncing between the courts of GE and Royal Sundaram. After an endless number of calls to both and assurances from them for over six months, we were told that we are not entitled any refund since their 6 month period fro refunds was over.

So we had to take the hard way. We really wanted to put them both to terms. So after threatening them to take to court, they finally refunded the premium fee but again not the interest.

Recently an exactly similar thing happened to my cousin, who was charged over 8.5k by Royal Sundaram on her SBI Credit Card. And yet another struggle has begun…

Its such an irony, where credit card facilities are meant to ease your life, managing your financial transactions, but they end up making it even more difficult for you. And you are left to fight for your own hard earned money!

13 Responses to “Beware of Royal Sundaram Insurance Company”

  1. Ambarish Mitra wrote on July 5th, 2007 at 2:09 pm

    You are bang-on target. We should run away by the very mention of the name of Royal Sundaram.

  2. Ashwin wrote on July 9th, 2007 at 6:30 pm

    Royal Sundaram is a BS Company.
    To hell with them and their marketing practises.

  3. Shrurti wrote on July 26th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    Hi Dear,
    How the company is doing this without the person permission.
    why dont to complain in Consumer forum Court..They will surely help you or other consumer protection sociaties made to help people from such incidence..

  4. dhiraj kumar wrote on July 29th, 2007 at 4:57 pm

    Exactly the same thing is happening to me.
    It is the SBI and Royel Sundram, who are doing the foul practice to me compelling me to pay for a policy i have never asked for.

    what should i do?
    can we move to consumer court?
    do anyone knows any lawyer to help me out?

  5. Akshar wrote on August 15th, 2007 at 11:11 pm

    Hmmmmmm Very true. But Sundaram Mutual Funds Are really good.

    One should always beware of Insurance Agents.

  6. Rahul Khattar wrote on October 26th, 2007 at 12:17 pm

    Does Royal sunderam have a website thst we can check out promiums and if th policy given is valid etc..

  7. sunny wrote on November 21st, 2007 at 5:20 pm

    thanks for this. i just got a call from this company, and i was really tempted to try them out. i will ask them to get lost now…

  8. Insurance Broker Finder wrote on January 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    Well, this is sad story but these CC companies and insurance broker should be brought into law to portect consumers from such fradus

  9. Bala wrote on January 25th, 2008 at 12:24 am

    Hi, Its purely the faults of the Credit Card offering Banks. The Tele-Calling Setup is the Credit Card Banks and not Royal Sundaram’s. Ususally the Credit Card companies pay to the insurance companies and asks for an insurance for the said client. The Insurance company is nowhere related to this kind of acts.

  10. Rachael wrote on April 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 am

    I agree, this is spot on. BEWARE of these people!

  11. nakul wrote on April 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    If any one gets into this kind of trouble from th insurance company,
    you can contact any of the ombudsman office in India ( which ever is near your location ).
    What is an Ombudsman:
    The institution of Insurance Ombudsman was created by a Government of India Notification dated 11th November, 1998 with the purpose of quick disposal of the grievances of the insured customers and to mitigate their problems involved in redressal of those grievances. This institution is of great importance and relevance for the protection of interests of policy holders and also in building their confidence in the system. The institution has helped to generate and sustain the faith and confidence amongst the consumers and insurers.

  12. ashish wrote on May 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    i m also getting too many call from royal for health policy of annual premium of rs. 2999.i visited their website but not got as such any policy.
    thanks to this site who save me to enter in hell of telemarketing and royal sundaram.

  13. subodh thakur wrote on May 14th, 2008 at 8:50 pm

    MY SELF SUBODH THAKUR THIS COMPANY HAS CHEATED ME TOO,BY SENDING THREE MEDICLAIM POLICIES OF MY NAME .SBI CREDIT CARD DEDUCTED THE AMOUNT THRICE FROM MY ACCOUNT.WHEN I TOLD THEM FOR CORRECTION THEY LINGER ON IT AND IT INCREASED LIKE ANYTHING.IT IS STILL NOT RESOLVED THOUTH I HAVE PAID THE AMOUNT I SPEND TO SBI CREDIT CARD ,NOW I AM GOING INTO CONSUMER FORUM AND MAKE BOTH OF THEM PARTY.
    I AM GOING TO CHARG HARRASEMENT CHARGES ON sbi credit card and royla sunderam both in the tune of Lacs of Rupees.




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