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Review 1/31/2011
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On January 24, 2011, I called 21st Century to set up insurance for a car I was buying that day. I needed insurance before taking possession of the car so I needed a document faxed over to my work ASAP so when I went to get the car, I could give the dealer the document showing I did in fact have insurance for it.
I spoke to Justin at 1-888-244-2040 who was extremely cordial and helpful. We set everything up and he assured me the insurance document he was about to send over would show the insurance would start up at 12 midnight that night. It was exactly what I needed to give to the dealer.
I go to get the fax and he’s got the start date as August 11, 2011. Again, we’re talking about a policy I need on January 24, 2011. This does me absolutely no good. The dealership is not going to give me a car with an insurance policy that doesn’t start for over six months. Why he would start insurance for a car I’m buying that day over six months later I have no idea. How does January 24 mistakenly get put as August 11? I did pay $177 so I’m expecting some sort of service and over the next four hours I could see the type of assistance I can expect from your company.
I call Justin back right away, but of course, he doesn’t answer (I leave a message on his voice mail but he had no intention of ever returning it). After all, he’s done his part, there’s no need for him to talk to me now. So I start the process of trying to get someone else to fix this. I only have a few hours to get this fixed before I get the car. I spend the next two hours on the phone TRYING TO GET SOMEONE at this company to fix this. I get put on hold. I finally get someone who doesn’t have a clue how to fix it. So I get transferred. More hold. Another person who has no idea. More hold. More transferring. I get hung up on. I call again. More hold. More transferring. No one has any idea how to fix this.
This is a stinking clerical error. It should take a minute to fix and another minute to fax over the document I need to give to the dealership. Instead I wasted two hours on the phone on hold and talking to people who had no idea what to do and just kept transferring me to other people who had no idea what to do.
Finally two hours later I get a girl named Debbie (at 11:17 on 1/24/11) who says the “customer service” department is fixing the problem and the revised document showing my insurance starting up that evening (like I paid for) will be faxed over within the hour.
I wait and wait and wait. No document comes. Two hours later I call Justin. He does answer! Except this isn’t the cordial and happy-go-lucky Justin I spoke to earlier in the day. Now he’s curt and appears to be annoyed that he’s being bothered with this. After all, it’s clearly my fault he put a date six months in the future on my document. He’s got my money now, so why should he have to bother with this? He says right away “Customer service is taking care of this. Let me put you on hold for a minute.” That’s it. That was the last I heard from him. So I watch the clock on the phone. Ten minutes go by and I realize this guy has absolutely no intention of doing anything. Of course he does have my cell number and can call me at any time to say “we’re still working on it” or “I goofed, let me fix this right away” or anything to let me know he’s taking care of this or that he even cares at all. Instead, he put me on hold and went back to the Tetris game he was playing on his computer.
I call him back and of course, to no one’s surprise, his voice mail answers. I leave a message that if I do not receive the document in 20 minutes I will be canceling the service.
Again, he can call me back on my phone and tell me it will take longer or anything but he chooses not to. He’s made the decision that his error is my problem now. That’s apparently how this company works. “We have your money, you’re screwed and good luck trying to get ahold of anyone on the phone” is their policy.
So no fax comes over, I then have to go through the process of canceling this crappy service, which means more hold time, more transferring more wasting time. An hour later I finally get Kim Taylor who was very nice and cancels the “service” for me. I go to one of their competitors and get the correct document faxed over within ten minutes. Oddly, no document was ever faxed by anyone at the company the whole day.
Interestingly, 24 hours later a document IS faxed by 21st century. Only it’s a document STATING THE SAME INCORRECT START DATE ON AUGUST 11, 2011. So not only did no one at the company fix the Justin’s error and not fax me over a document before I get the car, they end up faxing me a document 24 hours after I needed it with the same incorrect information that started the whole problem in the first place. So literally nothing was done. Faxing a blank piece of paper would have been just as helpful. Really, to call this incompetent is an understatement. I had to waste four-plus hours dealing with this awful company; hostile and incompetent people and I can only wonder if I had ended up keeping the service and was in an accident and actually needed the service, how hard would it have been to get anything done?
So in the end, I wasted half my work day but on the plus side, I learned a valuable lesson. 21st century insurance is about the worst company you can imagine (you make AT&T look good!) and thankfully if I’m ever in need of actual service, I won’t have to deal with this company.
To top it off, a few days later I get a letter from these scumbags telling me I owe a $50 cancellation fee. For a service I never had. Literally. It’s mind boggling. So now I’ve got to waste more time on the phone to get this taken care of (since the letter threatens to get a collection agency after you if you don't pay). I get a guy who says he has to forward a form to another department to get it off and he can’t give me any documentation showing this fee is canceled so now I’ve still got to call this sleazy company yet again in a few days to make sure it’s cleared (which we all know it will not be, since that’s how you operate). I've been contacting every agency that governs stuff like this (like the BBB) to cover all my bases here. I’ve never come across a more sleazy, poorly run company.
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