Ok I’ve had enough

by Whaleoil on May 22, 2010 · 25 comments

I said the gloves were off. I said that it would come. I never back down on my promises. This is the start and it isn’t going to end any­time soon.

Barry was in a squad of seven non-firefighters who com­pleted the annual Fire­fight­ers Sky Tower Chal­lenge, all in the name of rais­ing money for the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation

The group, made up of Barry, Leukaemia and Blood Foun­da­tion chief exec­u­tive Prue Etchev­erry, Sky City chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer Mike Clarke, Auck­land Air­port chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer Tony Gollin, Fidelity Life chief exec­u­tive Mil­ton Jen­nings and Dave Howard – a man who won a com­pe­ti­tion on Trade Me for the chance to com­pete in the chal­lenge, was the third squad to race up the building.

That is so nice for Fidelity Life‘s Chief Exec­u­tive to do that, oh how sweet. Of course he is all smiles and waves for the char­ity but in the back­ground, the com­pany that he runs has made my life a liv­ing hell. This of course will all play out in court, and it will all play out very pub­licly because, well because I can and will.

With just three days till I have to sell the house my will to resist bit­ing has gone, might patience, and some would say I have been very patient is at an end. From this day for­ward through Social Media, through Tele­vi­sion and through any medium I can use I will tell my story along with any­one else’s sto­ries of how insur­ance com­pa­nies like Fidelity Life, but Fidelity Life in par­tic­u­lar like to take a risk but don’t like to hon­our con­tracts, pay out on those risks and gen­er­ally fuck with peo­ples lives.

This post is now an open invi­ta­tion for any­one who has ever had a prob­lem with Fidelity Life, their claims peo­ple, the doc­tors in their pay like Anthony Aster­aidis, Prof Des Gor­man and Ralf Schn­abel to let me know your story and I will bring it to the public’s attention.

I will blog on how they wear you down, how they make shit up as they go along and how they obfus­cate in order to get you to bend to their will. I will explain how the whole insur­ance indus­try use a select few doc­tors to get what they want and keep their patients med­icated in the mis­taken belief that they are cured.

Very soon when you google Fidelity Life it will not be their web­site at the top of the search, it will be mine and the spe­cial cat­e­gory I am going to cre­ate just for them. The hurt is immense and this hurt has to go because my life is hell. The ONLY way I know to deal with it is via my blog and my writing.

There isn’t much I am good at but this kind of thing I am very, very good at. I will just have to do what I am good at.

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{ 24 comments }

steve May 22, 2010 at 7:56 pm

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Hit them head on. Wear­ing you down is just a time wast­ing game to make you sub­mit and give up.

Irela­vant to your sit­u­a­tion, I have a sim­i­lar thing with ACC. They are respon­si­ble for wast­ing 1 year of my life.
I think it is about time Govt Min­is­ters did some­thing about the Insur­ance Indus­try. At the moment Min­is­ters say ‘it would be inapro­pri­ate to com­ment while you have a claim’ (Pansey Wong)

Make the skull­dug­gery public

megashitstirrer May 22, 2010 at 8:53 pm

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They are com­plete cunts WO.

I like the Aussie rea­son­able­ness sys­tem where the respon­si­bil­ity is on the indus­try to ensure the cus­tomer is 100% clear on what is cov­ered in a policy.

thor42 May 22, 2010 at 9:03 pm

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I’m very sorry to hear that you’ve been mucked around by these guys, WO. Mucked around from pil­lar to post, as it were.

Hang in there, ay. I hope that SB can give you her sup­port (I’m sure she will). Would it be use­ful to think of hav­ing a hol­i­day? Just an idea – maybe duck off to the Coro­man­del or Taupo for a while.

All the best from me –
– thor42

ummmm May 22, 2010 at 9:04 pm

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Oh dear, you sound fucked. You won’t enjoy going to Court against the insur­ance guys any­where near as much as you enjoy your Dis­trict Court stuff. Trust me, you will bleed from the arse, and they High Court process will take you places darker than you have ever been. You should really give a bit more thought to whether you might be a bit frag­ile for lit­i­ga­tion. You will end up being Fidelity Life’s Louise Nicholas, f#cked over twice.

bigkev May 23, 2010 at 1:25 am

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takin on a insur­ance com­pany, good luck with that and the arse bleed

cadwallader May 23, 2010 at 8:50 am

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Take them on! Issue pro­ceed­ings, main­tain a blow-by-blow record of your progress and Fidelity’s obfus­ca­tions. They’ll fold if you are loud enough. The court of pub­lic opin­ion is open 24 hours of each and every day.

It is wrong to imag­ine the Aus­tralian process is any bet­ter than here in NZ…it is not! The same oblig­a­tions apply to com­pa­nies here as in Aus­tralia. My advice is that you need to really drive the lit­i­ga­tion but also to keep up the momen­tum you require in the pub­lic domain.

As for Steve sug­gest­ing that a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter ought do some­thing about the insur­ance indus­try is sad and woe­ful. Why do state wor­ship­pers believe gov­ern­ments can fix anything?

spanishbride May 23, 2010 at 8:54 am

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We have noth­ing left to lose. They have cost us EVERYTHING.Taking them on can only cause them prob­lems , not us because as I said, we have noth­ing left to lose.
We tried believ­ing in the sys­tem and being rea­son­able. We expected that a con­tract that says you get A if B hap­pens would be hon­oured. When it wasn’t we got a 20 page report from the top Doc­tor in NZ in his field explain­ing why their Doc­tors opin­ion (based on a 30 minute meet­ing with WO was wrong ) Unlike Fidelity Lifes Doc­tors ‚our Doc­tors have seen WO reg­u­larly for 6 years and actu­ally know the state of his health.Fidelity Lifes response to the 20 page report was to say that it was insuf­fi­cient for them to make a judg­ment and that WO would have to come in again for another 30 minute meet­ing with one of their Doc­tors. At that point we realised that they had no inten­tion of hon­our­ing the con­tract and that it would never be reinstated.

spanishbride May 23, 2010 at 8:59 am

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The com­pany in my opin­ion got sick of meet­ing their finan­cial oblig­a­tions for our pol­icy. WO is not seen as a cus­tomer who paid good money for this pol­icy ( over $360 a month ) but as an expense that is reduc­ing com­pany prof­its. Cut­ting him off improves the bot­tom line and is a risk worth tak­ing as most cus­tomers with depres­sion will be too busy gong to hell in a hand­bas­ket, curled in a cor­ner and sui­ci­dal to chal­lenge them. They KNOW full well that they are NOT hon­our­ing the contract.The thing is that they also know that the aver­age Joe does not have the resources to get justice.

spanishbride May 23, 2010 at 9:04 am

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If it wasn’t for my par­ents we would be liv­ing in a car­a­van park right now. I am not exag­ger­at­ing, it is the hon­est truth. I would like to pub­licly right now acknowl­edge them for keep­ing a roof over our heads and food on the table. They have sup­ported us and by doing so helped keep our mar­riage together. The pres­sure has been so immense that even the very loyal and lov­ing Span­ish­bride has wanted to run for the hills and never come back on more than one occa­sion. Thank you Mum and Dad. We couldn’t have made it through with­out you.

steve May 23, 2010 at 9:23 am

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So cad­wal­lader, what are the Govt Min­is­ters there for then? Self appraisle and spend our tax dol­lars?
I cer­tainly know where not to buy Insur­ance and I cer­tainly know who will need a whis­tle come next elec­tion.
“The court of pub­lic opin­ion is open 24 hours of each and every day” This applies to Govt and Jus­tice as well as Insur­ance. Does Mil­ton Jen­nings have a com­ment? I’m sure he is aware of this blog.
Whale Oil Beef Hooked!

cadwallader May 23, 2010 at 11:45 am

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I refer to my ear­lier post. Go for it. One cau­tion: You must ensure your hands are spot­lessly clean in this mat­ter. I am not at all sug­gest­ing that you have faults on your side, but you must ensure the com­pany has noth­ing to toss back at you.

Steve, when I fig­ure out the use of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters it will indeed be revelatory!

Whaleoil May 23, 2010 at 1:15 pm

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My life is an open book, plus their stu­pid pi has been rum­bled twice fol­low­ing me. I have noth­ing to hide, unlike them

ummmm May 23, 2010 at 12:44 pm

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SB: “Tak­ing them on can only cause them prob­lems, not us because as I said, we have noth­ing left to lose.”

That is a very quaint and naive view of the con­se­quences of litigation.

Actu­ally you have a num­ber of thing to lose: san­ity, dig­nity, your belief that lit­i­ga­tion will cause a prob­lem for the insur­ance co, costs, charg­ing orders, your sta­tus as non-bankrupts, your marriage….

Then if the judge doesn’t go your way, Whale will become another Vince Siemer with an end­less vendetta against the judiciary.

You are head­ing down a well worn path to mak­ing your past mis­ery look like a hol­i­day camp. Fact.

Whaleoil May 23, 2010 at 1:24 pm

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Right, so give up, let the big guy win. Let bully win. News­flash I’m not play­ing to win, I’m play­ing to not lose, there is a huge difference.

spanishbride May 23, 2010 at 2:27 pm

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Ummmm you are the one who is naive.
We lost our san­ity and our dig­nity a long time ago.For the past 6 years peo­ple have tried to bank­rupt us.If it hap­pens it hap­pens, we really don’t care any­more. When your back is to the wall there is no where else left to go and noth­ing is more dan­ger­ous than some­one with noth­ing left to lose.As for our mar­riage I am already fac­ing the prospect of Wo going to jail and to court thanks to the name sup­pres­sion charges.If we lose in court we lose and that will be that. Wo will con­tinue to focus on get­ting well. Our life will not be con­sumed with seek­ing jus­tice. We will do every­thing we can and will then move on.

ummmm May 23, 2010 at 2:55 pm

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“Let bully win” is one way to look at it, but I would say you can do more to them through your blog and sup­port­ers than you will in Court. As for play­ing not to lose… every­one loses in lit­i­ga­tion, ask David Tua/Kevin Barry or Vince Siemer/Michael Stiassny.

Do your google stuff, but fil­ing pro­ceed­ings will just give them the chance to take over any last bits of your life that they don’t already own.

The first thing the insur­ance com­pany will do is get an order for secu­rity of costs mean­ing you will have to put up about $20K just to cover you through the ini­tial dis­cov­ery phase. The judge will grant this if it appears there is a pos­si­bil­ity you are unable to pay the insur­ance company’s legal costs if you lose. You can’t pay, so the judge will have good grounds to make such an order. If you fight the insur­ance company’s appli­ca­tion for secu­rity and lose the judge will order you to also pay the insur­ance company’s costs on the ‘secu­rity for costs’ hear­ing, prob­a­bly about $5K. Then, unless you pay the $20K secu­rity for costs and the $5K hear­ing costs you case can be struck out with fur­ther costs awarded against you.

After dis­cov­ery you can expect to pay a fur­ther $50K secu­rity for costs. Oh and I am sure you know about the $1700 fil­ing fees and the $2,500 per/day of “court costs” you have to pay the Court before the hearing.

On the pos­i­tive side, the costs you have to pay to the insur­ance com­pany will cover only about half there legal bill, mean­ing it will cost them about $15K to get the pro­ceed­ings struck out.

And that’s assum­ing you have a strong case.

Any­way, all that aside, sock it to em.

ummmm May 23, 2010 at 5:11 pm

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SB: “They KNOW full well that they are NOT hon­our­ing the contract.”

Per­haps, but they have paid you out $500K on the con­tract so far. The Courts won’t be that sym­pa­thetic, trust me, much sad­der cases have failed muster in the High Court.

fisher44 May 23, 2010 at 5:41 pm

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Prof Gor­man is deputy chair of the Wel­fare Work­ing Group which is, appar­ently, advis­ing on Govt on ways to intro­duce insurance-based con­cepts into our wel­fare sys­tem, includ­ing assess­ments of sick­ness and dis­abil­ity. Paula Reb­stock is the chair.

spanishbride May 23, 2010 at 7:22 pm

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Ummm who are you? Front up! Where did you get that $500,000 fig­ure from? Are you our insur­ance agent? Do you work for Fidelity Life? The court won’t be sym­pa­thetic you say. In your books if they pay out on a legit­i­mate claim for 5 years and then get tired of doing so despite the clear med­ical evi­dence that the per­son is still ill,then the court will say…oh well they hon­oured it for 5 years that’s good enough?

steve May 23, 2010 at 7:31 pm

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SB you beat me to it.

I see ‘ummmm’ as hav­ing much more inter­est in this than inter­est in a Blog.
It is the ‘threat’ with­out actu­ally mak­ing a threat. Either that or ‘ummmm’ is a sadis­tic shitstirrer.

“The first thing the insur­ance com­pany will do is get an order for secu­rity of costs mean­ing you will have to put up about $20K just to cover you through the ini­tial dis­cov­ery phase. The judge will grant this if it appears there is a pos­si­bil­ity you are unable to pay the insur­ance company’s legal costs if you lose. You can’t pay, so the judge will have good grounds to make such an order. If you fight the insur­ance company’s appli­ca­tion for secu­rity and lose the judge will order you to also pay the insur­ance company’s costs on the ‘secu­rity for costs’ hear­ing, prob­a­bly about $5K. Then, unless you pay the $20K secu­rity for costs and the $5K hear­ing costs you case can be struck out with fur­ther costs awarded against you,”

I see that as a ‘You can not beat us’ hint

cadwallader May 23, 2010 at 8:53 pm

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I have no idea what your claim is about nor any sums paid/payable so my thoughts are untainted. Sue them! Pub­li­cize your case. (You’re in a good place to do so.)

If Fidelity tries to slow the process go pub­lic! When you are expe­ri­enc­ing progress in the court, stay away from the pub­lic. The two fori are sep­a­rate and exclu­sive so use them both inter­change­ably, DO NOT sign any con­fi­den­tial­ity agree­ments. I think the place to start is for you to pub­lish your entire pol­icy on this blog with­out delay with a brief out­line of your claim.

spanishbride May 23, 2010 at 9:33 pm

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Fidelity

I is for incen­tives. Cus­tomers being paid out on a claim are lia­bil­i­ties. The per­son han­dling their case are given incen­tives to get them off the books.

We went through SIX dif­fer­ent case man­agers because each one in turn failed to get us off the books and to col­lect their bonus. Each had their own unique meth­ods.
One was very inter­est­ing in her approach. She under­stood she said. She had been there her­self she said.She had been able to go back to work she said after she had been given elec­tro shock therapy.It was just the thing she said as it sorted her out quick smart. Lithium she said, Now that was the busi­ness also.
( she was not a doc­tor, just a case man­ager )When we asked why the pay­ments with­out warn­ing had been cut in half and then rein­stated and back­dated 3 months later she said that it was a stan­dard tune up ( her words ) to see if WO was faking.The fact that he didn’t out of des­per­a­tion find a job dur­ing that time and in fact his depres­sion wors­ened con­firmed that he was actu­ally ill.
The stress caused to his fam­ily and the fact that it set his progress back 12 months was of no con­cern to her.

nazislater May 24, 2010 at 6:37 pm

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Its no con­so­la­tion to you, but I am glad I gave him a hid­ing more tha 40 years ago when he was grow­ing up in Buck­lands Beach. LOL.

OMG he has grown up to look just like his mother.

Whaleoil May 24, 2010 at 7:00 pm

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Gave who a hid­ing 40 years ago?

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