Selectquote Doesn’t Really Think It Through!

I’ve never been a fan of Selectquote. Having worked (a long time ago) in a similar on line agency I know for a fact that with quantity (they claim to do 100,000 applications a year) quality suffers serious damage.

The agents, if you can really call them that, have no where near the knowledge of the business and underwriting as they should. They have huge workloads and requirements to crank it out. The system can’t accommodate creativity or cases that are high maintenance or buyers who are slow to pull the trigger. It is their goal to meet you, sell you and be done with you.

There is no service after the sale. The annual reviews that have been the benchmark of customer service in the industry aren’t done by Selectquote. They have argued to me that through use of social media they are servicing, but I have plenty of ex Selectquote clients who have seen the difference and don’t agree with Selectquote.

Sorry. Got started on all my pet peeves and all I really wanted to do was point out how an agent who is really on the ball can do a better job for a client than an agent that is in a hurry to make a sale and get on with life. I am currently working with a client who also started an application with ING Reliastar through Selectquote. The client is in great health with the exception that he said that on an exam a few years back his total cholesterol was 234, but his hdl ratio was 4.3. He is an airline pilot which is generally not an issue with most life insurance companies. He also flies privately occasionally. The Selectquote agent picked out the cholesterol as the issue and told the client he could get preferred plus rates, which for $500,000 of 20 year term came to $258.

What the agent failed to know or tell the client was that the private pilot life insurance will incur a small flat extra charge of 48 cents per thousand, an additional $240 a year, making the cost of insurance $498 annually. The agent did tell the client that the private aviation might be a problem so if the price came back higher they could always shop it.

I shopped it and spoke with an underwriter from another company who said they wouldn’t factor in the private pilot activities because of his experience as an airline pilot and would go preferred plus at $275 if his total cholesterol is down to 220 and $340 if it was in the same range as his previous exam. We are going to run an application concurrently with the ING application and I arranged to have the exams done at the same time.

Bottom line. If you’re too busy to do a good job for a client the first time, why would they want to stick around and go through it again with you?