Beware of Benenden offering cheap healthcare insurance

[Greg]

I've been reading up on this healthcare provider and there are plenty of reviews and discussion on various money forums about this outfit.

Offering such low priced monthly payments £6.50, you may think you are getting a great value deal but it is too good to be true as this 'mutual society' will take your money but you are not guaranteed to get the operation or healthcare you need and have paid for. To claim on your policy, you have to ring them up and they make an 'assessment' on your case. It seems a large proportion get rejected outright without an explanation, so your payments mean nothing.

Again, this is a scheme in the same vein as the Win24 competition one that Ideal World are pedalling.

You have been warned! :headbang:

I thought Ideal World would be above promoting these dodgy deals.

 

[Akimbo]

Benenden used the run the health plan when I was first in the civil service in 1980, I wasn't tempted because I lived in Blackpool and their hospital was in Kent which felt miles away, plus at 18 I also felt invincible. LOL!

Jude xx

 

[neilbarnes101]

99% of Benenden Healthcare users satisfied with its service

I’m contributing to this thread as an employee of Benenden Healthcare and would like to reassure readers & contributors that 99 out of 100 users of our services are satisfied with the service we provided – this is according to regular customer satisfaction surveys we conduct of ALL service users.

Benenden Healthcare is not an insurance company, but a mutual not-for-profit organisation providing a range of health & wellbeing services for a low-cost weekly contribution rate – which remains the same regardless of your age or existing medical circumstances.

We have over 100 years of experience in high quality, but low-cost, healthcare service provision – since our organisation was founded by Post Office workers in 1905.

We can confirm that some of our services are discretionary, whereby we give assistance on basis of need. That is because we aim to be complementary to the NHS, not a replacement. So if the service you require is available in good time on the NHS, we would always encourage you to pursue that route first. That is the ethos on which we were founded in 1905.

However, in 2011, around 10% of our membership were able to access one of our services – with 93,000 members, friends & family being offered assistance. This is a fantastic figure for an organisation providing healthcare services and would compare favourably to many insurance companies.

Members do not all need to travel to Benenden Hospital in Kent for treatment. We have developed relationships with a range of hospital providers to build a regional treatment centre network of 18 hospitals across the UK.

In 2011, following a customer service survey by the magazine Moneywise with over 12,000 respondents, Benenden Healthcare was voted the UK’s ‘Most Trusted’ provider in the healthcare category. We have been shortlisted in the same category for 2012 – this year with over 15,000 respondents to the survey.

Readers can see for themselves some stories from our members filmed for our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/benendenhealthcare. Benenden Healthcare adhers to the Financial Services Authority’s ‘Treating Customers Fairly’ scheme, which means we have to maintain high standards in our external communications – so all our case studies in videos such as these are real members.

In particular:
http://youtu.be/rsDClVV-kl8
http://youtu.be/2vtbHEUJCeA
http://youtu.be/fd9b0FCm7dU
http://youtu.be/PuhTdi6W_8M

Kind regards,
Neil Barnes
Media Relations Manager
Benenden Healthcare Society