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-   -   Policy up for renewal - Fed up of marketing calls from insurance companies (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-loans-insurance/159958-policy-up-renewal-fed-up-marketing-calls-insurance-companies-6.html)

Dear mustang_shelby,

Only once I went through the process of complaining to Idea. They acted quite promptly. The telemarketing SMSs stopped. I got a followup call from Idea saying that they had penalized the concerned party. I forget the amount now - but I think it was 10,000 or 25,000! This was around 2008-09 some time.

Regards,

Girish Mahajan

I hate the month when my car's insurance policy is to be renewed for two reasons, one I have to let go of my money and the other one is because I have to deal with 2-3 insurance provider's calls daily till I have crossed the policy renewal date by a week or two.

This is fairly a very common practice, as far as I have experienced. Yes, they know the make, model, year, policy due date, variant, name, every damn thing and sadly you can't do much about it.

Privacy law in India is not as matured as in first world countries, hence the nuisances.
Not only are the details leaked from the dealer, also from the insurance company, agents and what not.
What we can do against it, not really much. In all the contracts, basically they put a small line where it states that they may share your details to provide you “BETTER” service:deadhorse. Yes, this is a very cunning statement and it gives them all the legal immunity they need.
All we can do is to raise those call details to DND and in case of may be 5% they will get penalized. I rigorously raise all business calls and sms to DND and few instances I have received information that the calling party got penalized, mostly with a number disconnection.

I think we all can do the same, as we just need to send a sms to 1909 with ‘summery of call’,’number’,’date in DD/MM/YY’ and they register a complaint immediately. Even 5% penalty would help us in great deal and those idiots will also learn the consequences.

Ditto

My XUV car insurance renewal is up for next month and I started getting calls from all the insurance companies.

What frustrates me more is two different guy providing ICICI Lombard insurance, provides me quote with difference premium amount for same IDV :(

Yes, the validity is only for that year, starts again in the next year. :)

Ironically every year I get a call from Bimal Maruti Dealer in Bangalore telling my Zen insurance is up for renewal. I sold the car in 2011 :). I keep telling them that, no use, next year they call again

I made the mistake of giving my number at policybazaar once (just checking if my regular agent's quote was competitive- it was by far!) The number of times I got called by their annoying agents for the policy was not funny. My number is on DNC registry so I usually don't get such calls. Suggest you do the same.

If you want to cut down on spam,

1. Register yourself for DND.

2. Install TrueCaller.

This has eliminated 99% of the spam calls I used to receive 5 years back.

TrueCaller even has a feature where you can automatically block numbers that many others have reported for spam, but I don't use it as even my own bank (whose calls I want to take) is listed there.

rl: rl: No ways, I would've never imagined this.

Unfortunately, nothing one can do about spam from PR companies - related post.

If you have an android phone install the india against spam app and report all those numbers. Those fellows (usually receptionist at the coaching class, or coaching class's landline) will have their cellphones disconnected sooner or later.

Actually - it is a rather nice situation wrt unsolicited calls and SMS.

Once you are on the DND list - if your complaints do get through, the telcos don't have any option NOT to deal with them.

They seem to compensate by changing their reporting format from time to time for their 1909 number (each telco seems to have its own weird format .. the android app "India Against Spam" tries to cope of course)

The penalties in India for cellphone as opposed to email spam are extremely tough (I hear, a legacy of when pranab mukherjee started getting marketing calls on his personal cell during cabinet meetings, and instructions filtered down to let TRAI take the gloves off)

They have several regulations to limit telemarketing that I haven't seen even in the USA / Europe etc.

1. A dedicated prefix (140xxxxxxx) that all telemarketer numbers - at least registered telemarketers - have to use. Feel free to cut the call if you get anything from such a number .. if your phone is on the DND you will not get any such calls for sure, the penalties are very strict

2. Complaints when received by the telco can potentially lead to punishment (number cancellation, fines etc) of -

a. The telemarketer

b. The advertiser (weight loss / homeopathy clinic, credit card vendor etc)

c. The telco (if they allowed bulk calling plans to be sold to non registered telemarketers or if the offending phone doesn't have proper KYC / is obtained using some random labourer / street vendor etc's ID card). And for the telco the fee can run into lakhs.

It works too! A large insurer some years back once decided to do some telecalling from their own office rather than through a direct selling agent / outsourced telemarketer. I reported that as usual. Some weeks later I got a frantic call from the IT admin at that insurer, saying that the telco was threatening to cut off all their phone numbers including their main board line and would I please take back the complaint. I did take it back but anyway..

This is an airtel presentation at a recent ITU workshop and is a fairly ok overview of the TRAI regulations on spam in India.

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Regiona...nurag_Jain.pdf

One indicator of "success" is that a lot of the spam promptly moved to Whatsapp - which accounts for several new spam filtering features that FB / whatsapp rolled out in a hurry (reporting spam, flagging messages from people not in your contacts etc)

The fly in the ointment is that such regulation does not apply to people engaging in email spam, whatsapp or other social media spam etc - so the only thing stopping the very large number of Indian spammers, phishers and scam artists (who are extremely persistent) is the spam filtering that these providers deploy.

Thank you everyone for the responses. My phone number is on the DND registry. I will install the True caller app and India against spam app.

Much appreciated.

Cheers
Lakshmi.

With the renewal due in October, I've been getting 4-5 calls daily. There's no point even giving them a piece of your mind, shameless buggers call again the next day.

True caller to the rescue! Reinstalled today.

Call from a pesky insurance agent that Truecaller couldn't identify -

Agent - Good afternoon sir, I'm calling on behalf of 'Hon-dye', aapke vehical ke insurance ke liye
Me - Madam aap bol kahan se rahi hai? (where are you calling from?)
Agent - Sir, 'Hon-dye' se
Me - Madam Honda se ya Hyundai se?
Agent - Sir, 'Hon-dye' se
Me - Ma'am pehle company ka naam bolna seekhiye, phir uske liye insurance bechiye (First learn to pronounce the name of the company then sell insurance for them)
Agent -

End call.

Is this only from Hyundai. They have started calling me for last 3 months. I am really sick as I get at least 3 calls a day for my Hyundai EON for which insurance is due for renewal in November.

The spam calls can be reported to TELCOs. Each TELCO has its own format and number for registering the complaint via SMS.
For Airtel, the number is 1909, and a sample complaint format is as below:
+911234567890, 05/10/16, spam call about personal loan

I always make it a point to report to Airtel about the spam calls. I get an acknowledgement for the complaint, and the status of the complaint within a week. Most of the reported numbers have been disconnected, but still these spam calls never reduce!

If DND status is active on your phone number, You're eligible for submitting complaint against the commercial communication.

Once the complaint is registered with provider, you can check the complaint status on TRAI website below

http://nccptrai.gov.in/nccpregistry/