Transferred to Medibank from other health fund. Major issues. What's your experience?

vegemite2008 on 27/07/2022 - 20:29

Hi, we transferred from another health fund to Medibank end of the financial year.

Our health cover with Medibank (hospital and extras) is less compared to our old fund so no need to serve waiting periods.

Problem is that Medibank has not sent a 'release customer from old fund request' (probably not the correct name to our old fund.

I have contacted Medibank several times and response is, yes we have contacted your old fund.

Old fund says, we have not received a request from Medibank.

Problem is that we cannot receive a refund from old fund (premium taken out 2 days before move to new fund).

Also, for certain items we are not able to claim until june 2023. Not a big issue unless we need to use those extras.

What's your experience with Medibank?

Health & Beauty

Related Stores

Medibank Private
Medibank Private

Comments

  • carlJack on 27/07/2022 - 20:35

    I guess this the first time you are switching your health insurance?You will receive refund from your old fund. It will take a while. You old fund will try to contact you first to ask why you switched and then they will issue clearence certificate. Probably 2 or 3 weeks sometimes even longer.

    • vegemite2008 on 27/07/2022 - 22:43

      I have waited 4 weeks and still no progress.

      • carlJack on 28/07/2022 - 11:27

        That sucks.Give your old Fund a call and ask them to send you clearence certificate directly. If it was me I would call everyday until they send the clearence certificate and the refund.

  • AndyC1 on 27/07/2022 - 20:37
    +2

    For any change you need to read everything and compare before you agree to move as once you move you can go back to the previous health fund within a certain period without penalty, but after that you are stuck with the new one or if you transfer then the coverage starts like a transfer.

    I would tell Medibank if they cannot sort it out in 48 hrs you are going to go back to your old health fund.

  • wei13 on 27/07/2022 - 21:31
    +2

    Alternatively, you can call the previous fund yourself to cease and request a transfer certificate emailed to you, which you can pass on to Medibank.

    • vegemite2008 on 27/07/2022 - 22:45

      Thanks for the suggestion. I will give them a call and request for a transfer certificate.

    • burningrage on 28/07/2022 - 08:07

      This!

  • avoidfullprice on 27/07/2022 - 21:46

    I’ve always tell my old fund I'm leaving myself, then give the new fund contact to the old fund to send over the clearance certificate. See if this helps.

  • holdenmg on 27/07/2022 - 22:39

    So, your profile says Perth.

    Why not HIF?

    Medicare, nah.

  • ozbs25 on 27/07/2022 - 23:28

    Have you made any changes to your name or anything like that? Sorry, your post isn't 100% clear on that. I used to process transfer certificates and sometimes that can cause issues. There could be backlogs at either Medibank or your old fund? Are you able to physically go into a branch to get your transfer certificate from your old fund so you can give it to your new fund? If you have a hard copy of it, maybe you can go to a MPL branch and push for them to do it while you wait. A little inconvenient but it may be your best chance of getting it done quickly.

    Edit: Someone else mentioned emailing your old fund. That would work too. I would see if you can try to bring a hard copy of it into a branch. I had to process many transfer certificates for customers that essentially jumped the queue because they were unhappy and waiting at a branch.

  • jolee3 on 28/07/2022 - 00:25

    We had the same problem a few years ago, but sorry I can't remember exactly how it was resolved. Medibank said they had sent two requests to the previous insurer with dates and reference numbers, but the previous insurer said they didn't get any requests from Medibank. I looked back at the emails and the previous insurer said that they needed "Clearance Certificate Request" from Medibank, if that helps. We asked them to send it to us directly to forward to the previous insurer, but I can't find it in the emails so I don't know if we ever did or if they finally resolved it between them.

    • vegemite2008 on 28/07/2022 - 11:44

      Thanks for the post. I have requested one from Medibank (will be sent to my email address)

  • akyeeeahdude on 28/07/2022 - 07:25

    I've had similar headaches before. QANTAS Health Insurance (who are just NIB and serviced by the NIB Call Centre) did something similar by submitting n transfer request for my wife correctly to HBF but for myself and my daughter, they incorrectly sent our transfer request to HIF (we were all on the same policy too). It was frustrating as I had to alert them to their error.

    Unfortunately the headaches didn't stop there - once the transfer was finalised, QANTAS incorrectly processed the transfer in terms of deducting general dental benefits claimed in the year from the major dental limit. To be fair, HBF's Transfer Certificates have a flaw in them where it's not fully broken down into preventative, general and major dental but my concern was that QANTAS just made an assumption rather than following up with HBF. It took me many calls following this up as QANTAS refused to offer any further assistance with getting it rectified and expected me to obtain correct paperwork from HBF and submit it to them and HBF kept saying they couldn't provide a Transfer Certificate with the amounts claimed broken down into general and major dental. The only way to rectify it was to submit a complaint with the ombudsman which resulted in HBF manually producing a properly segmented Transfer Certificate.

    • holdenmg on 28/07/2022 - 07:56
      +1

      Exactly…
      See Ombudsman link (above).

  • vegemite2008 on 29/07/2022 - 12:45
    +1

    Thanks for the suggestions in relation to requesting the transfer cert to be sent to my email address.

    I contacted Medibank (and informed them that there is something called the ombudsman…). I received a transfer form from them the same day. Sent it to HIF, HIF sent my cover details (the transfer cert) to my email address this morning. Transfer and refund should be completed within 10 days.

  • vegemite2008 on 03/08/2022 - 16:43

    Latest update.

    Transfer complete.

    Thanks for the support and suggestions. It worked.

    Ozbargain Ombudsman 🤣🤣🤣

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join