posted: Mar. 04, 2025

Is it just me, or has poor customer service become a business strategy?

Nothing irks me more than a company with poor customer service – intentionally designed to frustrate, annoy, waste time, and ultimately get the customer to go away. Having served for five years on the board and as chair of the Denver/Boulder Better Business Bureau, I saw plenty of companies behaving badly, especially when I was on the BBB Grievance Committee.  Usually, this is some small business owner who doesn’t know any better, trying to scratch out an extra buck or two, but I digress – I am going to give myself some therapy by writing about personal experiences with companies who, I suspect, intentionally train their employees to provide poor customer service to increase their profitability.

Case Study #1: International Medical Group, Inc. #IMGLOBAL

During the end of the pandemic, our daughter was working at a guest ranch in South Africa and was kicked in the head by a horse. Originally, everyone thought it was just a concussion (she was wearing a helmet), but after she texted us a photo of her CT scan from the rural hospital, we knew she was in trouble. This put into motion an emergency plan to get over there, stabilize her, and get her home. I was on a plane within 4 hours for a 24-hour journey from Denver to the ranch via LGA, Johannesburg, a 4-hour midnight drive to the guest ranch to get her stuff, a brief overnight stay, and then on to the hospital she had been transferred to in Durban. Meanwhile, she underwent a 4-hour ambulance ride, where they made her get out (without her shoes) and withdraw money from an ATM at the halfway point! My wife followed as soon as I arrived so that our daughter was always in touch with one of us.

She had travel and health insurance from International Medical Group (IMG), one of the biggest companies in that space. IMG assigned us to a nurse case manager, and Aetna – our home health insurance carrier – also got involved. The IMG nurse was on top of things, getting our daughter moved a second time to a level one trauma center. IMG denied medical transport to Denver but approved commercial lie-flat travel via Frankfurt. After about 8 days in Durban, she was approved to fly by her South African neurosurgeon, and we headed home, eventually going straight from DIA to Swedish Medical Center and emergency surgery the next morning.

All our expenses had to be paid out of pocket, for later “reimbursement” when we arrived back in the U.S. Neither IMG nor Aetna paid anything directly.

The issues with IMG started almost immediately. There were endless forms to fill out, hours on hold, hangups, and downright rudeness. No customer service agent was empowered to make any decisions. Callbacks were non-existent. IMG immediately denied the claim, saying they needed to know which expenses were covered by Aetna before they could continue. They demanded that I send them the original medical bills and copies of invoices. I sent them a 2” thick FedEx package, and I also emailed it and faxed it, and we heard nothing for weeks on end. When I finally reached someone with some knowledge, IMG claimed they never received it, then they said they lost the information after giving them proof of delivery- despite the multiple ways I sent it to them - and I would need to re-send the originals. That wasn’t possible, as they had lost them. Aetna continued to drag their feet as well.

Weeks dragged into months, and we finally settled with Aetna on their coverage and sent everything back to IMG. Aetna did cover most of the medical expenses in South Africa, which were shockingly minimal (for example, the cost of the neurosurgeon for a week’s hospital care was $800). IMG again denied the claim, claiming that they had never approved business class (lie-flat) travel and that the claim wasn’t timely, in that it had to be final within 60 days of the event and that they never received the original paperwork. Of course, they had intentionally delayed the case past the 60 days and “lost” the paperwork. We ended up eating about $25,000 in reimbursable expenses.

We considered litigation, but IMG’s terms of service required that all legal action had to be in at their venue - a tiny town in Indiana - where I’m sure they were the dominant employer and essentially controlled the local court.

So, the IMG business plan appears to be to represent itself as comprehensive international medical insurance, whereas they don’t actually cover anything because your home health insurance covers emergency care abroad. When you get home, the claim has to be made within 60 days – impossible because that cannot be determined until the home health carrier has determined what it is going to cover. To protect themselves from liability, they delay, delay, delay through “losing” paperwork, forcing impossible deadlines, and giving themselves such a home court advantage that litigation would be too costly and most likely unsuccessful. Yet, somehow, they have 4.6 stars on Trustpilot, and my scathing review magically disappeared.

Many good things happened during this unfortunate adventure, from the United Airlines agent who asked to pray with me, upgraded me on the way over, and another who discounted our fares home, to the South African and American medical staff, to the airport wheelchair crews, to the ranch owners, and to friends who moved into our house to watch our pets, picked us up from the airport, and who provided support, advice, and reached out to their connections to help us. Unfortunately, IMG made a difficult situation more difficult with their successful strategy to avoid any financial obligations from their travel and medical insurance “coverage”. IMG never paid a dime.

Our daughter is doing fantastic and is about to finish her master's degree.

If you have a story that you would like me to include in this series, please send it to [email protected]. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has experienced terrible customer service!