AAA Life Insurance – Shady Business Going On

My husband and I opened life insurance for both of us when we had our first child 23 years ago. We have paid into it monthly since. My policy was set up as a Term Life so if I didn’t pass away after many years, I would get money back. I paid $100. every month and my husbands (no return unless he passed away) was $79.00 a month.

We have been very responsible in paying but there have been months where we are super financially tight and I pay it before the second months due date. This past July I was having that kind of month (I had been out of a job for 4 months). Long story short – I went online to pay my insurance and there was a banner on the website saying they were having technical difficulties but were working on the issues. It did not explain anything about making payments online. I was paying for two months and went in, made the payment and it did not give me any indication that it went through. I logged into my bank and there was no sign of it. I thought it didn’t go through so I did it again. The website just sort of stopped versus providing confirmation about the payment. I walked away thinking I would try again the next day.

The next day I see that both payments were debited from my checking account. I paid twice. I called Customer Service for AAA. They could see there was two payments and said I would get the refund back in two days for one of the payments. (Which I was counting on because I still had to pay my husbands that was due in 4 days.) The payment did not come. I called AAA again and this customer service person said they could NOT see that I had paid twice and they would not be providing a credit unless I proved that two payments were deducted. I had to get a copy of my bank statement.

I then called my bank. I asked them- “Do you see they have two payments on this day?” My bank said “Absolutely yes.” I explained they would not return my second payment unless I showed proof. My bank said “We can take care of that for you.” They did-within 24 hours my account showed a “reverse” from AAA Life Insurance. I figured it was done. Unbeknownst to me, two days later, AAA also credited my account even though I did not show proof they required and was told emphatically that I would not be seeing a credit until I showed proof. Literally the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Now it looked like I never made a payment because of their website that wasn’t working to take payments and because they credited my account when they said they would not. I did not know that my life insurance account was in jeopardy-and you can say “How would you not know that you had $xxx.xx deposited into your account? I didn’t notice anything different because literally money is constantly moving in/out of my account. I did not see two payments (I thought it was the same payment!) and one could argue thats on me for not being more aware. It was an oversight for sure. I wasn’t expecting a second credit. I receiving nothing in the mail or by phone that they were closing my account after all these years. I didn’t have the ability to fix it because I thought all was fine.

A few weeks later I received a check and a letter that my account was closed due to non-payment. I wrote a letter explaining the situation because after two phone calls to AAA and they were stating inaccurate information which showed they did not have access to seeing what I know happened, I wrote a letter. I got a message saying it would take 7-10 days for a response. 18 days later and I never got a response. I called again and another customer service agent was again saying inaccurate information. They see it as I never paid. They do not see that I paid twice. They do not see that they credited my account. They do not see my bank reversing a charge. I wrote this detailed letter for naught. I have no way to reach anyone that will work with me. I am losing out on 12 more years of paying into my term life insurance to have a nice chunk of investment. I received a very small amount of what I paid into for the past 20+ years.

I am writing this because I want to know if anyone else has dealt with AAA life insurance and the lack of transparency, contact and absolute terrible service. I’ve been a member via car, life, home insurance etc. for 40+ years. This is not what AAA had been for many years. It’s so disappointing and I have lost a lot of money.