Canada Life Financial 

Feels like everything has already been said. Worst company I have ever dealt with in my life for customer service. Slow, unresponsive and unhelpful. The advisors when you eventually do get to speak to them clearly want to help but they don't have the tools to do that job.

REALLY hard to get to talk to a real person ... endless 'muzak' on the line and L-O-N-G queues .... the wait usually 20 - 30 minutes, which is totally unacceptable from a company making money from their various clients - whom they clearly don't value very much.

BUT ... and it's a big 'But' the qulaity of the staff once the phone is answered is quite at odds with the corporate lack of respect for their customers.

I had a terrific advisor called Alexandra Bridson who was simpy first rate. She apologised for the long wait on the phone, understood what I wanted and talked me through the filling out of an impenetrably long and complicated form, with skill and sympathy.

A follow up call with Gemma Quirk was equally cordial and dealt with professionally and with great efficiency. It's a shame that the people working there don't have better support from their employers so that they in turn can offer first class support to their callers.

Absolute worst insurance ever. Sends me a letter saying Im covered for 12 months. I books an appointment with my doctor 2 months before that would expire and gets my bloodwork done 2 weeks before my doc appt. Goes to get my meds a few days later and they are no longer covered. They cut me off 2 months early. I need the to live people. Worst company ever.

Unable to communicate with clients in a meaningful and timely basis! They make assumptions without consultation, assumptions that bind you in when you wish to make a swift clean break! Assumptions that err to their advantage!

E-Mails are ignored or not responded to and when they do reply, insufficient information is contained within the reply to enable you to act in your interest and you have to go back to them to fill in the gaps, and so on!

When you do get a reply and then you reply, you do not get the same person twice.

Processes and forms are overly complex, paper based and duplicate data you have already provided is required time and time again and you never quite seem to satisfy their thirst for more information, most of it surplus to your requirement.

As for phoning them, don’t you’ll run up a bill and get nothing in return!

All in all I would not touch the is company with a barge pole, they can not communicate with their clients!

Their system is cracking under this year's increase in demand for annuities creating stretched, staff unable to respond as they try to manage a system in chaos. Twice they lost the documents, they had sent me, and asked me to email them back for them - even though they don't accept email attachments! Quite appalling and very stressful all round. Tried to phone & was 45th in the queue. Not good.
Sandra or Daphne stood out from the crowd as being very helpful, responsive, and knew what they were doing.

I’ve been dealing with Canada Life International for about 6 months now, and their customer service is truly shocking.

When you send an email to the focus@canadalifeint email address you get an instant automatic reply, but you have to chase up for weeks and weeks if you want to get an actual reply from somebody.

The automatic email response gives a phone number to call and proudly claims to solve 90% of queries on the first call, however I have routinely spent between 30 minutes and 1 hour on hold only to speak to yet another new person who doesn’t know what’s going on, often can’t even find the emails I’ve been sending in, or just cut you off.

On one occasion trying to speak to them by telephone, they denied me access claiming that my name was not stated on the policy! (eventually, through “an alternate route” in “another system” they allowed me to pass the telephone security clearance). Dodgy to say the least!

On another occasion, they emailed me documents from another persons account! This is clearly a security data breach, and which only got an off the cuff apology from them.

Their handling of an Estate Preservation Account (EPA) has been appalling and they have failed to communicate basic facts and basic status updates in a professional manner. They have provided contradictory and misleading information and they fail to listen to or understand basic requests.

At the time of writing this review, I am still waiting for closure of some outstanding matters, and if anyone from Canada Life International is capable and willing to respond it would be appreciated.

Canada Life International don't care about customer welfare. Currently their portal for customers to log in is broken and has been for weeks. This means that customers with investments or savings (where there can be thousands of pounds at stake) are unable to view their accounts or policy valuations. There is a note on the login page that says "we are aware of this" but there is no urgency from Canada Life to fix it. When you call, customer reps are offhand. This is an appalling way to treat loyal customers with life savings at stake. Avoid this company if you can. They are uncaring and ignore urgent emails too. Dreadful.