Thanks for sharing mate.
Interesting, do you gain benefits or reduced prices from consolidating all this to be under the Discovery umbrella?
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I believe you do yes. Having more products under Discovery also positively affects your Vitality status and ability to earn Discover Miles. I know several people who pay for flights at least once a year using only the benefits racked up through Discovery’s loyalty programs. If you’re health-inclined, the benefits of grabbing an Apple Watch for “free”, cheap tekkies, cashback on healthy food purchases at PnP or Woolies etc. quickly adds up and saves you money each month. After all, if Discovery can prove you drive carefully (or not at all), eat healthy and stay fit by integrating all your complimentary insurances and products, then they make more money in the end by not having to pay medical claims.
Then I’m not even mentioning stuff like the education boosters for children and cashbacks on life- and long-term insurance if you don’t claim. They really have the health market cornered with great and comprehensive offerings that are actually more affordable than it seems.
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Hmmm… Two notes. At this stage, I would only really recommend the medical aid from Discovery since that is by far superior.
As far as vitality is concerned, it feels to me they’re degrading the benefits every year. The hotels they’ve changed for a while now that you need to book 21 days in advance to get your discount (which essentially renders it useless to me). They’ve now changed the flights also that you only get discount based on your status where you are in the point of the year instead of your status from the previous year. So for us that only reaches Diamond here by November / December, we’ll never get our full discounts again. Additionally, they make it harder each year to keep your status by reducing points that you get in different areas or in this year’s case, increasing the number of points needed in order to maintain diamond status.
I’ll re-examine everything at the end of the year and decide if I’ll continue with vitality.
I’ve had my life insurance with them for 10 years now and I’m shopping around for alternatives. At this point, I get quite a lot of value for my money, but that is about to change very soon. 5 years from now, my premium will effectively double and after that it will very quickly escalate to become unaffordable. There is Vitality discounts and bonus payouts that are determined by how much of your medical aid you use, but they “cheat” in the sense that they reduce that discount / payout when my wife uses the medical aid and her life isn’t even insured. So for the past number of years, the Vitality discount was rendered useless as well as my payouts. They also do not have an option to fix the premium which is pretty much what I’m going for at this stage.
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I’ll need to investigate that. I’m currently with Old Mutual (the Greenlight suite of products) and I can get more cover for effectively half the premium that I’m currently paying. Our gap cover can also be halved by going with Discovery’s option from Sirago, where we’re currently at. So by moving my long-term insurance and gap cover to Discovery, I can quite literally save thousands each month.
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And here I thought Viality was angled at the ‘healthy’ option to incentivise some rewards, like gym memberships, eating healthily, cycling/running and driving safely.
- I can’f afford gym or not interested in partaking or joining Virgin active etc.
- I can’t afford shopping at Woolworths
- I don’t ride/run the distances required to gain any rewards
- I hardly drive anywhere
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Ahhh, the myth that they care about your health. They care about the optics and how it is perceived by the potential market. All that is part of a marketing campaign.
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Old Mutual is quite useless in our experience… but apparently they’re a bit weird in the sense that different kinds of policies with them have different levels of service (almost like it is different companies). So with the specific one my dad had, when we notified them of my dad’s death, after weeks of struggling, they finally sent an email to his email address with forms to complete. My sister lost it and wrote on their facebook page that she now understands why people took a dead body to their offices because they’re trying to send a dead man an email, asking him to confirm his own death. Needless to say, the phoned her back within the hour after that post, although I don’t know if any progress has been made since there are still external factors involved (pro tip: don’t live in the Lowveld at the time of your death).
Here is some feedback that I have from life insurance companies.
- Momentum is apparently the best in terms of service, but they’re somewhat pricey (according to my friend).
- With FNB I took out a policy to cover my house and I fixed the premium at no extra charge (as far as I can tell) and I get 40% back in ebucks, although their premiums aren’t the cheapest.
- I got a very competitive quote from Liberty which basically beats my Discovery life cover. I haven’t enquired about fixing the premium yet.
- I got a similar quote from Sanlam and I also haven’t enquired about fixing the premiums yet, but they invest a portion of your premium (75% for me based on my age, but can be up to 100% for younger people) into a mini retirement fund that pays out I think at the age of 65 or 70.
My friend who used to work in the life insurance industry now gave me the contact of a decent broker who quoted his new bosses for keyman life insurance at a fraction of the cost of what our company is paying a Liberty, but for almost triple the cover. That is through BrightRock so I’m going to get quotes through him before I make my decision. My Discovery Life policy has a payout of about R10k in December after which I’ll move.
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So I have decided to move to Bonitas. My reason being my husband’s current plan is not sufficient for my requirement and he is not willing to move to a better plan. So Bonitas Primary it is for me then.
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Thanks for the update. I must really set away some time to get it sorted.
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Ja so FYI, i called health squared and it was recorded message after recorded message and then just silence. i held on to nothing for a whole 2 min before i decided to just put the phone down. i have done a contact me on their website so lets see how long it takes them to call me back
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I must say I’ve also heard from loads of People about how misleading the Discovery awards are and how often they move the goalposts… Not very reassuring.
Oh well, who needs medical aid, i plan on never getting sick or dying 
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Typical. It’s one of the main reasons why I’m moving away from them. So difficult to communicate with them.
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Just be aware that one day if you decide to join a medical aid you may have to pay late joining fees. E.g If you decide to get a medical aid plan in your forties you’ll be paying an extra 25% on your premiums.
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Yea just needed to get married to now share my ladies guffment medical aid plan thingy. We’ll be joining before end of the year, just need to sort out finances with regards to new house etc and what our budget is.
Will give this a read though 
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Remember to give us feedback once you’ve claimed a couple of times. I’ve only heard from someone that has heard from some people that “they’re useless” when it comes to payment (hardly a reliable source), but I’d be quite interested to know hearing the experience from a direct customer. As I’ve mentioned before, on paper Bonitas is the 2nd best medical aid available so it would be nice to be able to confidently recommend them to someone.
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Two ppl form my office is with them and i also have a friend that is on bonitas and they all seem to not have had any issues. that being said, they are on the more expensive options as they have kids etc.
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ja so i eventually got through to them only to be told i need to downlowd a de-registration form which also acts as a cancellation form…have done that and submitted it. i have now received an automated reply and still no one has called me on the online form i completed. 
And everything for Bonitas has already been sorted. i have a medical aid number and everything(even though it is only kicking in from 1 January 2021)
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If it means anything, I have been with Bonitas for 15 Years and have never had any major issues with them. Most “not paying” reasons are funds depleted or the doctor submitted the claim wrong (usually no referring doctor for specialists)
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Yes, it does mean a lot. Thanks, now I know. It is always hard to get decent feedback because people usually only go to HelloPeter when they need to complain, but in a lot of cases, there are other factors applicable so that in itself isn’t a great measure.
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Hmmm… Out of interest I went to have a look at Bonitas since I haven’t looked at their plans in a couple of years. They seem to be more expensive than Discovery these days, or for my plan at least. We’re on the Classic Priority and the plan that seems to be closest in comparison is the BonComplete. The BonComplete is slightly more expensive but the benefits are significantly less.
Some notable differences:
- Hospital cover: 200% vs 100%
- Savings: Discovery is about 60% more
- Above Threshold: Discovery is 3 times more
- Self Payment Gap: Discovery is also about 3 times more (positive for Bonitas)
- Chronic Conditions: Discovery = 27, Bonitas = 31
This is just a very rough and shallow comparison for my needs, but if I remember correctly the lower plans do offer more value than Discovery. So for plans that cost more than R3800 for the main member, it might be worth looking at Discovery instead.
This is not for network plans though. I have no idea how the Bonitas Hospital Network is, but the Discovery Delta network is quite useless.
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