12 July 2026

This story has been submitted by Bureaucracy Beat reader William

The health insurance fund HCF claims to be different. A caring, sharing kind of an organisation that goes above and beyond to help customers. That’s their marketing pitch but the reality is different.

Dealing with HCF when you have a problem is not much different to dealing with a major bank or a government department. I had some issues recently and wasted hours trying to resolve them, without success. Like the big banks, HCF doesn’t want to ever have to speak to you, so they delegate customer service to AI bots, text chats and overseas call centres.

I’ve been receiving lots of emails from HCF, including some telling me that the payments for my life insurance premiums had failed. This was a bit mysterious because my life insurance policy with them ended in 2024.

There were also emails telling me my monthly payments for health insurance had failed. These, for several years, have been deductions to a credit card and there is no current problem with the card, so this didn’t make any sense, either. I checked the card and there were no problems.

I was unable to respond to the HCF emails because they were DO NOT REPLY emails. I tried to phone their 13 13 34 number and spend five minutes listening to advertisements and pointless messages. Then I was connected to a call centre, clearly based overseas, where I spoke to someone who had poor English and was unable to understand the problems. Eventually I gave up in frustration.

I tried to log into the HCF website but it rejected the log-in and password details I have used for years. I was forced to change my password

When I eventually got into the website and found my membership, but there was no record of my credit card details.

I tried the AI bot on the website, but it was hopeless. Next was a “service” which created a text conversation, but a voice conversation was not possible, apparently. I was told, via text, that my credit card payment had been “dishonoured” and when the payment failed, they removed my credit card details from the website! I was forced to re-enter credit card details.

The text conversation person continued to insist that I do have a life insurance policy even though I have records of it being terminated in 2024. She said she would email details to me.

The entire process took up an hour and 45 minutes and the issues were not resolved.

I have not received any email about this from HCF, three weeks later.

Very disappointing, from an organisation that claims to set high standard of customer care and service, and where I have been a member paying monthly premiums for several decades.