During the first week of April, I received a phone call from a customer service representative of AIG. He introduced a promo connected with SM Advantage. According to him, once I availed the insurance policy, I would receive 50 reward points and only pay Php15 per day.
At first, it sounded simple and affordable.
There was no personal interaction at all — just a phone call. But throughout the conversation, he kept repeating that everything was being recorded.
Honestly, he was really good at promoting the insurance.
The moment you say “YES,” you’re automatically insured.
He asked for my credit card details for the mode of payment, and without thinking too much, I gave them.
After the call ended, I immediately contacted BDO and SM Advantage to confirm if the promo was legitimate.
BDO had no idea about it.
SM Advantage, however, confirmed that it was valid.
By the second week, there was already a deduction on my credit card.
But as the days passed, I still hadn’t received any insurance policy.
No documents.
No policy details.
Nothing.
So I called the company to cancel it.
Instead of processing the cancellation immediately, they kept telling me to wait for the policy first so I could “fully understand” the coverage.
By the last week of April, I called again to request cancellation and reversal of payment.
The agent told me that she could cancel the policy, but they could no longer reverse the deduction already charged to my card.
She also offered to email me a scanned copy of the policy “within the week.”
And then she casually mentioned that the billing starts every 6th of the month.
That’s when I got really annoyed.
It had already been ONE MONTH and I still hadn’t received the actual policy.
So what if they sent it late?
That would mean another deduction would already happen before I even fully understood what I signed up for.
And what made me question everything even more was this:
If I stopped paying later on — or once I reached the age of 72, which was supposedly the last payment — I wouldn’t even be able to use it anymore.
So what was the point?
It felt useless.
They kept saying:
“You will be insured.”
But what kind of insurance is that if, after years of paying, you no longer get to benefit from it the way you expected?
That experience taught me three things:
Never trust too easily.
Never invest in something you don’t fully understand.
And most importantly — learn how to say NO.
