WedSafe sucks the big one (along with their parent company Aon Insurance).  Why is that?  They charge you for insurance policies they don’t deliver.  Get this shit:

I got married on Sunday the 3rd.  I realized that I did not have the event liability insurance that was required by my venue the week before the wedding.  I called WedSafe on Thursday afternoon, July 31 at 1:45PM, to verify that I could purchase a policy that day for my wedding on August 3rd.  The agent on the phone said yes, I could do that.  Cool, so I bought the policy on the website and got a confirmation web page saying the documents would be provided within 24 hours.  I made the purchase around 2:10PM or so, going by the creation date of the PDF for the confirmation web page.  I didn’t get my documents immediately, so I called them again at 2:27PM, but got a message saying that they were closed (3 minutes early, since it said they were open 9AM to 5:30PM Eastern time.)  Think I’m lying?  Just ask AT&T:

Roll around to Friday evening, I realize that I’ve not received an email with my insurance.  I’m freaking out because I cannot get married without the liability policy.  According to the reply I got via email on Monday, August 4, I submitted the “Contact me” form on WedSafe’s website at 1:04AM saying simply “I ordered a liability policy on Thursday for my Sunday wedding but have not heard back with the policy.  Would like to confirm I have coverage ASAP.  Thanks!”

I went to sleep hoping I would have my insurance in the morning.  No such luck.  No response from WedSafe, nothing in my email.  I tried calling them again, since they are open 9AM-5:30PM according to the message I got on Thursday afternoon (before they were supposed to close).  At 8:35AM Pacific (11:35AM Eastern), I got the message saying to call back during their normal business hours, which one can only assume excludes Saturdays.  Let’s double check with AT&T:

Yup, they were closed.  Obviously, the conversation would have lasted more than the (minimum) 1 minute if I was talking with someone.  So, I found another broker online.  By the way, Zain Jeewanjee Insurance is AMAZING.  I called and spoke with Zain on a Saturday morning and he was able to get my policy done before noon with double the coverage of WedSafe for less money than WedSafe.  Anyways, I heard nothing from WedSafe at all the rest of the day and was never able to call them.  At 12:29AM on my wedding day, I emailed WedSafe asking for a refund of the charge they made to my card without delivering the insurance policy documents.

I got married.  Yay!  Life is awesome, and thankfully, I didn’t have to use the insurance policy I bought AND RECEIVED from Zain.

Monday morning at 7:33AM, I get an email from WedSafe saying that a policy was issued and that the documents will be “re-sent” to my email.  I get the policy documents within a minute or so.  A lot of good that does me, since I already got married and spent money on another policy.  About 4 hours later, I get another response from WedSafe.  This is where it is blatantly obvious that they are crooks:

The agent says that the documents were emailed, but they received a “delivery failure message.”  First: what email server is not configured to attempt at least one more delivery of a message before completely failing out?  A ghetto email server.  Second: why would WedSafe charge my credit card $195 if they knew I didn’t receive my insurance documentation as early as Thursday afternoon?  Sticking with that theme, if WedSafe knew that I didn’t have my insurance documentation on Thursday, why didn’t THEY try to contact ME on Friday when they saw there was a problem?  So, they are either lying out their asses, or they are shady business people.  Which one is it?

Moral of the story: don’t buy from WedSafe unless you are able to call them between 9AM and 5:30PM Eastern time on weekdays if things don’t work out.

Have a story about WedSafe?  Post it in a comment!

UPDATE 1 (9:47AM): I replied to the email declining my refund with the following:

I’ve documented my event timeline with WedSafe on my blog at www.DrunkenTech.com and submitted the story to the nice folks over at Consumerist.com to see what people think and to see what other experiences anyone may have with WedSafe.  I’ve also contested the charge on my credit card with Bank of America.

I would certainly appreciate your allowing the charge to be reversed on my credit card because I am completely confident that I would prevail with a small claims suit for rescission should it get to that point.  Going to court would be unnecessarily expensive for WedSafe/Aon and really annoying for me to deal with.  I’m also glad to know that, at least in the state of California, relief based on rescission may include restitution and consequential damages.

Make no mistake, I will go to court if WedSafe feels it necessary for me to proceed down that path.  I just don’t want to have to deal with it, and my guess is that WedSafe doesn’t want to either.

We’ll see what happens.

UPDATE 2 (12:18PM): I’m already #1 in the Google search for “wedsafe sucks“.  Click the link to verify.  :)

UPDATE 3 (10:53PM): I got an email back from WedSafe at 1:18PM today, but I was at Disneyland most of the afternoon:

I am sorry that your experience with Wedsafe was unfavorable. We service many clients and meet their insurance needs successfully.  We are sorry that your needs were not met. In light of your situation, we will cancel your policy and refund the premium paid to your credit card. In your email, you indicated that you were going to dispute the charges through your credit card company.  Have you contacted them yet to begin the process? Again, we are sorry for any inconvenience you experienced.

To which I responded:

I did already dispute the charge with Bank of America, however, I would be more than happy to call them to see if it can be re-instated should it be better for you to simply refund the amount back to the card.  Just let me know what is easiest.

I might be a jackass, but I’m not an unreasonable jackass, nor am I interested in screwing with people who don’t deserve to be screwed with.  I submitted the story to Consumerist, but they haven’t even run with it yet (as of this evening.)  While the initial experience was less than awesome, after a little bit of saber rattling, I was able to get WedSafe to do the right thing.  Still, in terms of responsiveness, I’ll throw my current endorsement behind Zain Jeewanjee for pretty much any insurance you could want.

UPDATE 4 (2009-05-20 @ 12:15AM): I got a spam message from WedSafe trying to get me to promote how great WedSafe is to my friends and family who may need wedding insurance. I’m sure you all would like to see my response to the fuckers at WedSafe.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 9:04am and is filed under Douchebaggery, Fraud, Jackassery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.