New York Life Reviews

Called today and am reasonably confident that I was routed to some foreign sounding customer support person that I had difficulty understanding. I entered my policy number and last 4 of SS and the system repeatedly refused to recognize it. Spent several minutes waiting for connection with foreign agent. She put me on hold for quite a while and looked up my account. She then told me that I would have to contact an agent. The names she gave me were included on the renewal letter, both of which I suspected had retired by now. Indeed, both have, but one at least returned my call and told me who to contact. I left a message and haven't heard back. The local office is only open by appointment. Welcome to 21st century customer service.

The following day, I received an email saying New York Life needed my medical records, and to follow a link to their portal called 'Human API' and enter my doctor's name and practice. First of all, I provided the names, addresses, phone numbers of all my doctors as well as medications over the phone, so I was confused why the ball was back in my court to provide this information twice. I already authorized them to pull my medical records, why do I have to do it?

Upon clicking on the email link and entering 'Human API,' I was presented with a search bar for my doctor/provider. This is where things went down-hill quickly. There were no results in their database for my provider. Not the Dr. himself, nor his practice (which is a major facility with dozens of doctor in my city, by the way). Secondly, this 'Human API' site asked me to 'paste' the URL from my doctor's portal to sync my medical records. This also did not work, as I was presented with an error message stating, 'the site doesn't exist.'

Frustrated, I initiated a conversation with chat customer service where the agent ignored my questions and asked me to repeat the previously failed process anyway. She again asked me to share my doctor's portal link, which she could not view. By the way, I'm not sure why they think the link to portal I'm logged into would be shareable (that's like trying to share your email. It ain't gonna work without a login. I'm still confused as to how they would access my portal without my login credentials or email verification. So this is baffling to me. There's no option in my doctor's portal to share medical records externally, so I'm not sure how this link sharing would work for New York Life.

Upon giving them my former doctor's info, she never confirmed he existed in their database, or offered to call the number I provided. After asking for additional options to solve this technical issue, the chat CS agent referred me back to my personal agent, essentially giving up. Cool, thanks! Very helpful. How's my agent supposed to fix their database not listing my doctor, or help link my medical records? He's a sales agent, for crying out loud. Absolutely useless and lazy customer service just saying anything to get rid of me. I wasted almost 2 and a half hours messing with this, and I'm a tech-savvy guy. I can't imagine what this must be like for the elderly. Their site looks like it was coded by Ai and thrown together in a day. It does not work.

After reading the hundreds of poor reviews, I've decided to seek coverage elsewhere. I can say with conviction that I believe these issues are indicative of a much larger problem with this company. For example, my wife's also a client of New York Life, and it has taken forever to simply change her maiden name and update her rep. This company moves at a snails pace.

Additionally, I have little confidence in New York Life's ability to potentially pay-out a claim 15-20 years in the future if their customer service and infrastructure is this awful TODAY. All these issues are flashing red signs that this company may be on the brink. I really hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised if New York Life becomes insolvent in the future. Hopefully, they haven't hitched their wagons to private equity like other insurance firms.

Lastly, literally any other term life insurance company has better reviews online. As someone else mentioned in these reviews, they're banking on a large portion of their clients simply giving up when they can't get answers. Thing is, this is not a long-term strategy. If you're willing to pay for a service and sign a contract, then the expectation is they won't cut corners, intentionally degrade the experience, and ignore you. Stay away from any company that behaves this way. We deserve better.

If/when I ever have the opportunity to cancel this crap I'm going to save myself more money by just putting $50 a wk in a savings account. They literally have lied to me. They want you to get frustrated enough to say I give up and either cancel the claim or go back to work. Even my Dr is fed up! He has completed 3 sets of forms and now they want another one saying pretty much the exact information the other 3 said. I'm scared he is going to refuse to continue to play their game and I will be denied. It's already been 3 wks since short term ended and im still filling out paperwork for longterm. I received an email. I checked my account and they are mailing me the 20 pages to fill out. I have exactly 10 days to get it returned! I will be lucky to get it in the mail by 10 days, let alone get into my Dr to have his portion filled out. My advice for anyone dealing with this short/long term insurance.... GET A LAWYER!!!! You're gonna need one!!!