"The Prudential" Paid A Fraction of My Claim. Here's How.

Sitting for many hours at a stretch, trying to keep hospital mental health services going during the first year of the pandemic, I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands and a bad hip. Eventually, I couldn't type without messing up every word and had to use a cane to get around. After many months, I couldn't do my job, and needed three operations.

No matter! I'd forgotten! The hospital has a Group Disability Policy! In May 2022 I chose to make a claim.

It's 18 months later, and here's what's transpired...

J.

Appeals Specialist

Prudential Insurance Company of America,

Disability Management Services,

Box 13480 Philadelphia PA 19176 08/07/2023

Dear J.:

I was disappointed to receive your letter dated 08/01/2023.

I do not accept your decision to finally refuse this claim, or the idea that Prudential can?unilaterally decide when and where my right to question your decisions may be terminated. Clearly we're at loggerheads over this.

All I can think is that we should go for arbitration... though I understand Prudential won't.

What I have learned about Prudential - and possibly the whole category of companies providing “group Disability benefits”- is that this type of provision is cynical?beyond reasonable belief.?

Let me list for you some of the ways that Prudential has acted?in bad faith towards me over the last two years:

• Refusing my claim initially, betting that I would be unable to fight it because people usually can’t or don’t;
• Taking advantage of my illness and my reduced capacity to operate wisely, without counsel as I was;
• ?Not providing me with a copy of the policy until well after?the first refusal of benefits was made;
• Conflating of the dates of my absence from work with?the date of my disability;
• Making awards so small that arranging legal representation costs more than the award itself (I understand that the state has a hand in this one);
• Stonewalling when you think you've won, in violation of my?legal right to an efficient process;
• Denying that the pandemic affected institutional operations, and whether this might have delayed an important letter from the UK.... ALL THE WHILE repeatedly failing to send letters to me;
• Insisting that what your policy says about avoiding paying me trumps what both US and UK governments say about your obligations.

I realize that you rely on your policy to justify these unjust decisions.??But I also realize that Prudential makes billions every year from refusing to pay out justly, and that the US Department of Labor EBSA?has this very year levied a big fine on your company due to the actions of your life insurance wing. Why? Because, in a similarly underhand fashion, they tried to use their policy wording to avoid?paying out on legitimate life claims.

Such institutional sleight-of-hand is truly despicable and in the name of profit?violates all that is right or reasonable.

I will do what I can to see this matter gets publicized on and off-line, and I promise that I will continue to be heard. I have again today contacted my?agent at the EBSA, and once again, my lawyer.

J, I don’t suppose you yourself are unfeeling or interested only in your company’s?bottom??line. Our interactions were never unpleasant or particularly difficult.?

But please know that although I'm now somewhat disabled in body, I'm very able in mind; and that I'm a creative person who now has a blazing sense?of having been unjustly treated.

I hope that you will at least feel a tinge about this, should you ever look back on?how Prudential has side-stepped what is right - once again.

Yours sincerely,

Alexandra Brunel

08/07/2023

Springfield MA

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