I am in the midst of changing my insurance here. Interestingly all "public" health insurance in Germany costs the same thing, but each carrier naturally has different benefits. Also, this gets automatically taken off your paycheck.
When I first moved to Germany I started with AOK because that was the first one that I found, and they had a campus representative. Easy was all I cared about. Even back when I decided to stay here I found that I had some difficulties, even living 2 months (unknowingly) living without insurance (which is illegal).
Over the course of some lunches, colleagues and I have talked about insurance, and it seems the consensus was that no one was insured by AOK. I decided, hey why not make a switch because there are some other benefits that interest me.
I finally stopped being lazy and wrote an email asking how far in advance I would need to cancel my insurance. The response...sehr geehrte Herr Schmidt - Dear Mr. Schmidt. grrrrr
I sent off my cancellation letter and received a phone call last week from the sales rep who would need to come by and drop off my papers of cancellation, and I knew naturally would try and convince me not to leave.
He just came by, and sir....I am at home with some killer headaches and you show up with a dual combination of cologne and cigarette smoke. It's clear he is an auto-smoker which is so disgusting. I just wanted him to leave as fast as possible. Instead of inviting him into my house I just let him stay in the foyer. I didn't want my house to smell like him after. There were some last ditch efforts he made in trying to change my opinion, but to no avail. I have some literature but I really do not care to read it. On of the other points he made was that there were many more people insured by his firm than the one I am going to switch to....so what. It could just mean that 24 million people are unhappy.
The impression of the people that AOK hires leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
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