Hey guys
I had a yearly interview over the phone. Has anybody had this situation?
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I haven’t but I never got the yearly paper form so maybe they are switching to phone.
I don’t do phone stuff very often so I will request the form again.
I have a progressive disease with no cure so it is kinda stupid to do yearly anyways.
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Yes it’s very common as is the claimant statement and attending physician statement yearly.
Should I contact them?
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Heck no. Out of sight out of mind. I just looked it up and it’s been a couple of years since my last update form too.
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Good to know it can go down to never. 
It is nice to know they still care if I am alive though.
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In my opinion that’s basically what those forms are now… “Are you still alive?”. Making sure they aren’t paying a dead person.
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Thank you Danilo2019 for starting this thread.
LTD will interrogate me by phone soon instead instead of sending me the annual form. Any tips for handling this is appreciated. Should I request a form by snail mail?
Thank you all.
What prompted them to phone you?
I’d ask if you can do it by mail.
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It’s their once a year interrogation. Once a year is better than them calling me every month like the used to.
I will probaly speak with them because if they send me a form for my doctor to fill I am screwed. My doctor is lazy and refuses to fill forms.
I would probably be screwed too unless they are prepared to wait.
I am lucky because I have a degenerative physical disease.
I am unlucky because I have a degenerative physical disease.
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Interesting, this shows that insurers and even the claim reps handle this differently. I think it is more common for them to just send the update form. Was it just the typical questions asking for any updates or chances in health, treatment, work, activties, etc?
David Brannen
Disability Lawyer with Resolute Legal
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FYI if this is SunLife, they are discontinuing the paper version of the annual update questionnaire.
They will be requiring the update to be done via the Claim Lab 3rd party form online.
The only accommodation they agreed to is a phone interview. Wouldn’t budge on letting me submit the update via email.
I get a yearly form from SunLife.
I have never dealt with the ClaimLab and I won’t.
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I’d love to see my LTD company force me to do a phone interview. Would be the last time they ever asked I can guarantee you that. I’d talk one word at a time slow as molasses and take breaks every few minutes to have anxiety attacks where I’d just scream in the background, followed by returning to the call and forgetting where we were and having to start over again. Bring it!!!
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You’ll do the phone interview instead?
In all seriousness, I’m really upset about this. I literally almost never talk on the phone at all, it legitimately will give me so much anxiety just anticipating it, let alone doing it.
But I have no choice. I don’t feel like this is right at all. All I know is I was given a deadline that is less than 2 weeks from now, and if I don’t do the update (through Claim Lab or phone interview), they are terminating my benefits and closing my claim.
I think that considering the phone interview issue is actually related to the very reason I’m disabled, it’s particularly twisted to put me in this position.
When my file was moved to the long duration (or whatever its called) team last year, I stopped having a claims manager specifically assigned to my file. I have no contact person in this new department. Either I write an email to a generic inbox and the turnaround time is over 10 days before I get any reply. Or I call and get whatever agent takes the call.
When I get an email reply, I do have a real person’s email contact but they rarely give any of the information I ask and push for me to call instead. I had another issue a few weeks ago and had to call because my questions weren’t being answered by email. The person was super nice, clearly understood what I was explaining and what I needed but the person who them took over to send me the documents totally missed the boat and I didn’t get what I needed at all. So back to square one. I’m deciding if it’s worth trying again.
But with this update, it’s like I’m in my own. The person who has refused any accommodation for the update isn’t budging and I feel powerless. Because I had to fight to get my claim approved in the beginning and ended up filing a complaint through the ombudsman after 8 months, the person that reviewed my complaint/appeal and approved it, was actually the person in charge of the claims managers. And because of what happened to me, I got an apology and I got honestly the best claims manager for quite a long time.
I got the sense that they were easier on me because of the eff up and the chaos is caused in my life for those 8 months without income. (when I ordered a copy of my file last year, I realized they actually spared me the in person IME and had a report done based on my medical notes and specialist reports. I wondered why they never requested me to get an IME, I didn’t even know they just did all of that without me having to go through it. The full report is in my file, that’s the only reason I know)
And the one time I had an issue, when my amazing claims manager moved on and someone else took over and was threatening to cut off my benefits (I’ve posted about this), I was able to cc the person in charge who had been the one who reviewed my complaint. The issue was resolved the next day. Now I have nothing of that. I don’t have any contact or any recourse.
I’m really upset.
Would you really do that if you had to do the phone interview? I’m not going to but genuinely wondering how you and @jammer would get out of having to do the update by phone or through Claim Lab…
Help 
Considering I don’t do well on the phone they can try to talk to me.
I won’t make an appointment but I’ll talk to them if I feel like calling back.
I’ve already explained to them I am not good on the phone and they have already agreed that phone is no good.
Maybe I’d do the ClaimLab thing.
I’d look at it but if they want me to waive privacy for them then probably not going to happen but it might.
If I’m asked to waive any privacy then I’d contact a lawyer first.
Yes, I would really do that. Maybe not quite to that extent. Honestly, I’d probably just tell the person “I am going to write down your questions and then I’ll email you the answers”. What are they going to say, no, you can’t do that? I’d tell them “Sorry my brain doesn’t work very well and it takes me a while to answer questions properly. I want to make sure I answer your questions properly”.
But I digress… maybe I missed it, but what is the problem with “claim lab”? I mean, it’s obviously intended to work in the favour of the LTD company, but so is everything. Your LTD company does have some rights. They can force you to see a doctor or do an IME or whatever else, stuff like that. It sounds like they were fairly reasonable with you. To me, I’d feel more comfortable doing the claim lab thing because I can control all my answers and take my time with it.
I don’t defend LTD companies often, but to me, it’s not unreasonable for them to tell you “either claim lab or phone”. For me, as long as they provide me with an option to phone, I am fine. So me, I’d probably do the claim lab. But that being said, I don’t really know what that is or much about it. I just fill out a 1 form document once a year.
As long as they don’t ask me to check something giving them rights to my medical file or giving them my banking information or something unreasonable I’d probably do that.
Did you get a letter from them regarding the change?