Yesterday Discovery Health called scheme members to warn them that a systems error would result in them being erroneously debited today (12 February). A spokesperson said the amounts all differed but one member was debited R9,612 as a result of the error.
When asked about the glitch, the CEO of Discovery Health, Jonathan Broomberg said: “During a manual fix to address a minor issue we had with our automated billing process, 381 Discovery Health Medical Scheme members were incorrectly debited. While this is less than 0.03% of our base, it is still an unacceptable incident, and we apologise for the error. We have already begun initiating refunds with immediate effect. We will also reimburse affected members for any bank charges incurred as a result of this error.”
A spokesperson confirmed that all members affected by this incident were contacted and that the reimbursement process had already been initiated. Call centre agents told Justmoney that the error had affected those who have or have had debits come off around the 10th of the month.
At 31 December 2014, the scheme provided cover to 2 634 819 members.