Military Financial Independence

Me, a decade ago: “John Hancock made my father’s long-term care insurance claim the worst financial experience ever.”
John Hancock LTC team, a decade later: “Hey Nords, hold our beer.”

This letter claiming to be from John Hancock arrived in December 2024, just before the holidays.

“Upon a recent review of your… long-term care insurance policy, insured and administered by John Hancock, we have discovered there are still benefits remaining, even though your claim ended on 10/5/2014 and your coverage was terminated.
To help make sure you receive correspondence as soon as possible, please contact our dedicated service area at 888-[redacted] at your earliest convenience to confirm we have your current information. This will also help us verify that this policy’s remaining benefits will be delivered as intended.”

Yeah, right. Nice try, scammers.

Yet why would John Hancock address the letter to “Estate Of”? (After the claim ended, Dad lived another three years in memory care before Alzheimer’s Disease killed him.)  They could have simply addressed the letter to my father or directly to me, his conservator.

Frankly it wasn’t worth my time to answer this suspect letter (even if it turned out to be legitimate), but half of Dad’s estate belongs to my brother.  He’s financially independent too, and he probably wouldn’t care about the money. Yet I still felt the sense of obligation, and my conscience would nag me.

Except… if this was a scam, then how did they know the policy number and the expiration date of the benefits?  Well played, phishers.

 

I searched the Internet.

The letter was signed by a John Hancock executive who has a Linkedin account. Other search engines seemed to confirm that there was such a person, although their public info was easy to clone into a phishing hook.

I looked up John Hancock’s corporate “Contact us” number and spent 45 minutes with two different representatives.  The first one couldn’t help but eventually transferred me to the long-term care insurance call center. That rep could see the letter on their system and confirmed that the number was legit. They also volunteered that the LTC department was reviewing old claims, but they had no further insight.

I decided to call the toll-free 888 number, which felt like time-traveling to the 1990s.  It went directly to voicemail, and here’s the full transcript:
“Welcome to the long-term care operations team. Please leave your full name, LTC ID, and/or claim number and we will call you back as soon as possible.”

John Hancock couldn’t even make the time to identify their corporate name, or offer an e-mail address, or provide a fax(!) number.

I left three voicemails during the next 24 hours, and I couldn’t tell that anyone bothered to check it.

My Internet search also turned up John Hancock’s $26.3 million settlement with New York over canceled insurance policies.  Suddenly I could completely understand why the company was calling me about a 10-year-old claim from Denver. Maybe I should notify the Colorado insurance commissioner of my experience?

As I wrote in my 2014 post, John Hancock had attempted to terminate the insurance claim while it was still $6175 short of a full payout.  During 2011-14 their claims reimbursement procedure was so laughably chaotic that I built a tracking spreadsheet. (I used their numbers in my father’s 1992 policy and from their 2011 approval letter of the claim.) When I sent them a copy of my spreadsheet, 19 days later they deposited the money in his checking account ($6175.20, to be precise) and followed up with a letter:
“Based on a review of the file, we are honoring your request for payment.”

 

Finally, The Callback

In early January 2025, two weeks later, they eventually checked their voicemail. I was in the middle of yardwork, and (as usual) I was listening to my phone’s classic rock music on my hearing aids. I recognized the 617 area code (“Boston– oh that could be John Hancock!”) and picked up.

The good news is that the caller from the LTC team knew there was a five-hour time difference, and they avoided the classic Mainland mistake of calling at 3 AM.

The other news is that by calling– instead of e-mailing or sending a letter– they didn’t leave a record which could be subpoenaed by a lawsuit.

The LTC team member acknowledged my voicemail and asked for a complete set of my father’s estate paperwork:

• • his will,
  • the executor’s appointment letter,
  • the probate records, and
  • IDs from the heir(s).

I guess their legal staff wanted to make sure the money went to the right heirs, even though their correspondence file already showed that I was the fiduciary son who had to deal with them for the three years that they were paying the claim. Especially for the part where they tried to short my father by $6175.

I explained that my conservator’s appointment ended with my father’s death in 2017 and his assets were passed by beneficiary designations. His will was filed but never probated (and never had an executor) because it wasn’t required. His estate was closed in 2018 after I filed his estate income-tax returns.  I didn’t even need to open an estate checking account.

Today all I have is my father’s death certificate and my archived copies of my conservator’s filings with the probate court.  Maybe the Denver probate court still has them too.

The LTC team member said that my father’s beneficiary designations didn’t meet their requirements. I was already antagonized so I lit up and shared my feelings: in 2011-14 their entire claims process left our family feeling victimized, and their scammy phishing 2024 letter (with its sketchy toll-free phone number to an unprofessional voicemail) brought back my trauma emotions all over again.

I amped up my military voice to emphasize that John Hancock had already been given their second chance in 2014 to pay the claim correctly, and today I didn’t feel obligated to prove I was still an heir of his estate.  And because I’m a nuclear submarine veteran, I pointed out that a decade of neglect should include compensation for interest & inflation.

I concluded by demanding that unless they were ready to send the money to me right now, then I was ready to talk with my estate lawyer and the state insurance commissioner’s office.

The team member said they’d consult their lawyers for guidance and let me know how they wanted to proceed. I doubt that I was talking with the person who signs the checks.

I had one more question.
Me: “Before we finish this call, do you have any information on how much money we’re talking about?”
LTC: “Let me look in the file… it’s a sum between $10K and $20K.”
Me: “Thank you. Please e-mail me when you have a response. I’d rather not talk on the phone.”

I e-mailed my lawyer (Michelle Hobus of Sterling & Tucker) with a summary and asked to discuss it with her on a Zoom call.  She does outstanding estate planning.

 

Another Callback?!?

Four days later, the John Hancock LTC team member… called me again. (This time I was waiting in line for an auto safety inspection and had plenty of time to chat.) I reminded them of my “Do Not Call” preference, and they asked for my lawyer’s e-mail address.

I explained that I was waiting to hear back from my lawyer, and I asked what information the LTC team wanted to share with us.

The LTC team member said that in 2024 when they reviewed my father’s claim, they found my 2014 letter which told them that they were $6175 short.

The team member said that they agreed with my spreadsheet and wanted to send me the $6175 plus interest. Then they began explaining to me (yet again) why John Hancock needed the legal documentation to prove that I was the heir.

I (politely) interrupted their script to inform them that we’d already received the final payment.

The team member said John Hancock had no record of paying it.

When I affirmed that they’d already electronically deposited the $6175 into my father’s checking account in late 2014, they said there was no record of its deposit.

I felt the gaslighting.

On the other hand, John Hancock had screwed up before. Incompetent accounting is not a crime.

I reminded the LTC team member (once again) that I was my father’s conservator and I knew he’d received the deposit. We’d already paid his long-term care expenses with their final deposit and then, since the claim was exhausted, we moved on to private pay for nearly three more years.

I could have shared that I properly documented their deposit in my conservator’s 2014 report to the Denver probate court. If I did that, though, they would have asked for a copy for their record. After the way I’d been treated over the last few weeks… I felt no obligation to volunteer my help.

I told the LTC team member that I thought we had nothing further to discuss.

They said that they felt sorry for all of the trouble they’d put me through and they wanted to make it right.

At this point you may be wondering whether it crossed my mind to let them send me the $6175… again… maybe this time with a record of its payment.

They’ve certainly earned the karma backlash, but my brother and I are financially independent. We don’t need the money.

At that point I had two thoughts:
1. I was even angrier that they made me re-live this experience just to admit once more (and prove yet again) that they couldn’t handle their own accounting.
2. They’d still insist on estate & probate records which had never existed.

Then I had a horrifying third thought: in a few years a new member of the LTC team would review that file yet again (possibly with more diligence?), and realize that they’d paid out $6175 twice. They’d want their money back, and I’d have to re-live this conversation all over again.

Ever since I was a midshipman I don’t lie, cheat, or steal– and in this case, doing the right thing was easy.

I said that I appreciated the feelings of the LTC team, and we had nothing further to discuss.

They tactfully pushed back that if I’d just give them the proof of being my father’s heir, then they could…

I told them that I wasn’t going to fix John Hancock’s accounting errors. I suggested that they should discuss this whole issue with the team, decide on the right thing to do, and then do it. We had nothing further to discuss.

After more pushback I repeated that paragraph. I think they got the hint.

(Spoiler:  They didn’t get the hint.)

We agreed that if John Hancock ever wants to contact me again, they’ll e-mail me. Sure they will.

(Spoiler:  They did.)

After we finished our call I e-mailed our estate-planning lawyer, reported the update, and apologized for wasting her time. She graciously accepted my apology and didn’t even bill me.

 

But wait, there’s still more.

A week later (after I cooled off) I drafted this blog post.  I finally formatted it and scheduled it to post in early March.

Two days before the blog post went live, my Gmail inbox had a message from “noreply” with subject “[MLIencryptPII].”  I’m an experienced blogger, and these are usually spam or phishing invoices. A lot of them get past my e-mail filters, and I delete them without reading.

However I was still squinting while sipping my first cup of tea, and the “encrypt” letters seemed to be more creative than the usual invoice scam. I opened the e-mail, and I’m glad I did.

It was actually from “noreply@jhancock.com” through a Microsoft Office 365 encryption program. Gmail didn’t seem upset, and neither did my PC’s virus scanner, so I clicked through. I had to click a second link for an e-mailed unlock code (a really good spearphishing tactic!) before I could finally see an Outlook page with a tiny thumbnail of a PDF from… John Hancock Insurance.

At least they didn’t mail cryptic form letters, or ask me to leave voicemail at sketchy toll-free numbers, or call my phone. But only John Hancock could make e-mail even harder.

They might be struggling to understand that “do the right thing” part too.

This settlement letter was accompanied by a three-page release assuring John Hancock that we would not file a claim or take any other legal action.  (But it’s not a non-disclosure agreement!)  “All we have to do” is notarize our signature, mail it in, and wait for the check.

At least they’re no longer insisting on proof that I’m the heir to my father’s estate.  Yet I don’t think John Hancock’s LTC insurance team would know the right thing to do if it reared up and bit them in the assets.

Interestingly, I’ve never told them the [redacted] name of my brother. I’ve never even mentioned that I have a brother, because I thought they’d shift targets and start pestering him too. John Hancock must have done that research because they managed to spell his (unusual) name correctly.

Since I apparently failed to preserve my brother’s privacy, I forwarded my copy of the (decrypted) e-mail to him with a summary of Hancock’s letters & calls. Then I went surfing followed up a few hours later with a phone call. As usual, my call went straight to his voicemail.

I should mention that I haven’t talked with my brother in nearly seven years, and his last e-mail was four years ago. Bro doesn’t use the Internet, and he would never have clicked on John Hancock’s encrypted links. I don’t know how John Hancock would have discovered his e-mail address, which he only checks every few weeks. He moved out of Colorado years ago and (wisely) he doesn’t send out change-of-address cards when he moves.

He called me back a bit later, and of course he hadn’t even read my e-mail yet, so I reviewed our story so far.

I avoided telling him what I thought we should do, but he immediately had the same reflex reaction: we’re not accepting their offer.

I have to admit that he reached his conclusion a lot faster than me.

It irks me greatly that John Hancock knows they don’t owe us any money– and yet they still want to buy our compliance to shield themselves from hypothetical legal action.

I guess I should be flattered that my integrity is worth almost $8300 to them?

This could be their attempt to fend off another class-action lawsuit by settling with as many clients as possible before the subpoenas arrive. I searched online for another hour but I don’t have the access or subscriptions to know whether any new legal action is pending. I’d hate to settle for $8300 and then (a year later) have the Colorado insurance commissioner ask me for a deposition.

(If you’re in the Colorado insurance commissioner’s office, or if you can research pending lawsuit filings, please let us know what you find!)

The hard part about this “settlement” (which they shouldn’t have offered in the first place) is that their money could have come from another client who was shorted on their claim and never checked John Hancock’s math. Or a client whose claim was inappropriately denied. Or a client who let their policy lapse because it was too expensive or… you get the point.

Like I wrote a decade ago, I won’t buy long-term care insurance either.

This offer feels transactional and uses what feels like tainted money. I’ve gone over the release with a lawyer, and it does not prohibit me from blogging about it.

I’d be happy to donate Hancock’s money to charity, but I don’t trust them to even buy us off. I’m concerned that they’d come back another decade later to report that they’d fixed their bookkeeping and want us to return their settlement. Or, even worse, they’d lose their record of this payment too.  Or, worst of all, that they someday contact my heir about my father’s estate.

I want nothing to do with them.

My brother’s waiting for a few more weeks to see whether he gets a letter or e-mail too, and he’ll let me know if he changes his mind.  (I’ve known him his whole life.  I doubt he’ll change his mind.)  As you can tell from this post, I’d rather snark freely than sell out my editorial privilege due to their incompetence.

 

Your Call To Action:

Thank you for reading. Writing this post has been helpful keyboard therapy… and I hope it helps you make an informed decision on your personal long-term care plans.

Regardless of your long-term care planning, I hope you’re also pursuing your financial independence today so that someday you don’t feel compelled to accept an unrefusable offer.

Let us know how we can help.

 

 

 

There are no affiliate links or paid ads in this post.  Try your military base library or local public library before you pay money for these books– in any format.

 

 

Related articles:
Why I Won’t Buy Long-Term Care Insurance
Alzheimer’s Care Financial Update
Geriatric financial management update