What if Land’s End were an insurance company?

“Guaranteed. Period.” (R)

Land’s End built their direct response business — and helped the industry grow — with their “Money Back, No Questions Asked” guarantee. They engendered trust in an inherently risky proposition, that of buying products you couldn’t pick up and touch. And perhaps, because they needed to live up to that guarantee, they also pursued a higher level of quality.

Compare Land’s End to the insurance industry.

Hard on the heals of Sully’s heroic Hudson landing of US Airways Flight #1549 comes the insurer AIG’s decision not to pay insurance claims for the passengers. They claim the pilots did everything right, there was no equipment failure, and the geese were an “unusual incident.”  Apparently, if there’s no negligence, there’s no liability.

It’s like the insurance companies not paying some homeowners after Katrina because the insurers claimed that the damage wasn’t from the flood, it was from wind-driven storm surge. To a normal person, four feet of water in your house is a flood.

Even worse, there is recision, the practice of canceling the insurance policies of sick policyholders, frequently to avoid having to honor them, and often on technicalities unrelated to their illness.

According to this article in the LA Times, Blue Cross actually praised and promoted employees who saved them millions. One employee alone was praised for “dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.”

How have we allowed a system to thrive where reality is trumped by legal fiction, or more accurately, legal stamina?  These insurance companies outwit, outlast and overwhelm us in the courts. Every day that they avoid paying out makes money for them at our expense.

Could you imagine another industry operating this way?

Imagine if Land’s End had acted this way? “Guaranteed. Until it’s not.” Who would have ever sent them a check? How long do you think they’d have lasted?

Land’s End became a powerful, popular and trusted brand because it lived up to its brand promises:  its quality, its customer service, and its guaranty.

How can the insurance industry ever hope to be loved and trusted by consumers when it continues to weasel its way out of its promises.

More importantly, can someone please explain to me how long we’re going to go on enabling these companies who are addicted to gambling with our money and then using legal obfuscation to avoid the consequences when they lose?