Travel & Holidays A travel insurance story

So we've had this person living in a back building of our place forever. Early last year she managed to get a work permit for the US, then got her dream job as a temple manager at a Buddhist retreat in Colorado, then got cancer - a bad one.
She had a 12 month travel insurance policy so got in touch with the insurer.
They said that sadly her policy was one where she could only stay a maximum of 30 days in a country before moving on - possibly to stop people getting it and going to live in a country with expensive medical costs.
She told them that it was never her intention to leave the US regularly and that she explained this on the phone when she queried the very reasonable cost of the policy.
'Leave it with us,' they said. It was then 'escalated'.
Several days later, they called her back. It was a senior person who made the call. He said they had retrieved the phone conversation from 10 months prior, listened to it, and she was right. She did query the policy and was told it was appropriate for her plans.
So they not only had the conversation on tape, but they retrieved it, listened to it, acknowledge their error, and stumped up money immediately for treatment. It would have been so easy for them to stall and wait for the cancer to do its thing and resolve the issue.
The treatment was probably about $100K. Then when she was 'fit to fly' i.e. able to get on a plane, they flew her back Business Class with assistance at two airports for flight changes.
I got involved because I'm here and the internet access from the wilds of Colorado wasn't great. The bloke I was dealing with was the Manager of Retail Claims. He was amazing and answered every email I sent him within about hald an hour.
The insurer is ACE. They have recently bought Chubb.
I told the bloke that he had restored my faith in insurers.
Scott

 

Nice to hear a good story. I hope your friend is doing ok.

 

Scott...that is an amazing story. I will check out Ace for my next travel insurance.

Friends of mine flew to Europe, prior to leaving they had sold his mother's house and had her safely installled in a nursing home. She had been there for 3 weeks when they flew to Rome with a group of friends. They did not take out travel insurance as the Bank had assured them, that being as they had paid for their trip using their credit card, they were covered under the Zurich Insurance Policy.

On arrival in Rome they were paged and told to phone home immediately. His Mother had died while they were on their way. They re-booked to fly home straight away. They had to book Business class as that was all that was available.

They came home, arranged the funeral and flew back to join their friends a week later.

They lodged the claim with Zurich which was fully paid including the Business class fares!!!

So another good Travel insurance story

 

where can I find such a mythical insurance company that admits to making a mistake and fixing it instantly.....

 

Love it !!
Put the old gurl in a nursing hime ... Sell her house... Then go on holiday !!

 

Arrange a funeral and remove mother's belongings from nursing home within a week? I dont believe it - someone else must have done the practical work. I hope they enjoyed their holiday.

 

Travel, car and (in some cases) health insurance seem to be decent in the claims process, it's almost like the people working in it were not mean enough for life insurance companies . I claimed on my Covermore travel insurance last year as we had to cancel a cruise and the claims process was completely painless and quick.

Also it's interesting that Fairstar refunded the non refundable portion of the cruise too, all up I was only out of pocket $150 which I thought was simply brilliant.

When I was diagnosed I received a letter from NAB asking if I wanted mortgage insurance, I called them and explained I already had it as I had specified I wanted it when setting the loan up due to a redundancy in 2014, They assured me they would listen to the tapes of the phone calls and low and behold they couldn't find where I had said I wanted it. I know I did, my exact words were "I want mortgage insurance, I have learned my lesson after last years redundancy"

If I do manage to get insurance in the future (which will be a couple of years away) it will exclude cancer .

 

Balwoges... remember the mother had only been in the home for 3 weeks, so there was not really too much to remove. Organising a funeral in a week is easy, I have done it 3 times now in Australia. Each time has been a burial.

The most difficult to organise have been two in the UK, one when Dad died and the ground was too frozen, why this was a problem when he was being cremated I could not work out. Mum's was delayed by 18 days as we had to go on a list for the cremation.