Finally received checks for claims on cancelled travel! Some tips inside.

[Nizzie]

Long story, but my husband and I booked a cruise for December of 2014 and were greatly looking forward to it. I made final payment in September and right around that time I started experiencing vertigo and feeling like my left ear was plugged up. I called the nurse line and was told I probably had a mild ear infection (no fever) and to see if it cleared up on its own. It did not and thus began several weeks of urgent-care visits and rounds of medications that did nothing to clear up my ear issue. After a hearing test, a course of steroids and an MRI it was determined I actually had a brain tumor (!!!) nearly an inch in diameter sitting against my auditory and facial nerves, and it was recommended to have it removed as soon as possible, both to get it out of my skull and to be covered by my much-better-in-2014-than-2015 medical insurance. We cancelled as soon as I was given my diagnosis, so we got half the fare back from the cruise vendor. I was informed that since I had chosen to purchase the cruise-protection policy (I think I'd had a glass of wine when originally booking with the cruise line representative and was in a spending mood and was agreeing to anything he offered me - I don't think I've ever opted for the cruise line's insurance before this) I could put in a claim for 75% of the remainder with Aon Affinity.

 

I ended up spending the day we would have flown to Miami in surgery, and our sailaway day in the ICU.

 

Still, as brain tumors go, this was a "good one" to have and I was back to work just 29 days after my surgery date.

 

My husband was taking care of me and wasn't focused on putting in the claim, so that ended up waiting until I was feeling better and able to do things like wear my reading glasses.

 

Gathering the information ended up being the hardest thing for us. We had to find all the receipts (all electronic since I'd booked over the phone and had everything emailed to me) for the deposit, final payment, and refund. I had to get the names and contact information for all my doctors, including the multiple urgent-care physicians, my PCP (who never actually saw me through any of this as she was on holidays at the time) and the two surgeons who performed my actual excision. Getting the doctors to fill out the requested forms proved to be very difficult and because I was not allowed to drive for some time after recovery it meant my husband had to take even more days off of work to go bug doctors and their staff members.

 

We were calling Aon every few weeks or so to get updates and invariably they were waiting for more info from some doctor, the hospital, or my medical insurance company - apparently Aon communicated with them for some reason as I got a letter stating that Aon had submitted an appeal to them on my behalf - but nothing ever became of that. In addition someone lost the authorization to release medical information I'd signed for the hospital, so they were refusing to give over any data, so I had to sign for that and send off that form a second time.

 

All in all, we started the process in January and we got the final payment checks on our claim yesterday - four months later!

 

Still, buying the insurance turned out to be a great decision I don't remember making. If I had not purchased it, we'd be out over $1100. We only ended up having to eat $320 (and, sort of, $120 that was the cost of the protection to begin with) so I will probably be buying it again when we rebook for the same cruise this December just for peace of mind.

 

In the future, though, I will be saving off to a hard drive folder AND printing out every receipt, email and attachment from the cruise company - plus if we have to make a medical claim I will put in my own medical release forms with all doctors and hospitals naming the insurer, just so we don't have to go through that rigmarole, and the docs will just release info without having to go through that dance again!

Edited May 17, 2015 by Nizzie

[BullDawg91]

When I had to file a claim for my parents, we waited a while on doctors to fill out and return paperwork too. I think it was about 3 months before we got a check, but I never felt it was the insurance company's delay.

 

I'm glad that you are recovering and ready to cruise again!

[sirwired]

When I filed a claim for a cancellation due to my wife and I having to take care of my father because of a cardiac bypass, I found the most useful thing was to go ahead and include everything I could think of from my Dad's file, so the insurance company didn't have to ask for it.

 

During one of my Dad's follow-up visits, I gave them the one-page questionnaire (which I pre-filled as much as I could) and the records release, and while my Dad was being examined, I perused his chart myself and had the office copy the juicy bits (like the referral letter to the surgeon requesting a bypass be performed without delay.)

 

The trick is to try to answer any questions the adjuster might have before they to ask them (or go to the doctor asking them) and to explain why each attached document should be helpful. I think my total initial claim submission was around 30 pages. It was helpful that TravelGuard had an itemized list of the things they needed from me to document costs, so the only part requiring any real effort beyond stacking paper was the medical parts.

 

My claim was processed in two weeks, and they didn't have to go back to the doctor at all.

[Mr. Click]

Glad you are recovering. We had to cancel our Baltic cruise last year at the last minute when I had an emergency cardiac cath a few days before we were supposed to fly to AMS. Long story short, I made the phone calls to cancel things. came thru the cath lab in much better shape and 9 days later I had my doctor fill out Square Mouth/Tin Leg's claim forms and I sent them. All within two week of getting sick. After that it took almost two months, many phone calls and not so nice emails to get them to move on my claim. In the middle of it all they lost all of our paperwork for about two weeks. The reality was in our case they really did not care. The longer we let them wait with out following up and complaining, the longer it took to get things resolved. I kept hearing "that is just industry standard"..... Of course, it would be worse if I did not have insurance .....it does take time, it does take patience but it also takes vigilance on our part. Stay on top of them, don't accept excuses and demand responses when you submit the piles and piles of forms they want. Oh, we leave on our re-scheduled Baltic trip in 8 days..... :) and while it is insured it is not with Square Mouth/Tin Leg.