Travel Insurance - medical condition?

dacouch

I have had a client with an Axa claim that after a bit of a discussion over them wanting to use Homeserve and the client wanting to use a local company they agreed to use the local company. The lady at Axa got the details of the quote off me there and then and sent the money over that night. So they actually paid before they needed to.

If they get their act together they could be such a good company as they are one of the largest Insurers in Europe, have a big market share in the UK and are the largest travel insurance provider in the UK.

FH_Brit

If! If! If!

FH_Brit

(THINKING) dacouch and FH Brit need to get a job with AXA to clean up their act!

As I did say (for me anyway) Chicago is the problem and need to go - If they are a contractor AXA could just dismiss them.

I have more AXA accounts with the FSA, than I have accounts at most other insurers - Inter-Group I have 6 cases, Norwich Union I have 3 - Insure & Go I have 26 --- AXA over 400 cases and tey owe me over $1.2m ! ! ! Yeah they are good payers ........ NOT!

dacouch

Oh the other major problem with Axa is.....they are French!!! lol

jem16

FH_Brit wrote: »

As I did say (for me anyway) Chicago is the problem and need to go - If they are a contractor AXA could just dismiss them.

I had dealings with the AXA Chicago hospital almost 2 years ago when my 19 yr old son ended up in a Canadian hospital for an emergency appendectomy. My elder son was with him and phoned the insurance company as soon as he was taken into hospital. The Chicago office dealt with the hospital and apart from getting on the Canadian's hospital's bad books by sending American forms everything was handled smoothly and efficiently. AXA paid the medical bill directly to the hospital and he was able to fly home on his original flight.

After he was home my elder son was contacted and asked to fax the hospital's report to them. We managed to get that from the canadian hospital without too much bother and faxed it to AXA Chicago. I phoned to check they could read it ok as it wasn't great quality and asked if everything was fine with the claim. They said that they didn't foresee any problem and promised to let me know once it had been looked at. Later that evening I received an email to confirm that everything was going through.

I had no problems and was happy with everything done. However I have read so many bad reports I would be hesitant in using them again.

dacouch

Jem16 this is how Travel Insurance is supposed to work.

jem16

dacouch wrote: »

Jem16 this is how Travel Insurance is supposed to work.

I agree.

It just shows the varying treatment that you get though. I had no problems with AXA which a lot have problems with and yet had problems with First Assist who are apparently normally good.

It seems that too much is on the the side of the insurer.

dacouch

Travel Insurance is a complicated Policy and has an amazing amount of small print, the cover and wording varies from company to company and you can find policies with the same Insurers have different cover and wordings.

On bigger medical claims such as yours the medical treatment and assistance is generally fairly trouble free. However Travel Insurers will look at the claim carefully as you have found in your other claim often refuse to actually pay the medical expenses (Its what keeps FH Brit in a job).

Unfortunately Travel Insurance is often an after thought when booking a holiday and as its relatively cheap people tend to buy on price without understanding what they are covered for and more importantly what they are not covered for.

FH_Brit

Jem - all being fair - There is good and bad in every company and (It hurts to say) even AXA has some good reps/adjustors, but it is a toss of a coin that they get your claim.
From personal experience, if IC's were efficient, as DA says, I would be out of a job. I deal with claims that are already late in paying when I first see them IC's should issue payment or a denial in writing within a timely manner (140 days under Florida law). And although you say everything went through - how do you actually know? One of my problems is that the regular billing dept (before it comes to me) have no idea how to address an envelope for delivery in the UK, therefore a great many patients don't get the bill so they assume it's been paid until "Big Bad Debt Collector" (me) sends them a letter, that can be up to 7 years after discharge (in Florida).
Example - $24,000.00 bill here, and the patient was complaining to AXA that we were "after them" and we informed them to go to FSA but they listened to AXA who said that they had paid it and supplied cheque dates & details, saying to the patient "do not pay [me]". Anyway after we had started proceedings and the Patient was paying for a solicitor (instead of getting it free through the Ombudsman Service), the patient's solicitor told AXA to prove payment (not just that they had written a cheque) and well bottom line 14 MONTHS before this a guy had left AXA Chicago, and they found the unmailed cheque on his empty desk! The patient had bills of over £2,500.00 (slicitors fees, our interest, our legal fees etc). After that I bet he wished he'd listened to me not AXA!
I can honestly say from my experience - AXA have NEVER paid promptly or efficiently! But I live in hope!
And in the same respect (as you say First Assist are "normally good" - there are some untrained/bad/lazy/inefficient people who work for the normally good companies.
To me, what the difference is when a good reputable company makes mistakes, they say sorry and get it fixed quickly. Inter-Group last month had my money in my bank OVERNIGHT!
A bad company says "it's not my fault, it's the emergency assistance company" or "we have sent it to cost containment" or "we have not received the bill" or "you [patient] did not send back your claim form" etc. etc. etc. Bad companies have a list of excuses and often they are trained in "delaying tactics" as your $500.00 bill is nothing to worry about but if they owe 1,000 bills like it, then they can earn a little more interest on that $500,000.00 before they have to pay it out.
A direct quote from AXA Chicago when I was chasing some accounts. "but it's only $70.00, I have accounts worth $70,000.00 that I have to deal with first"!
Well I replied that I understood but you owe me 330 accounts at various prices and it's over $1.2m so do I get priority now? Also not paying in 140 days mean that you can be prosecuted just as much for my $70.00 as for the $70,000.00! Bearing in mind one x-ray's radiologists fee is $31.00 and AXA not paying the "small bills" mean that the doctor client of mine gets paid zero!

Gabby50_2

Hi, I don't know if you can help; my father 82yrs has recently been told that his travel insurance will not cover him for a 5day hospital stay (Celebration hospital Florida) during a visit to Florida last Christmas. The thing is now the insurance company have made this decision the "debt collecter" is now chasing him for payment, however the sum he is asking is about double what the insurance company were talking abou it costing? how can we ensure a correct and realistic figure for this bill and set up realistic payment terms - at th moment we are looking at about $20000.00 which is a fortune to my father. Any advice on who to contact and how to negotiate the best scenario would be really appreciated.