Travel Insurance Fiasco

rmackinnon

Hi, I was on a ski-ing holiday in Italy with my wife recently. Unfortunately, she injured her knee and needed assistance at the airport. We thought we'd been cautious by buying travel insurance from Staysure as well as the policy we have with AIG through our bank, Virgin Money, in case we would have to make a COVID claim for which Staysure claim to be market leaders. I called and e-mailed Staysure to request assistance at the airport two days before departure. Guess what, despite numerous further e-mails from me, they responded the day after our flight departed. (I had also tried AIG before deciding to use Staysure - they had no idea how to arrange airport assistance). We were lucky that another passenger helped us with our luggage and the check-in staff at Innsbruck were great and blocked an extra seat on the plane without charge. To make our experience worse, we now know that our claim has to be split between the two insurers and expect it will take months to settle. Beware these companies false claims of excellent service and avoid dual insurance.

mgfvvc

That's poor. When my wife broke her leg in NZ Columbus Direct were great. We would definitely use them again.

Sandtree

rmackinnon said:
Beware these companies false claims of excellent service and avoid dual insurance.

And if the claim had been for a lost laptop rather than injury then the claim may have been split 3 ways with your Home insurance if they cover items whilst overseas. 

Normally in these cases however one insurer agrees to take the lead and the others follow. In commercial insurance its very common for large risks to be split over multiple insurers... no one insurer wants to take all the risk of the Shard being gutted by fire for example. However in those cases its known from the outset that there are other insurers involved and who the lead is is agreed up front which makes things slightly smoother.