Here's how I made a travel insurance company pay out the $5500 claim they denied
Spoiler: I made myself a pain in the ass
My husband opened the bathroom door. “I’m in the shower!” I yelled. We were leaving soon to catch a flight to London and on to Lisbon. This was my last shower before flinging myself across an ocean and I wanted to make the most of it.
“Get out!” he yelled back. “They cancelled our flight.”
Welp. So much for luxuriating under the hot spray for few more minutes.
I wrapped a towel around my wet self and dripped my way to the kitchen, our de facto shared home office and gathering space. Brian showed me an email from British Airways on his phone.
Fuck, fuck fuck.
They proposed another flight … in two days … in coach. Now, that’s where we always fly. Except for this one singular time that we had splurged on business (for the outbound leg only) We’d arrive rested and ready for a big adventure, we justified to ourselves. I don’t sleep well in the best of circumstances, let alone crammed in an airplane seat and I was looking forward to the fancy flight (with lie down bed!) almost as much as arriving in Lisbon.
We tried calling BA. No luck.
Fuck.
We had five nights in Lisbon, and were checked in to the flight, packed, and just about ready to walk out the door for the airport. Well, as soon as I could dry off. No way were we giving up nearly half the time there.
Brian was stressing. Usually that’s me, but now he was running hot. “Don’t worry,” I said. “That’s why we have travel insurance. We just need to get there for now, and we’ll figure it out later.”
Because what can go wrong when those words are uttered?
In fact we did have travel insurance. We’d even ponied up for the higher priced package from World Nomads, because this was expensive airfare. Specifically, we bought it for just such a situation. Air travel is a shit show, and you need somebody to have your back these days.
Here’s the part I’d forgotten about doing for the next few months.
“Please call them,” I’d said, “and make sure they’ll reimburse us for new flights.” I was already on Google Flights. Yep, there were actually some options for getting to Lisbon that very night. What a world we live in! They didn’t come cheap, naturally. Premium economy rang in at more than $2700. Apiece. Business was the cost of a new car and more than the cap on our insurance.
Brian called World Nomads. Told them the situation. “As long as the cancellation isn’t the fault of the airline,” the rep told him, “it’s covered and you’ll be reimbursed.”
Done and done. I booked the slightly-less-awful economy seats on the phone through Capital One Travel, thinking, I don’t know, that there would be some extra protection there.
We kept trying to reach BA — what would happen to the stack of cash we’d spent on the original airfare? Bombarded as they surely were, we couldn’t reach them until finally someone on their social media team responded to me in Instagram DM. We’d have to wait till the trip was over, they said, and then submit a claim at which point they’d refund the unused portion. Meanwhile, they (apparently) re-issued the return ticket. What we didn’t know until we started raising 50 kinds of hell later, was that — according to a helpful person I emailed with at consumer advocacy group Elliott.org — when they re-issued the return ticket, they REPRICED IT. At the higher one-way fare. On the flight THAT THEY CANCELLED. That’s why our refund wasn’t the full amount. Jesus.
Anyway. Everything sorted, and a new flight waiting for us, we went about the trip. Which turned out to include the earthquake in Morocco, but that’s Another Story for another day. Lisbon was and absolute dream, and I was so very happy to have found alternate flights so we could have experiences like this.
Back home, we dutifully filled out the claims. BA was radio silent for a while, then randomly a credit showed up on our card for an amount nearly two thousand less than our outbound airfare. Now we were in a battle on two fronts; getting back the unused portion of our flights from BA, and getting a reimbursement of the same-day tickets from either them or travel insurance.
Now, my girl math doesn’t think the whole thing should have been free. But we also shouldn’t pay for flights we didn’t take, or last minute prices for a cabin downgrade.
Thus began an absurd round and round with BA. I’d email their execs and PR people and someone named Miles from a “premium escalation team” would email me to politely and firmly say no way and oh by the way, **Please don’t hit ‘reply’ – we won’t receive it. If you need to get in touch, please use the link at the bottom of the email**
But since we’d accepted the cancellation and kept our return flight, we were at their mercy. They directed us to a small refund we were due through a mysterious program called Air Passenger Rights.
When I persisted, as I do, they sent us a British Airways voucher for still not enough (for an airline I wouldn’t fly if it were free). Then they even more firmly said no more and if you want to go be a crybaby, complain to the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution. The CEDR? Also denied the claim.
So did World Nomads.
I was starting to feel like the kid in Pepsi, Where’s My Jet.
Sidebar. This debacle followed an even bigger Situation where my longtime realtor gave keys to the buyer of our house, without our permission, and after they hadn’t paid for the house yet, missing the closing deadline — and they changed the locks. Yep. Locked us out of our house and we didn’t have a penny yet. He didn’t give them the keys, he swore, until he was outed and told us he “misled us” to protect himself and the deal. I do not lie. Talk about a shitshow. “Hurt feelings aren’t damages,” in-house counsel for his brokerage told me when I said they’d better be returning that commission (and the rest I’ve paid him while they're at it). Also Another Story and I'm nowhere near done, but same theme: big companies do what they want and there’s basically nothing we little people can do about. At least they think that.I couldn’t let this go, though.
Companies should treat everyone like they have a platform where they can share their experience around the world. Because we all do. I also, literally, am a travel writer (among other things), so one might think they’d be leery of being called out for the super sleazy way they were behaving. It mostly feels though, like companies like this think they operate on a different playing field where they don’t have to follow any, I don’t know, rules.
This leaves people desperate to bring attention to their claim leading to responses like the guy on X posting horrific plane crashes every day tagged with #BritishAirways until they “sort his compensation claim.” (He’s now deleted them; wonder if they paid up?)
So we went through the appeal process with World Nomads, and I also took my own path. Which mostly consisted of dinging them on social media, and emailing the PR contacts for World Nomads, their parent company TripMate, and their underwriting company Nationwide. When their sponsored ads would show up in my feed, I’d comment with a screenshot of their denial of our claim. (We’re clearly not the only travelers they’ve pissed off, not with their Trust Pilot score hanging out at 3.4)
I honestly have no idea if any of that accomplished anything other than the satisfaction of feeling I’m doing something (always tinged with the fear of looking like a Karen but come ON there’s no way this is ok).
Then a World Nomads rep called us. Day before Thanksgiving, we’re in the car en route to a hap-hap-happy holiday, and she says, basically, give it up, we’re not paying you. An absurd, circular conversation ensued — and then. Then Brian had the amazing idea to ask if they record their calls. Indeed they do.
“Listen to our call from August 30,” he said. “Then come back and tell us it’s not covered.”
Why, why, why didn’t I record the call, I thought. That would have been the smart thing to do. When they tell us the call is being recorded for quality purposes, pop back with: great, it’s being recorded on my side for covering myself purposes.
She promised to come back to us after the holiday and would you believe it!? 10 days later we received an email.
Good (Morning/Afternoon/Evening),
Our office has completed the review of your claim.
Attached is a letter providing the outcome of your claim.
Best Wishes,
Trip Mate on behalf of
WorldNomads.com
OMG the suspense! Also, this arrived at close to 10 at night on a Sunday. What?
Here’s what it said [sic].
…
Thank you for your contact with our office regarding the above referenced claim.After review of the information on file, we have determined that your claim is not covered under the plan provisions underwritten by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company with the documentation currently on file.
At your request, we reviewed our phone records to determine if you were provided incorrect information.
Therefore, as a goodwill gesture, due to our error in informing you that we would reimburse the new flight purcahsed, a payment is being issued to you in the amount of $2,724.70 per person for a total amount of $5,449.40. This payment will be mailed to the address you provided, as noted above, within the next 7 days. Unfortunately, because of the situation, it is not possible to send this electronically.
HOT.
DAMN.
Now, once the giddy relief that we weren’t out damn near $6k wore off I was just annoyed that we would be so relieved that a company just … did what they exist to do. Still and all, I’m beyond thrilled to get that money back, and I learned a couple of important things I want to pass on.
One. If you think you’re going to have to use travel insurance, DOCUMENT everything. That’s probably best with email but if you are in a situation that requires an immediate answer, record the call. Tell them you’re doing it to be on the up and up. I use a program call Otter (free trial here) for my work, and it records and uses AI to transcribe (not the best, but better than typing it from scratch).
Two. Don’t stop when they say no. Use every tool at your disposal. Google the company name plus PR/media/newsroom to get contacts for their media people. Use LinkedIn to track down execs to contact, or check Elliott.org for contacts. Tag them and comment on their posts on social, and DM them. Basically, be such a giant pain in their ass they can’t ignore you.
There you have it. Will I buy travel insurance again? Always. But you can bet I’ll do my research next time, and not count on anyone to have my back but me.
I KNEW the story and I was still sitting here goddamn-ing and you go gurl-ing like a fool. 😂