
Originally Posted by
oldrider
Funny how it is with all that cover, they can still find a little reason why you are "not" covered in "this" instance and your up the creek!
Too true. My mom-in-law died last year (overseas), so we cancelled the trip we'd planned for December to go see her (not much point, after all). My wife flew over to go sort out funerals and the rest of that mess - and paid full whack for the flights, of course - and I went on down to the travel agent to cancel the other flights. Had to pay $750 per ticket cancel fee, of course, three grand - ferk knows how they justify that price, I'll 100% guarantee they resold the seats - but no worries, the travel insurance would cover that. We had bought the tickets on the credit card, so were covered - so I thought.
Turns out the company doing the travel insurance for the bank (Chartis) only covers travel disruption caused by the death of a person in NZ, says the small print. But... there was no point in me flying the family over to see someone no longer there, so we had no option but to cancel the flights. Result: me buggered, no cover.
In a sense it's a fair cop, it's in their policy doc (which I had to request from them in print form because you can't download it from the bank website), and if I had taken the time to do this I would have known this when I bought the tickets. (Who does that, though?) I doubt I would have chosen another product anyway - I was buying the tickets on the card regardless, so had cover. I can just see me saying "actually dear, I might go buy some more travel insurance just in case your mother dies in the next few months". Not so likely.
Anyway, back to the main topic - privatising accident insurance is not a good solution, for the main reason that the insurers are bigger bastards than ACC is.
Redefining slow since 2006...
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