Smile-breaks
Sure Glad I Bought Travel Insurance...
Booked a cruise to Alaska – had to cancel. Sure glad I bought travel insurance.
The claim form arrived last month - four pages of questions in fine print. And a page for the doctor to fill out, but I don’t know which doctor because there were the cardiologist, the thoracic surgeon, the internal medicine guy, the primary care doctor…
I’m s’posed to gather up all of our unused tickets and receipts, and stuff them into the envelope they sent that isn’t even big enough for the claim form, let alone the cruise tickets that came in thirty-three-page booklets and who knows which of the thirty-three pages is the actual ticket. I’m thinking I’ll kind of forget to enclose the tickets.
I was sure relieved to see that I had ninety days to do all this. It looked like about a month’s work…
Several days after it arrived, I picked up the form and started filling in the blanks. Looked for the easy stuff – name, address, phone number. Today’s date. Cost. Oh darn - the cost changed three times. I forget what it ended up. I called our friendly travel agent.
"What was the total cost for our trip? What date did we make the first payment? The last payment?"
She gave me the answers and told me she’d filled in her claim for our refund the day it arrived in her office and that she makes it a habit to do that with every claim form she gets. I ignored the subtle hint and thanked her for being so prompt.
After that – knowing what the rest of the questions were - I stayed away from the form as long as I could. Finally, feeling the threat of losing several thousand dollars, I gritted my teeth, grabbed a pen and went to work.
They wanted to know the life and history of the person whose incident/accident/illness caused us to cancel and the day, hour and minute he first realized he wouldn’t be able to make it to Alaska and why couldn’t he make it to Alaska and did he ever have that feeling before and if he did, we’re not going to refund your money even though you paid for the travel insurance so be careful what you say…
After I finished, I set the form where I’d be sure to remember it when we went to the doctor’s office for the follow-up appointment.
Of course I forgot it.
Fortunately – not really fortunately, but that’s another story - the doctor wasn’t satisfied with my man’s progress so he scheduled him to come back the next week and I figured I’d take the form then. We still had forty days left.
But the next week the doctor’s office called to cancel and reschedule so now we won’t be going until the end of the month. I’m hoping the doctor has an assistant who loves to fill out forms as much as our travel agent does, because by the time he gets it, he’s only going to have thirty-three days to answer all those questions.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch… I mean, over at my credit union’s website, some mysterious action’s taken place. My VISA account balance has a minus in front of it.
It turns out we have a credit balance because last week while I was busy filling out the form, the travel insurance company credited our account for three thousand dollars. Wow! That’s great – but it’s only three-fourths of the cost of the trip.
Looks like if I want the rest of my money, I’d better get that form to the doctor quick and order those roses so I can send everything in. I’m thinking maybe the roses will have to go in a separate envelope…