My 24-year-old daughter was covered by an Axa travel insurance policy when she met me for a holiday in Cambodia and Vietnam in July. Unfortunately, on the last day of our trip she became seriously ill with dengue fever and was admitted to hospital.
I collected all the evidence the insurer needed from the hospital and Axa agreed that my daughter was covered for her medical emergency and the losses resulting from it.
Because of the medical emergency we both missed our flights home from Hanoi via Kuala Lumpur. Axa agreed to fund my daughter’s ticket on a later flight direct from Hanoi to the UK and told me I would have to buy my own ticket and claim it back when I got home. Meanwhile, it paid for my hotel stay while she was in hospital, which suggests it accepted that my place was at her side.
However, after our return to the UK, Axa refused to pay the £900 for my rebooked flight home, arguing that my daughter could have flown home alone. The insurer seems unable to grasp that I had to miss my flight because I could not leave my daughter seriously ill, on her own, unable to communicate, on the other side of the world. AC, Northampton
Insurance companies are not noted for their delicacy of feeling, but Axa’s stance is unusually crass. Your missed flight was a consequential loss because it departed the day your daughter was admitted to hospital. It is therefore irrelevant whether she was fit to fly home alone after days of treatment.
Axa, when I laboriously spell this out, comes to realise this. At first it apologises for the “delay” in settling the claim – a claim it clearly had no intention of honouring before you invoked the media – but has now said it will refund you the £900.
Once pressed for its reasons for refusing you it blames an “error” and offers you £180 – which should just cover the cost of having your luggage, stranded in Kuala Lumpur and couriered home (another cost Axa had promised to cover, but didn’t).
“We are very disappointed to hear that the customer did not receive the usual level of service from Axa and we hope that the compensation offered reflects how sorry we are for this,” says a spokesperson. “We have reviewed our processes to ensure this does not happen again.”
If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number.
