This post is rare in several ways: first, instead of highlighting an exciting and innovative customer or marketing opportunity, this post illuminates how a company would not want to conduct its interaction with its customers. Secondly, rather than drawing on a business matter to exemplify an experience - it brings to light a rather personal matter - still, it is one in which far-reaching business lessons are learned.
The Booking:
In booking a rental car recently, my family chose a low cost company - Hotwire - for simply that: the lowest price we could find online to rent a car for a planned visit with another immediate family member. Hotwire requires for many of its lowest prices that you book non-refundable trips - it then charges your credit card immediately for the amount. But this is not about that.
The Insurance:
In consideration of any unplanned circumstances, we chose to buy travel insurance to accompany the rental, knowing full well that we'd have to have all the appropriate accompanying legitimate medical documentation, should there be any sort of emergency which would cause us to cancel or reschedule the travel. Enter: Access America. Hotwire "offers" Access America as its travel insurance policy should you choose to enter into such a contract.
In our case, the unfortunate and unforeseen occurred. The immediate family member we were going to visit passed away one month before the planned travel. With such advanced notice, airlines and all other bookings "stood by their word" when it came to cancellations and refunds: JetBlue was absolutely stellar in refunding our money when we provided death certificates; other airlines - such as US Air - were too.
When we contacted Access America (feeling relieved that we thought to buy travel insurance in this rare situation) we were told that the death was a "pre-existing condition" - and that we would therefore be ineligible for consideration for redemption of the funds we paid to HotWire. How could death be a pre-existing condition? As I perused the web for more complaints against this company (which are rampant) I saw how another victim of this scam put it in a blog post: "how can they claim it is pre-existing: this person never had 'end of life' issues before!?"
The Behavior:
The number of phone calls to the claims agent, the unwavering stance after promises of "coverage for illness of immediate family member, and death of immediate family member" and the numerous additional "possible" other doctor's opinions requested - with no guarantee of resolution to our satisfaction - by Access America have buried us in a sea of time-robbing paper chasing. There is no likelihood of our ability to successfully resolve this matter: we are now going on month five. When we've reached out directly about the pre-existing condition fallacy, an agent admitted: "Yes, you are right, HotWire should add something more explanatory to their web site, such as fine print to state: 'if a family member is in any state in which you believe that within 120 days he/she may expire, do not book travel insurance with us if you expect to collect on your claim!'"
The Resolution:
Stay away from valueless travel insurance company: Access America. To earn a customer's business, serve them fairly and openly; be transparent.
UPDATE: I'm happy to report a resolution to this problem which began for my family 5 1/2 months ago. As of mid-May, 2010, Access America contacted us directly and let us know of a 'company change of policy'. Without much direct explanation, they let us know that they would be issuing us a check and resolving the matter in the way we'd expected they would from the moment we applied for their service. We're pleased that the company has paid on the claim for which we'd been insured. Kudos!