Global Claim Service made me go Twisted (Columbus Direct)

Member Name: hplovejet

Product:	Columbus Direct
Date:	22/07/01 (4334 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap

Disadvantages: poor service, reluctant to pay out, unhelpful

Background:

This insurance was to cover a trip to China on the trans-mongolian express, going by train all the way from Waterloo.

After four days journey from Moscow we arrived in Irkutsk - an amazingly pretty town in the middle of nowhere but quite close to lake Baikal. Being stuck in the train so long I could not wait to get out for a stroll so I decided to explore the town for a while before heading to the lake the next day. My girlfriend sensibly decided to go to bed instead.

What happened next I am not sure as I was knocked unconscious and found my wallet had been liberated when I came back to find blood everywhere. Somehow I got back to the hotel where I was taken to the local hospital. They gave me a few string stitches to repair the skin breaks sustained to the forehead and rear scalp, but I thought it better to get back home as soon as possible.

Remembering the insurance we rang the claims line but we were told that they could not suggest anything until we found an english speaking doctor for them to speak to. I guess this is either their policy or they had no idea where to find one themselves. I know other insurance companies that do not operate this laissez fair DIY attitude: after all when you need medical attention you are not in the best form to hunt down obscure doctors in strange towns. The effect of this request was to refuse assistance, so we pooled the money that remained after my wallet had been stolen and bought the next Aeroflot tickets back to London. I had a bandage all around my head so I looked like the walking wounded from WW1, and having found no english speaking doctor I had to risk travelling without knowing if this would make my condition worse.

When I arrived at Heathrow I went straight to St Thomas's Casualty Department where the consultant asked me a few questions and inspected my eyes and ears before pronouncing the incident was unlikely to have any implications apart from the gra
zing and a possible infection. So far there is no infection and the stitches are out so I consider it quite a lucky escape considering how head wounds usually result in something more serious.

But I feel the attititude of the Columbus assistance and "GlobalClaims" assessors to be a complete disgrace. In the end they offered derisory compensation, and again requested english speaking witnesses and statements from each travel company that my tickets were non-refundable.

To save going into details and to give an example of the nasty way this claim was dealt with I am pasting a copy of one of the letters I sent them:

As you can see from the photographs taken at St Thomas? hospital after returning to the UK the extent of the injury sustained was so extreme that the collection of receipts was not a priority at the time of treatment, and that in any case requesting a receipt from a chemist at 4:00 AM would have been quite unreasonable.

I presume you do not question the fact that stitches were applied, and that this would not have been possible without engaging the services of a professional surgeon who would have charged the equivalent of what has been claimed, or rather more if the treatment had been given in a richer country.

You have requested medical evidence to state the necessity of repatriation and yet I have already included a letter from the doctor who treated me in London stating that aero evacuation was a requirement. You have the original of this letter; I have a copy if you need that. Again, I find this rather surprising given the clear gravity of injuries you can clearly see that have been sustained in the photographs.

I would also like to take this opportunity to inform you that I found the level of assistance provided on the phone following my injuries to be woefully inadequate. They asked me to find an English-speaking doctor in Irkutsk but declined to state where such a person might be found.
I suggest such a person is highly unlikely to exist and if they do it is your responsibility to arrange medical assistance AND the repatriation arrangements. In the event I felt deeply angry that this was all you could do and resentful that I was left to fend for myself when I had come so close to losing my life. I don?t think you need to have any specialist medical expertise to recognise that violent head injury one of the most serious and life threatening conditions that could have been sustained. I appreciate you are more concerned with the legal aspects but I can assure you that I will not hesitate to escalate this claim to the highest level if you continue to question the legitimacy of my claim. If anything you should be deeply apologetic and grateful that I do not sue you for the negligence shown when I requested assistance, and for the extremely reasonable nature of my claim considering the costs that would entail from chartering an aero ambulance. My partner is a journalist in the travel industry and would not hesitate to highlight your denial if that is how you wish to proceed with this claim.

With regard to the excesses that must be paid, that is fine, but I hope you don?t expect me to trawl though the small print of your policy to find out what I am not entitled to claim.

Incidentally I have also suffered the loss of my income for the past two months, and I see that because I have not been put out of action for an entire year your policy deems that I am entitled to absolutely no compensation for this loss.

Why do you say that the unused ticket home is not refundable straight after saying you are only liable for holiday costs after the injury? Surely this is after the injury date??

As I wrote in the original claim I could not report this claim to the police as I could not get an interpreter, the police do not understand English, and my time was used up working how to leave the country. If there were any way I could repo
rt this to the police I would of course do this. Do you have any suggestion about how to do this? If not your demand for a report is completely unreasonable.

I have a university degree in history and above average IQ but I cannot understand half of what you are writing about in your letter. The whole tone of your writing is clearly designed to confuse and scare anyone from claiming any compensation, and as such a reprehensible short fall on your duty to honour bona fide claims, of which I cannot see how mine can be put to question given the testament of the doctor and the graphic enclosure.

Summary: