The problem: Your voyage wasn’t technically “interrupted” since you spent all 18 nights on board. Several times in my conversations with insurance executives I heard the phrase “You are not covered for loss of enjoyment,” but I imagined this applied to a week of rain at a Caribbean resort, not an Antarctic cruise ship that never makes it to the antartida.
I also heard from a reader named Alan, from Vaughan, Ontario, about a nightmare return from Vancouver to Toronto during the storms of last Christmas season. After three WestJet flights were canceled and another was delayed, all due to weather, the next flight they were booked on was canceled due to crew shortages, and he and his wife were stuck in Calgary during the week. evening. Alan had paid for his trip with an HSBC credit card that offers travel insurance through Assurant.
The next day, with no word from WestJet on when they could fly, they called Assurant, who told them it would cover an Air Canada flight home. Alan submitted claims for hotel expenses to WestJet and reimbursement for the flight to Assurant. WestJet denied the hotel’s request, and the letter it gave Alan to file a claim with Assurant mischaracterized at least two of the cancellations and focused on crew shortages on the final flight, a situation not covered by insurance.
A WestJet spokeswoman, Madison Kruger, said the airline had wrongly rejected the hotel’s claim and would pay. Linda Recupero, a spokeswoman for Assurant, which administers the HSBC policy, said she could not comment on the case, but the company has contacted Alan to help with next steps.
In another case of tangled communication, Jacki of Englewood, Colo., tested positive for covid and was denied boarding on a May 2022 Greek Islands cruise, a situation clearly covered by the trip cancellation policy provided by her Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card. But when Chase’s third-party administrator tried to verify that the cruise line hadn’t reimbursed him for the $11,000 cruise, they were told that he had gotten a $250 refund at some point. Jacki was not informed of this mix-up until almost a year later. She wrote to me with the subject “Confrontation Insurance”.