A Scary Situation with a Silver Lining

When Lali and Ed booked a family trip to London followed by a cruise on Atlas Ocean Voyages, Crak Your Bags co-founder Jill Fox recommended travel insurance. These clients had never insured a vacation before, but they trusted our recommendation and bought trip insurance with Allianz.

Their cruise was heading to Belgium, Amsterdam, Norway and Denmark, and the trip started out great, as you can see from these photos.

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Three days into the cruise, Lali began having horrible abdominal pain. The ship's doctors couldn't provide relief, so the family was forced to disembark in Norway and head to urgent care. Lali was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with a bladder blockage, requiring surgery—in Norway! Lali said this was a very scary experience for her and her family. The day after she was discharged from the hospital, Lali had complications and was sent to a different hospital via ambulance. After hours of tests, the second hospital discharged her.

During this time, the family missed a large portion of their vacation, starting with an excursion in Amsterdam. Since they disembarked early, they missed all ports in Denmark and Norway, as well as their flight home.

As you can imagine, the unexpected costs began to mount. There were hospital bills and transportation costs to get to Oslo to fly home. They had additional meal and transportation costs related to the hospital visits, as well as the increase in airfare to rebook their tickets home.

Ed let Jill know what was happening and she was able to help them file a claim to recoup expenses incurred abroad and deal with the travel insurance company.

"The process was beyond easy. Jill walked us through everything. The time from initiating the claim to receiving the reimbursement check took a month or less. I will always get travel insurance through Allianz; I would definitely recommend them!" — Lali M..

She thanked Jill profusely and wanted to leave the Crak Your Bags community with this takeaway:

The takeaway:"I will always get travel insurance after this experience and highly highly highly encourage anyone going on a trip to insure themselves. Although this was a very scary experience for my family, it did make us feel better knowing we would be recouping some of the additional costs we never expected during this trip. Thank you, Jill and Crak Your Bags!"

We greatly appreciate our client sharing her story. If you'd like to learn more about trip insurance, check out our Insurance FAQs page.