AccessAmerica Travel Insurance — Worthless Insurance

My wife and daughter had planned a trip to visit my recently widowed sister-in-law in Minnesota. My sister-in-law has two young children, so my wife was planning on taking her sister's family for a vacation in Minnesota. We purchased tickets from Delta airlines and reserved rooms in a country Inn. At the same time, we purchased travel insurance from Access America, which was suggested to us by the Delta Airlines web site.

Four days before my wife and daughter were to leave for Minnesota, my sister-in-law called us and told us that her son was hospitalized and that he would be remaining in the hospital for a week or more. In response to this, my wife needed to cancel the vacation. We obtained all the necessary documentation and filed it with the AccessAmerica. They immediately denied the claim, saying that the reason for hospitalization was not covered by the policy. Furthermore, even if it was, the insurance would only cover my wife, but not my daughter, since the relative was my daughter’s cousin. Cousins are not covered on the policy, according to the insurance agent. When I called up and complained to the agent, they said that I could appeal the decision. I asked the agent to email me the information on how to proceed. She promised to do it within the day.

A day passed and there was no email from Access America. I called again. Again the agent promised to send me the information before the end of the day. Again no email. Finally I got on the web site, and emailed my request. After 5 days, I finally received an email address to ask for an appeal of my case. ([protected]@accessamerica.com) A series of delays followed and by searching twitter I found that several people had complained about AccessAmerica. AccessAmerica staff must have been looking for tweets, so they responded and indicated that one could get better service by emailing help.[protected]@accessamerica.com. I promptly followed this advice, and that did result in a very quick denial of my appeal.

I feel that AccessAmerica insurance is useless and discourage anyone from purchasing insurance from Access America.