Avoid Seven Corners, Inc. travel insurance!!

[Chicken_Lips]

This travel insurance company is a scam, go ahead and Google it yourself. Google "Seven Corners Insurance reviews" and "Seven Corners Insurance complaints". You'll see what I mean.

 

I purchased this travel insurance for one of my family cruises last year from a well known travel insurance comparison website. My policy INCLUDED pre-existing coverage, the whole works.

 

After a couple of weeks of purchasing my policy, my mother died of a heart attack. I cancelled our trip and had only paid the cruise deposit at that point. I filed a refund claim and submitted an official death certificate stating that my mother died of natural causes. Seven Corners responded, they wanted me to obtain a full medical history from all of her doctors on the other side of the country! I didn't know who all of her doctors were. So Seven Corners rejected my claim!

 

Since pre-existing medical conditions were "covered" by the policy, why would they require so much additional paperwork? It turns out that Seven Corners routinely rejects their customers' claims. When you Google them, you will find lots of travellers who had their legitimate claims denied for stupid reasons.

 

Avoid Seven Corners travel insurance! It will not cover you in your time of need. I ended up losing out on $450 worth of deposits plus the cost of this horrible travel insurance. I was lucky, some people have lost tens of thousands of dollars even though they thought they were fully covered too!

 

SpunkyBunks

[Hlitner]

Thanks for posting this info. Posting it on CC might save others from the difficulties that you have encountered. But putting it here is not going to do anything to help resolve your claim. You should forward all the pertinent info (and a cover letter) to your own State's Insurance Commission/Department and "CC" the cover letter to Seven Corners. Look up the info on your state's insurance commission online since they will have a specific address for complaints and might also have a complaint form that should accompany your info.

 

Hank

[Chicken_Lips]

Thanks for the tip about the State Insurance Commission. I just wanted to get my story out to fellow cruisers. We think we're fully covered with a comprehensive travel insurance plan that covers pre-existing medical conditions. But it doesn't matter unless you buy it from a reputable insurance company.

 

I made the mistake of making a major purchase without performing simple research on an unfamiliar company. It would have taken me 5 seconds to Google their customer complaint history. I took it for granted that insuremytripdotcom would sell 100% legitimate policies from reputable insurance companies. That's why I didn't perform any additional research on Seven Corners, Inc.

[Hlitner]

We thought they were a reputable company until we saw your post! I wonder if the Insuremytrip.com folks would also be interested in your experience. We are strong believers that consumers sometimes need to use their voice to strongly protest being mistreated...and make their bad experiences known to all pertinent parties. It is the best weapon we have since most companies do not want to have adverse reports widely circulated.

 

Hank

[cruiseco]

 

I purchased this travel insurance for one of my family cruises last year from a well known travel insurance comparison website. My policy INCLUDED pre-existing coverage, the whole works.

 

After a couple of weeks of purchasing my policy, my mother died of a heart attack. I cancelled our trip and had only paid the cruise deposit at that point. I filed a refund claim and submitted an official death certificate stating that my mother died of natural causes. Seven Corners responded, they wanted me to obtain a full medical history from all of her doctors on the other side of the country! I didn't know who all of her doctors were. So Seven Corners rejected my claim!

 

 

I believe you're not understanding what the "pre-existing coverage" can and can't do for you.

 

The policy will only cover "unexpected" events. In the case of medical losses this means that if the deceased was in a situation where death was expected -- given XX months/weeks to live or receiving hospice or other palliative care -- at the time the policy was purchased it doesn't matter if you had pre-ex coverage or not. The death was not unexpected and therefore not covered under any circumstances.

 

Or maybe the heart failure was the result of 20 years of meth abuse. Again, that claim would be denied because illnesses arising from illegal use of drugs just aren't covered, pre-existing coverage or not.

 

So the insurance company is not just interested in the relative's cause of death but also her health status as of the time the policy was purchased. To do so they will need the claim form properly filled out by her GP -- a death certificate just isn't enough. Of course you have the option of not submitting all of the information they asked for and they have the option of declining your claim for insufficient information. I've seen this exact scenario many times with many insurers and the state department of insurance has always sided with the insurer -- the insurer has the right to request this information in order to make a valid claim judgment. The department of insurance has already told the insurer what information they can and can't ask for in the event of a medical claim. As long as the are adhering to those guidelines you won't get any help there. And asking for the attending physician to fill out the standard health history form is certainly allowed. You won't get away with not submitting it.

 

Call the doctor who signed the death certificate and fax/email the proper forms to him/her. When you get them back send them in to the insurer and wait a couple of weeks for your check.

[sirwired]

^^ This.

 

Just because you have pre-exisiting coverage does not mean any claim will be automatically approved. There are still plenty of other exclusions, and they have to make sure your claim is not covered under any of them.

 

This is 100% standard for any insurance claim with any carrier; they all would have denied your claim.

[Mr. Click]

I will second chicken_lips complaint. We had to cancel our Baltic cruise because I ended up having a cardiac cath done the day before we were supposed to fly to Amsterdam. It took 3 months, tons of paperwork filed--and lost by them so it had to be re-filed again before our claim was finally "settled". I put settled in quotes because they refused to cover the $500 I paid with a Celebrity gift card. They did finally pay for our cruise fare, airline change fee and 3 nights of pre-paid hotels but it took many phone calls, emails and way too much of my time. I can't tell you how many times I was told "it is industry standard to take ___________ business days to respond to any questions". When I was looking for insurance for our replacement trip this coming May I did talk to the people at insuremytrip.com and they were appalled by these statements and the refusal to cover the value of my gift card. Steve told me that Tin Leg has approached him many times about selling their policies and after hearing my experience, he is glad he did not start selling them. One more note.. prior to my cardiac cath I had never had any heart issues but they still insisted on dragging things out with endless questions and paperwork about whether or not this was a pre-exsisting condition. They are not good people, it is that simple.

[cherylandtk]

Mr. Click, perhaps you have your insurance brokers confused? Insuremytrip, appalled or not, is today certainly selling the brand of insurance complained about in the original post. The mention of "Steve" makes me wonder if you are instead thinking of Steve Dasseos, from Trip Insurance Store? He is also a broker, but only deals with a few specific insurance companies that he chooses to work with.

 

Either way, to the OP, a certain amount of supporting paperwork when a claim is made is to be expected. An excessive amount, lost paperwork and long delays in response are not the industry norm.

[Mr. Click]

My apologies CherylandTK, you are right. When ever I see Tin Leg/Seven Corners/Squaremouth I get too riled up and make mistakes. I did indeed buy my current policy from the Trip Insurance Store. I dealt with one of their reps to secure my policy and once it was all done, Steve asked to talk to me and we reviewed the details of the policy I got from them and my problems with the other people. He told me they had been bugging him to sell their policies but he has declined.

[6rugrats]

. I put settled in quotes because they refused to cover the $500 I paid with a Celebrity gift card.

 

I am guessing this is because they did not consider this a "loss"? I ran into a similar problem with personal medical coverage; purchasing contacts and paying for part of the order with a credit for a previous return (this previous purchase was not covered by insurance and was paid totally by me).

 

I was only reimbursed the amount I paid, and did not get the amount I "paid" with the credit back. I appealed it and was turned down. Finally gave up, as the amount was not worth spending time over.

 

I have some experience with my job with Seven Corners for patient's medical coverage, and they are not my favorite company to deal with, though certainly not the worst either.

 

As already stated, if you don't complete required paperwork, they aren't going to pay the claim.

[Mr. Click]

My complaint is more about their total lack of customer service than the $500 gift card. Submitting the same paper work more than once because they lost and did not even know they lost it was more than annoying. They denied the gift card because they only cover cash, check and credit card payments. Not worth fighting over it, well worth letting to world know about the lack of caring and customer service.

[Chrisqi]

My travel companion and I both got sick with the flu on our cruise. We had onboard medical expenses of $350 and $411 between us. We filed a claim with 7 Corners. The claims submission process is not easy. They ask for things like credit card statement showing you paid for cruise. Then we waited 6 weeks, and heard nothing. I called and they said they needed proof we paid for the medical services (we had already provided the detailed medical bill and they did not specify wanting proof of payment of the medical charges at the onset). Obviously any company that deals with cruises as 7 Corners does, knows that no cruise line is going to let a passenger off the ship without paying their entire bill (for booze, t-shirts, medical services, etc). After many hoops, we got a final stateroom bill from Princess cruises and submitted it to 7C. But I believe the stall tactic and the ridiculous "proof of payment" was merely an effort to not pay a legitimate claim. The bean counters at 7C know that the more hoops they make people jump through, the fewer claims they have to pay. 7 Corners is not an honest company when it comes to paying claims and their responsiveness (or lack thereof) in customer service is pathetic. You can't just send them an email from the website, you have to upload documents and then wait for a reply (which they don't reply to).

[CDNPolar]

 

First of all, I am sorry for the loss of your Mother.

 

In general with insurance, the passing of an immediate family member is a covered reason and should have been good enough without medical records.

 

In Canada, we have lots of smaller lessor known insurance companies, but I stick with the "Big Guys" when it comes to travel medical or cancellation insurance.  By the Big Guys I mean insurance companies that are well known, sometimes part of our major banks, and sometimes standalone from the banks, but are also investment firms and very well done.

 

There can be deals out there, but for us, we pay what the best known companies charge because we know that they are going to honour a claim.

 

I am sorry for your challenges with this, but as discussed about travel insurance many times over on CC, the insurance company goal is to not pay out so you have to understand the language of the policy completely.

 

We have a challenge in that US based policies tend to be more specific and Canadian policies - especially with pre-existing conditions - tend to be more vague.  The vagueness of this language means that the insurance company has more room to deny a claim.

 

We have always bought cancellation insurance but never had to use it until this past December.  We have spent probably 10-12K on insurance policies in the last 8 years or so.  Our first claim was for 14K because of an unexpected medical situation and it was covered.  We got the whole thing back.

 

Just as a note, this was Arch Insurance and it was a policy that we bought through Gate1 Tours for a land based tour.  Arch were incredibly easy to work with.  We had never heard of Arch before, but the reviews were good, and we also had an annual plan with a provider in Canada that we have used for years.

Edited February 22 by CDNPolar