Poverty Lawyer Finds Coverage Problems in ‘Travel Protection’

A poverty lawyer turned to a newspaper columnist after her parents discovered their “travel protection” plan wouldn’t give them a cruise refund, despite her father’s heart attack and later death.

Catherine Bendor’s parents had agreed to pay for a cruise costing nearly $10,000, and paid an extra $978 for travel protection, Bendor told the New York Times’ “Haggler” columnist. Mailings sent after the couple purchased the travel protection plan said they would not forfeit the cost of the cruise if they had to cancel for a covered medical reason; the fine print warned that any trip “refund” would be in the form of a credit for a future trip.

Bendor, a Harvard law grad and a lawyer with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, told the Haggler her mother wanted her money back. The columnist helped Bendor resolve the matter—details weren’t released. But the column questions whether such protection plans can be misleading—and also looks at the specifics of the sales tactics used in the case of Bendor’s parents.

The columnist examined a voice mail recording of Bendor’s father, Edgar Bendor, on the line with a representative for the tour operator. Edgar Bendor asks a question about the plan’s medical insurance. Bendor says: “The travel protection is in case we become ill and we can’t go. So in other words, we wouldn’t have to pay all that if we didn’t go.But what about medical insurance?”

The agent replies: “Basically, the travel protection before your trip will allow you to cancel for any reason, OK? And then while you’re on the trip it covers you for interruption, delay, medical emergency evacuation, up to $100,000 per person.”

The Haggler opined that the reply appeared to be the result of a script and careful lawyering.

“It is obvious that Mr. Bendor had the wrong idea about what ‘protection’ means here, and it is equally obvious that the operator was careful not to disabuse him of his misimpression,” the Haggler writes. “Instead, she read from a script that sounds lawyered to a fare-thee-well, a description that tiptoes, to the Haggler’s ears, close to the line that separates literally true from outright misleading.”