I had purchased Travel insurance from Access America prior to the trip to Czech Republic for myself and my husband, tha package included: baggage coverage, missed connection coverage, emergency medical transportation and emergency medical benefit, trip CANCELLATION protection, TRIP INTERRUPTION protection abd etc. ( we have old parents: my mom was 81 yo and my father in law is 81 yo).
I left USA on April 5, 08 and my husband was supposed to join me one week later. While I was away my mom was admitted to the Hospital and passed away, as soon as I recieved the phone call from my family, i exchanged the air ticket ( paid extra fee, Penalty for exchange the ticket) and returned back home .
Of note: MY HUSBAND NEVER MADE THE TRIP
One week later, following burial, funeral, mourning I called the insurance to find out how to process the claim, few weeks later I collected all requested forms, death certificate, copies of the tickets, letter from my travel agent and etc and mailed to the company.
Since then, I had numerious e-mails and phone conversation with different agents and every time they were giving me hard time, requesting something else such as: natural causes of death is not enough ( please specify the cause of death) or they requested addition letters from her private phisicians, or they sent me to the hospital to get medical chart from the medical records, or to make corrections in the death certificate.
FINALLY!! 4 month later I had nice conversation with one of the supervisors and she said that insurance DECLINED THE CLAIM, because of my mom's pre-existing conditions.
Meanwhile we recieved the partial payment from Delta airline and Hotel in Czech Rep for my husband, who never made the trip, and none of them asked :WHAT IS CAUSE OF THE DEATH, submit additional letters
DEATH CERTIFICATE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH, IS NOT?
Please advise, what should be done in such a case. How can we get the payment from the company

On July 12th, 2008 at the end of my weeklong ski vacation in Portillo, Chile, my tour operator cancelled all transporation service due to a storm that forced all roads out of the resort to shut down. I called Access America to confirm coverage immediately after finding out about the interruption and was assured that the situation would be covered under my policy. This caused me to stay an extra night at the hotel, spend an extra night at my connection city and spend additional fees for changing my flight. Upon returning home from my trip, I turned in all the required documents which was immediately denied. I immediately filed a complaing with the California Dept. of Insurance for their practice of denying claims without just cause. I offered to request a new letter from the tour operator stating the situation to more closely match how the verbage of the policy was but was told that I had to go through their appeals board. Their appeals board stated that the tour operator would have to cease their entire service for my situation to apply, so basically, had this been an airline cancelling a flight, they could claim that the airline would have to shut down completely for them to pay a claim.