Help! I Fell in Sicily and my Travel Insurance Ditched Me

Dear Tripped Up,

I’m a 68-year-old solo traveler who was on a tour of Sicily in June 2022, once I fell getting off a bus, breaking a number of ribs, vertebrae and a pelvic bone. I had bought the RoundTrip Choice plan from Seven Corners Travel Insurance, so I known as, anticipating they might assist coordinate my medical care with Italian-speaking docs. But they instructed me to hunt assist alone, save the receipts and file a declare once I received house. Our tour information was an angel, arranging drivers to take me backwards and forwards to the hospital and even decoding by speakerphone with docs. Days later I received a physician to fill out a type (which I needed to Google Translate for him) saying I might journey house, so long as I used to be in a reclining place. My household chipped in to purchase a business-class seat for the return flight, a day-and-night journey from Palermo to Munich to New York to Jacksonville. Seven Corners lastly paid $5,772 for my payments and missed journey, however refused to reimburse me for many of my business-class fare. Far worse, I imagine they failed to supply me the help they promised, basically leaving me to fend for myself and leaving me unable to speak with hospital employees. I’ve registered complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the state insurance coverage businesses of Florida and Indiana (the place Seven Corners is predicated), however I’ve gotten nowhere. Can you assist? Helaine, St. Augustine, Fla.

Dear Helaine,

What a terrifying ordeal. And additionally a helpful reminder to solo vacationers that though seeing the world by yourself is likely to be exhilarating, it will also be perilous. Fall in poor health or get harm in a spot the place you don’t converse the language (or don’t perceive the well being care system) and who can be there that can assist you?

Seven Corners says it should, based on its web site, boasting of “a 24/7 multilingual team available to help with travel emergencies,” together with assist discovering medical care and second opinions in addition to “interpreter referrals” and medical evacuations. The web site recounts the reassuring story of Makenzie, a 22-year-old who fell in poor health close to the French-Belgian border. Seven Corners employees are portrayed as springing into motion, chatting with her docs, arranging for a member of the family to fly in, and finally reserving Makenzie “a lay-down seat to ensure maximum comfort” on her return to California.

You clearly didn’t get the Makenzie therapy.

To discover out why, I combed by way of your coverage and the opposite paperwork you despatched me, talking at size and exchanging emails with Greg Jung, Seven Corners’ govt vice chairman, and even asking a Times colleague, Ilaria Parogni, to translate that type your Sicilian doctor crammed out from Italian doctor-scribble to straightforward English.