Epilogue

The holiday had been a big success despite a few difficulties. We were quite pleased with the services of most of the companies we had been in contact with, but there was one notable exception, namely Gjensidige Forsikring. Although we had earlier had bad experiences with Gjensidige (see the Epilogue to our South African Adventure 1999), this time their (lack of) action was of a much more serious nature. By failing to acknowledge to the Chiang Mai Ram Hospital that they would cover the costs of my hospitalisation, they clearly were in violation of the insurance agreement. It was bad enough that I had to pay the hospital bill myself, but under different circumstances their behaviour might ultimately have been life threatening.

During the holiday, my regular mail had been redirected to my parents who had helped paying my bills while I was away. When I got home I discovered that Gjensidige for some unknown reason had sent me a second bill for my travel insurance premium. Not knowing that I had already paid for the travel insurance a long time ago, my parents saw no reason not to pay that bill. This was really quite ironic. I had now paid two times for a travel insurance that appeared to be of no use whatsoever!

However, Gjensidige is a very large organization and it's not easy to eliminate mistakes completely. I assumed that their behaviour must have been due to some kind of human error. If they could apologize for their behaviour and provide an explanation, I would have no problem accepting that.

As soon as we got home I therefore wrote them a very constructive and polite formal letter, detailing my experiences and how their travel insurance had failed to provide me with adequate help. I emphasized that if the situation had occurred in the USA, it might have had more serious consequences for me. Further, I requested them to pay me back the insurance premium that had been paid by a mistake. The letter was sent on August 14 to their head office in Oslo and I was initially expecting a quick reply since the issues I raised were of such a serious nature.

Unfortunately, my letter was ignored by Gjensidige.

I then tried sending e-mails to the people at Gjensidige which I had been in contact with after our holiday to South Africa, asking if any of them wanted to comment on the matter.

Unfortunately, my e-mails were ignored by all the recipients.

On the positive side it has to be mentioned that at the same time as I sent the formal letter, I also sent in an application for refunding of my hospital bill. After only four weeks of processing I received notice that they were refunding my complete costs.

So economically I was now on level terms, except for the money that had been paid twice for the insurance. I was still not quite satisfied, though, because I found it unacceptable that they just ignored my formal letter of complaint.

In late October when I was visiting my parents, I dropped by the local Gjensidige office in Mandal. From previous visits they had seemed easy to deal with, so I hoped that they would maybe be able to shed some more light on the matter. I spoke to a very nice man called Arne Hogganvik who seemed quite shocked at hearing about my experiences. He made it clear that this was unacceptable and that he would get in touch with the head office in Oslo to demand an explanation. He also immediately repaid me the second insurance premium.

I later went on holiday to South Africa and when I returned home early December, there were two letters from Gjensidige waiting for me, both dated November 23. The first was from Mr. Hogganvik who wrote that he had been in contact with the head office in Oslo several times. They had told him that a fax had actually been sent to the hospital and they had no idea why it had apparently not been received. He apologized a lot that I had to suffer because of these circumstances.

The other letter was from a woman (let's call her MW) at the head office in Oslo. Unfortunately, it was not an equally nice letter as Mr. Hogganvik's, in fact I would say it had a slightly sour tone. Being sent on the same day as his letter, I would guess that it had only been sent due to pressure from him. Apparently in response to my formal letter of August 14, MW wrote:

"Despite your letter being four pages long, it makes no mention of your actual costs. We need to receive details about your costs to be able to finish this case."

I was quite amazed by this response. The reason for writing my letter had been to make them aware that their travel insurance did not seem to provide adequate help, not to regain my money. I had made it clear in the letter that an application for refund had been sent in separately (and I had received my money back more than two months ago, anyway!). I don't know whether she had deliberately misunderstood, but the fact remains that she ignored all the points and questions I made in my letter.

Her e-mail address was mentioned in the letter, so I immediately sent her an e-mail further clarifying the intention behind my letter of August 14, and said that I would still be happy to accept a proper response from Gjensidige. I also sent Arne Hogganvik an e-mail thanking him for his efforts.

I have heard nothing from Gjensidige ever since.