Comments on: It’s alive! Prime Travel Protection pursues customer who didn’t want “insurance”

By: Frankie Leo

Frankie Leo — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:30:51 +0000

Sadly, it appears that if all life as we know it was wiped out by a conflagration of massive proportions, the only creatures left would be cockroaches and travel insurance scam artists, who would be then trying to develop a plan for selling bogus travel insurance to the cockroaches.
Exposing these people for what they are is the only alternative that we have, since public officials refuse to take a role in closing down these businesses and heavily penalizing the greedy travel agents who sell their products.

By: James

James — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:26:44 +0000

MasterCard, Visa and American Express all reimbursed the premiums for those who were scammed by Trip Assured from 2003-’06. Don’t waste your time with customer service. These three companies are all public entities. Send a copy of Prime Travel’s cease and desist orders to the CEO of each company and you’ll have your refund within days – it worked with Trip Assured. As far as a class action suit…don’t waste your time with Prime Travel – but going after the state of Florida would be a good idea. It took Florida years to halt the practices of Trip Assured and now they are sitting on their hands while millions of more dollars have been ripped off from their citizens.

By: JoeM1929

JoeM1929 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:06:06 +0000

There are Florida Statutes which govern the sale of travel insurance and further define the term “insurance”. To be a seller of insurance, a travel agent must be licensed by the state. Not everyone in the travel agency, but at least one person. As such, the travel agency is NOT allowed to sell insurance that is not licensed to do business in the state of Florida. Further, any sale of insurance through an unlicensed company is considered to be a felony, and the degree of felony is determined by the amount of premium collected, and any loss to a purchaser is the responsibility of the selling travel agent. For more information, see Florida Statutes #626. The law is very plain and many of the issues here are merely subterfuge raised by travel agents that are guilty of the sales of these policies. These travel agencies are under investigation and will soon have their day in court.

By: Carver

Carver — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:41:19 +0000

@Joe

I strongly suspect that you only have to be licensed where you are actually selling the insurance or are providing services. Otherwise, for travel insurance, you could conceivable be required to be licensed everywhere.

By: jeanine

jeanine — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:51:52 +0000

Joe,

One of the problems with scam companies like this and Legendary Journeys is that they stress prepaying the entire trip by check to save $200 . Thus you are giving up your credit card protection most of us don’t think about until it is too late. What we need is a lawyer that would take the case as a class action or something against the state (of FL ) for not protecting us against these travel insurance scammers and Legendary Journeys.

By: Ray's Travel Guide

Ray's Travel Guide — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:43:28 +0000

thank you for the information

By: Joe Farrell

Joe Farrell — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:56:35 +0000

if travel protection insurance is required to be licensed in either the jurisdiction where the insurer is located [as is the case with] OR in the jurisdiction where the risk is located [now THAT is a good question, huh? it is where Dick lives? Where the travel was? destination? the list is endless] then one cannot either insure against the risk or purchase a policy. The policy is illegal.

1. Who hooked Dick up with the policy? They bear some responsibility
2. Mastercard MUST refund the illegal transaction. They cannot collect money for an illegal transaction.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:39:50 +0000

Carver, I think your last sentence might be the understatement of the year. ;)

By: Carver Farrow

Carver Farrow — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:15:36 +0000

By the way, to say that Dick has a solid small claims case is the understatement of the year. All he has to do is to bring the C & D letter and proof of payment and he wins. Of course collecting might be a b-.

By: Carver Farrow

Carver Farrow — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:02:15 +0000

@John F

I can understand your confusion. However, from the legal perspective, this is a no-brainer. You simply are not entitled to compensation for performing services while unlicensed. The exception would be adminstrative licenses such as business licenses.

Look at it from this perspective. It is fortunate that nothing happened while Dick was traveling. However, the purpose of insurance is to insure against bad things. Since the company was fraudulent, there was actually no insurance. Dick received nothing for his money

By: Jeanine Peterson

Jeanine Peterson — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:27:54 +0000

I am not sure if this is the rip off Insurance company that Legendary Journeys is / was using last year when my mother got ripped off by them. She became unable to go on a planned vacation that LJ sold her and she has yet to see any refund / restitution for them (LJ or the ins co) for not being licenced to sell Insurance in the state of Florida. She filed complaints with the Dept. of Fin. Svcs. and the Dept .of Insurance , and the Consumer protection. I don’t know why Florida hasn’t shut down Legendary Journeys yet for their scams. jtrophy at aol dot com

By: Mindy

Mindy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:40:38 +0000

I dunno if there is much that the Department of Financial Services can do. They fine and shut down insurance companies. Since this isn’t an actual company..and holds no revokable license… they seem sort of powerless in this situation.

I would hope they would bring in actual law enforcement.. instead of just a regulatory agency here.

By: Lisa S

Lisa S — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:43:15 +0000

Just shows how useless regulators are and how the criminal companies continue to conduct their unlicensed activities for years without apparent consequences. Makes it very hard to trust any company to provide the services they claim they will provide, especially in the travel industry.

By: John F

John F — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:22:47 +0000

$824 is a LOT of money for ANY insurance. I forget the dates of all this, but to be honest, if the C&D happened after the “policy” was purchased and the trip was completed without a claim…..

While Prime are scums, take this a step further, and say Allstate is found to be “unlicensed” in some jurisdiction and has a history of paying some claims and denying others. They are ordered to cease and desist–are all of their clients who never filed a claim entitled to a refund of their premium?

Not very cut and dry to me. But if the passenger has a valid claim on a previous trip–absolutely take Prime to court.