Question: I have a question about travel insurance that I bought online when I booked airline tickets. Actually, I didn’t mean to buy the insurance. I was on the Frontier Airlines Web site, and there was a little box that was automatically checked that indicated I wanted to pay an extra $10.95 for travel insurance.
It was a lot like one of those pre-checked boxes that sign you up for sales campaign e-mails from a company. Only this time, I had to pay for it. The box was hard to see and the purchase didn’t show up until after I bought the ticket.
Frontier says it can’t help me, and that I have to go through the travel insurance company for a refund. The insurance company, AIG Travel Guard, hasn’t responded to any of my requests. I don’t think it should be a default setting to purchase travel insurance, and I want my money back. Can you help me? — Angela Gross, Englewood, Colo.
Answer: Frontier shouldn’t have charged you for insurance you didn’t want. The airline engaged in something I call unethical pre-checking — signing you up for a service you didn’t want.
The least it could do is offer a fast refund. Instead, it punted to AIG Travel Guard. Needless to say, AIG should have quickly refunded your money, too. Instead, it stalled.
What’s the world coming to?
When both companies balked at a refund, you should have written a brief, polite e-mail to both companies requesting a refund. To underscore your seriousness, why not copy the Transportation Department and the insurance commission for the state in which you live? Since those agencies track the number of complaints they get about companies, they’ll be particularly interested in what you have to say.
If that doesn’t work, try escalating your complaint to an executive. E-mail works best. At Frontier, e-mail addresses are formatted as follows: first initial lastname (no space)(at)flyfrontier.com; at AIG, it’s firstname.lastname(at)aig.com. I’m giving you the conventions because the names of executives can change, but e-mail address formats generally don’t.
Pre-checking a box is frowned upon in the online community. The more accepted practice is to opt in to a service or purchase — in other words, checking the box if you want to buy insurance. I asked both companies for a response.
AIG spokesman Dan McGinnity said you should be able to get a full refund for your policy and that his company has no control over the way in which its products are sold by a third party. “We do offer a full refund for clients who decide they do not want the travel insurance protection, as long as they contact us prior to their trip,” he said. A small percentage of Frontier’s customers — less than half of 1 percent — have asked for their money back.
Steve Snyder, a spokesman for Frontier, said the airline should have offered you a full and immediate refund when you phoned, but defended the practice of pre-checking. “Quite frankly,” he told me, “we are selling a product that we believe in.” He noted that travel insurance covers items that typically cause people to change their flights, “and we think $10.99 insurance is a better deal than a $150 change fee plus fare difference.”
Since your query, Frontier “made some changes” to its site to make the opt-out box as obvious as possible, according to Snyder. While I applaud that, I think there’s one more change that ought to be made: to allow passengers to opt in — not out.
Frontier refunded you $10.95.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Chris is 100% correct when he states that opt-out are considered an unethical practice by the online community. Personally, that would be sufficient reason for me to not patronize that vendor. I figure if they are being unethical up front, I can only imagine what shenanigans are happening behind the scenes.
The Frontier’s spokesman should be ashamed of himself for trying to defend such a practice.
I thought this was about flight insurance–paying your beneficiaries a death benefit when you DIE in a Frontier flight. Now that I got to the end about $10.95 vs. $150. for change in ticket, I’m interested in what all the insurance covers. Does it COMPensate you automatically when you’re bumped off an OVERBOOKED Frontier flight? Does it ENsure that you have best place in queue for rerouting after a CANCELED Frontier flight? Does it GAURANTEE you a flight on another airline to get you to your destintation without additional charge when Frontier is unable get you a seat on Frontier (bump someone without prechecked Frontier insurance from AIG?)
Or is it a worthless third-party piece of paper that has fine print that can negate any promise Frontier may have made?
Back to my original error about flight insurance:
Fellow ranters: Anyone of you ever get a payout when someone you loved was killed in a commercial aircraft and took out flight insurance at the airport? How did you get a copy of the policy–the insurance company provides no prepaid postage or even a mailslot.
Anyone collect from free, automatic coverage insurance from charge cards?
AIG didn’t become a multi-billion dollar entrenched corporation by paying off benefits they could get out of. And they can get $100 billions of YOUR money from the government, no questions asked, to perpetuate their business practices.
I don’t know about this specific case. But many of these are not actually insurance as such. They are called by various other terms, ‘protection plans’ or similar, in order to avoid having to deal with state insurance commissions. Doesn’t hurt to send them comments, but more than likely will go straight to the bit-bucket.
United has similar pre-checked boxes when you check in online. One is for an upgraded seating at an extra charge and the other is I think to pay extra to get bonus miles on your next flight (not the present one). Interestingly, they are on the far left side of the page and very light so when you are possibly rushing to get checked in, they are easy to miss since you are used to looking for the “continue” box in the center or right of the page. I didn’t get caught by it but did still contact United in three ways, at the counter (they said if you had checked it, they couldn’t reverse it) by phone and by e-mail. Only the counter agent agreed that this was not ethical and I got no response from the other contacts. I have warned everyone in my family and that I know to be cautious when dealing with any of the airlines.
I would appreciate it if the airline would pre-check the “Ontime” checkbox when I buy tickets online, I always forget to specify that I’d like to get there on schedule.
A small percentage of Frontier’s customers — less than half of 1 percent — have asked for their money back
Yeah, those are the ones who actually noticed that they were unethically charged for something they didn’t know they were paying for…the other 99% probably never noticed that they were getting charged for something they never wanted…
What do you expect from a company that books $40million junkets while asking for federal handouts…sheesh!
Ed
web/gadget guru
I just ordered tickets on the Continental website and like their set-up much better. You must check either Yes or No for flight insurance (neither box is pre-checked). If you don’t, you receive a message that you did not complete all information and cannot proceed to the next page. This makes you really think about why you should/shouldn’t take the insurance and makes sure that you are not subjected to a fee without realizing it.