Our gap year nightmare: I had to fly to Cambodia to rescue my sick daughter - then insurer refused to fly us home
Watching your 18-year-old shoulder an enormous backpack and wave goodbye as they set off for several months on their pre-university gap year is an emotional moment.
Will they be safe on their travels around the world? Stories of muggings, moped accidents and mishaps abound.
My daughter Alice joined more than 220,000 young people in the UK aged between 18-24 who are expected to take a gap year in 2024, according to estimates from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) with 56 per cent of ‘gappies’ choosing to travel abroad.
Ahead of her six-month trip around Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in January, we researched various travel insurance packages together before plumping for Tesco Bank’s Backpacker Insurance, which cost £250.
She was a backpacker; Tesco is a trusted British brand. So, if disaster struck and she could no longer backpack, she’d be covered to fly home, wouldn’t she?
Backpacker: Alice Walters on a cooking course in Thailand while on her gap year. The 18-year old had to be flown home after falling seriously ill in Cambodia
We read the small print. The policy, under the Tesco name but provided by AXA, seemed comprehensive, even stating that repatriation if medically advised would be covered up to £20 million.
According to the Association of British Insurers travel insurers dealt with 362,000 claims in 2022 totalling £352 million with the average claim the highest on record — £973, up 33 per cent on the previous year.
The average emergency medical treatment claim hit a record £1,750, up 26 per cent on the previous year.
Fast forward three months and we receive a call from Alice in Cambodia to say she had fainted and been taken to hospital in a small town.
A doctor said she was dehydrated — it was 40C over there — and put her on a drip for a few hours before she was discharged with antibiotics for enlarged tonsils.
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Two days’ later, she called again from an island with no medical provision. She was vomiting, with a crushing headache and fever.
Over the next 24 hours, we were getting increasingly worrying phone calls as her condition deteriorated.
The kind owner of the guesthouse where she was staying arranged for her to go by ferry and private car to hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.
Desperately anxious — was it meningitis? — I bought a £581 one-way ticket to Phnom Penh. I paid for it myself as it would not have been covered under Alice’s insurance. I did not buy a return as I did not know how long I would be there. I arrived to find Alice on a drip, looking shattered.
Ultrasound and blood tests revealed that she had a severely inflamed liver, spleen and gallbladder. Doctors diagnosed glandular fever, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus which in turn had caused hepatitis.
Hospital: The kindly owner of the island guesthouse where Alice was staying arranged for her to go by ferry and private car straight to hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital (pictured)
After three nights she was discharged, told to rest and return a week later for more tests.
Up until this point, AXA had been brilliant: it settled the full bill for her inpatient stay, tests, and scans directly with the hospital. Her medical bills ultimately totalled £2,819. AXA also paid her £79 taxi fare from the ferry terminal to the hospital.
Some days later, still very unwell, Alice developed a terrible rash all over. Her skin felt on fire. I took her to another hospital.
She was given more blood tests and ultrasounds and told that it would be extremely dangerous to resume backpacking any time soon. Exertion, such as lifting a backpack, could cause her spleen to rupture with potentially serious consequences.
Her best chance of recovery was to fly home, when safe to do so — her organs were still so inflamed that flying risked rupture and blood clots. Both the physician and hepatologist (liver specialist) confirmed the initial diagnosis of glandular fever and hepatitis.
We relayed the results of her blood tests, scans and diagnosis to AXA and asked it to arrange repatriation, as per the doctors’ recommendation.
But we were dumbfounded to receive the response that AXA’s medical team didn’t believe Alice’s condition warranted repatriation.
She should ‘stay put,’ recover and continue.
Guy, my husband, who was back home, phoning AXA and chasing up emails — to which he only received automated responses — emailed again, begging it to rethink, highlighting the hepatitis and glandular fever diagnosis. It appeared unmoved.
Alice, who had been thoroughly stoic throughout, was deeply upset. ‘How can they not believe the doctors here who have actually seen me?’ she asked.
As a journalist, I was able to phone AXA’s press office to try to find out what on earth was going on. It was only then that things started moving. We were called by a manager and our case was ‘escalated’ to a complaint.
Travels: Alice made a full recovery and after six weeks of rest at home she was able to fly out and continue her travels. Pictured: Halong Bay in Vietnam (file picture)
AXA grudgingly agreed to fly her home a day or so after she had the all-clear: ‘Only because you have complained, and against the advice of our medical team.’
AXA arranged the flights for me and Alice so we do not know how much they cost. It also paid £243 for our seven-day hotel stay while Alice recuperated, £81.45 expenses, and a taxi from Heathrow to our home in Wiltshire.
Once back, we sent our outstanding expenses that AXA had not already paid directly, including outpatient medical bills and hotel bills, totalling just over £800.
We heard nothing. Three weeks on, after I contacted its press office about this article, we received an email saying our complaint was being investigated, then another saying it would be settled in full, plus £100 compensation.
Thankfully, Alice has now made a full recovery. After six weeks of rest at home she was able to fly out and continue her travels.
So, what can you do if you are let down by your travel insurer? Sam Richardson, deputy editor of Which? Money, warns that not all travel policies are made equal.
‘Only around half of over 40 policies we looked at were good enough to earn our recommendation in our last review and complaints are sadly all too common.
Settled: Axa finally agreed to pay Alice's claim
‘Rejected claims are worryingly frequent, with over a third of people last year facing this issue. If the claim is rejected, push to get the reasoning in writing — having a paper trail can be useful.
‘If after escalating your complaint the claim still isn’t resolved to your satisfaction, take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service — 62 per cent of complaints it receives are upheld.’
My own advice to anyone travelling is to nominate a friend or family member who can keep calling the insurers from the UK — which is difficult to do if you are ill, overseas and without an inter-national SIM card.
Insurers should make it easier for policy holders abroad by issuing a WhatsApp number for urgent calls and a user-friendly method of filling in claims forms and uploading medical reports and bills. AXA’s nine-page PDF claim form was impossible to complete on a mobile phone.
An AXA spokesman said: ‘We are sorry Alice fell ill while travelling and we sympathise with her situation. Following the initial assessment of Alice’s condition, our medical team believed she could continue her trip and did not need to return to the UK early.
‘However, upon further review it became clear that Alice’s condition meant she wouldn’t be able to fully experience her trip, so we made appropriate arrangements for Alice and her mother to return to the UK.
‘We are sorry there was a delay in paying a further claim by Alice. We acknowledge that on this occasion the service we provided did not meet the high standards we aim to achieve at AXA Partners, and we will be providing compensation in recognition of this. The claim has now been settled in full.’
Tesco Bank added: ‘We were sorry to hear that Alice fell ill whilst travelling in Cambodia, and that she and her family were disappointed with the service they received… we’ll be discussing this case further with our partners to understand if any improvements can be made.’
