Bernie S.
A Honest Company with Integrity!
In July/August 2024 my wife and I booked a cruisetour with Princess Cruises to Alaska traveling on United Airlines departing from Newark Liberty Airport. I purchased trip insurance with Tin Leg. It ended up to be a cruisetour one would like to forget! My departing flight from Newark to Anchorage was cancelled after sitting on the tarmac for over two hours. The pilot timed out due to air traffic control congestion as the aftermath of the Crowdstrike Data Glitch in July 2024. I was not able to get another flight out until two days later with Air Alaska from Kennedy International Airport. I missed 2 1/2 days of the land portion of my cruise. My trip insurance normally did not cover air traffic control issues but Tin Leg made an exception for travel impacted by the Crowdstrike Data Glitch. The problem was they required a letter from United Airlines saying the flight was cancelled due to the Crowdstrike Data Glitch. I first emailed United Customer service, then an email to the United CEO (no response), then an email to the FAA, then a certified letter to the United CEO (no response), then another letter to the FAA, but United would only say the the flight was cancelled due to air traffic control issues. It appears their systems had no way to capture the underlying cause of the cancellation as due to the Crowdstrike issue. I even complained to the NY times travel reporter. I had been working with Brady F. from the Tin Leg Claims team since August 2024 to resolve this issue. I kept him informed along the way what I was doing to try to get this letter from United. I was about to give up when Brady offered to contact United on his own. He was able to get through to the right person and receive the documentation needed to approve the claim. Brady was wonderful to work with. He was very thorough in that he required detailed proof of every expenditure. He always responded quickly to my questions. He went way beyond my expectations to assist me on this claim. He should receive a Customer Service Award! That is not the end of the story with Tin Leg. On the last night of the cruise both my wife and I contracted COVID. We were in Vancouver and had planned to spend 2 nights in Vancouver and 2 nights in Seattle before returning home. We both had to get home as soon as possible. I contacted Tin Leg's emergency number first thing the next morning as our cruise was ending. I explained the situation to the customer service agent. Unfortunately the only seats available on a direct flight to Newark were business economy seats on Air Canada costing obver $5,000 for the two of us. The agent said that was not an issue so we booked the seats. Upon returning home I reviewed the Tin Leg trip insurance policy and saw that if one had booked economy seats one would need to book the same class of tickets in the return flight home. I thought I may be out the $5,000. I explained the situation to Brady, and the Tin Leg team actually listened to the tapes they maintain of customer service calls and approved the reimbursement of the business economy tickets as an exception due to the misstatement of the customer service agent. I feel Tin Leg is an honest company with integrity! They went above my expectations and did the right thing! I also like the fact that I had one claim agent throughout the process which lasted 6 months. I highly recommend Tin Leg for your trip insurance needs!