Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Lisa reminded me last night that I needed to get travel insurance for the trip to Chengdu. The main reason for getting such insurance is to cover the possibility of needing emergency medical air transportation home in case of a major medical emergency. All of the other stuff included in such insurance is relatively minor by comparison.

We don't get such insurance when traveling in the USA and Canada, except that due to Tonopah being so far from a hospital, we did get such coverage during Westercon 74. It was something like $25 versus around $100,000 for emergency air transport to Las Vegas or Reno. The odds there seemed pretty good to us, although of course we're glad we never had to redeem it. We've purchased similar policies for our other overseas trips.

The premium for this trip was $98 including up to $500,000 emergency air transportation. Again, the odds seem good here. I don't want to have to use it, but if I need it, I want it to be there.

Allianz now (finally) says that they are going to pay my claim for the van breakdown last summer. That will be a relief.

Of course, part of the delay was finally reaching someone at AAA who wouldn't pass the buck when I asked the simple question, "Please send me proof that I called in for a tow on this date."

The next time I have to use AAA, particularly if I think it will lead to a trip-interruption claim, I will try and get a paper receipt from the tow truck driver.

With Allianz continuing to insist that "The following documents are still needed: A copy of the AAA call log for assistance," I decided to once again see if AAA can actually provide proof that I called them and that they generated a tow for me when my van broke down on August 30. This time, for a wonder, I found myself talking to someone who knew how to request this, although he couldn't do it himself. For the first time since I entered this circle of buck-passing, I have a reference number for the case within AAA, as the request has been sent to the "Member Experience" department, and I've been reassured that I should hear from them in no more than one week.

If they can send me a copy of the call log proving that I used their service on that date, I can send it to Allianz, and maybe actually get the claim paid. It's not a vast sum of money, but the several hundred dollars I spent on hotel rooms and meals for those extra days would be very welcome.

I have filed the claim on my AAA trip-interruption insurance, requesting reimbursement for the cost of the rental vehicle necessary to complete the trip, the hotel night in Elko, and one meal, and including the invoice from the repair shop to prove how the trip got interrupted. (Those total up to more than the $750 maximum benefit, so I didn't worry about any other expenses.) Now we wait to see if they'll allow the claim.

I went to the dentist yesterday to have the permanent crown fitted over the tooth on which I had the root-canal work done. Including the two root-canal visits to the specialist next door to my dentist, this was my fourth trip to the Redwood Shores Medical/Dental Center since January. Alas, the new crown didn't quite fit. My dentist said there's too much space between the teeth after he put it in place. So it had to go back to the lab to have more gold added to it, and I'll have to go back in next Tuesday.

There was a bit of a delay getting finished yesterday because they had to cast a new temporary crown on account of having damaged the original one while removing it. I'm not too fussed about that, however, for it only has to be in there for a week. And I really want this new crown done right. It's the second crown on that tooth — they had to grind off the old one to do the root canal — and I never want to have to do anything with that tooth ever again. I trust my dentist on this; if he says the crown needs fixing, I'm sure it does.

Once the financial dust settles from this, I'll be able to decide whether I can afford to start the work on getting two other teeth crowned. Both of them have old fillings and hairline fractures. My dentist warns me that the sooner I get them crowned, the better. I set aside a lot of healthcare spending account (FSA) money this year expecting to do the dental work, but I have to find out if my insurance will cover any of the crown work on the root-canal'ed tooth. Because it's replacing a crown that was less than five years old, there's a chance that insurance will deny all payment, in which case the FSA will have to cover 100% of the cost, not 40%.

Because I can carry such things with me, having the available space and all, I packed up my multifunction printer/scanner/fax machine last night and plan to take it to Oregon with me. So of course this morning I get a notice on my Flexible Spending Account that I could easily resolve this morning if the printer/fax were connected and I could fax them the documentation on the $750 I spent on new glasses a few days ago.

(Yes, that's a lot. I splurged and bought a pair of prescription sunglasses, which I've never had before, and paid for the lightest-weight lenses and all of the fancy options, mainly because I have too much money in the FSA this year and if I don't spend it, I lose it. I wish you could roll over unused FSA money, and indeed told my congressman's office that allowing FSA rollovers would have been a good thing in any health care reform, but instead they made FSA's less useful by removing coverage for over-the-counter medication.)

Well, I'm not going to go unpack the printer now; it's buried under boxes in the back of the van. This will just have to wait until next week in Oregon.

Good news: My trip-interruption insurance claim payment for the post-Westercon mess in Tempe arrived today.

Bad news: It appears to be only 90% of what I submitted. There is no explanation of why the amount they paid is less than the amount I claimed. I speculate that they might have reduced it by 10% because we not only had the emergency repairs done, but also had all four tires replaced because they were shot as well, and replacing tires is not a valid reason for filing a trip-interruption claim, but I can't tell from the statement they sent me if that's why. I can't find specific items on the itemized list of expenses that add up to the non-paid amount.

Now I have to wait until Monday Tuesday to call them and find out what went wrong. What irks me is that there are no marginal expenses attributable to getting the dangerously-worn tires replaced. That is, I would have been out of pocket the same amount of money (not counting the repairs themselves, of course, but they're not part of the claim anyway) regardless of whether we'd had that work done or not.

Had I known that mentioning the tires (which was what got the claim denied initially) were going to be so much trouble, I wouldn't have mentioned them at all. For all that they cost several hundred dollars to replace, they were incidental to the serious mechanical problems that almost had a wheel coming off!

I can find nothing on the check or associated material that says variations of "cashing this check means you accept our determination without recourse," so I'll go ahead and deposit this payment and then ask what caused them to cut 10% off the claim amount. Even if I only end up with 90% of the claim paid in the end, it will make a difference; I've been carrying those extra expenses and paying interest on them since July.

Update, 21:10: Forgot to account for Labor Day holiday for reasons noted below.