Access America's Snow Job

I booked my daughter's holiday visit thru Orbitz who use Access America as their supplier of trip insurance.

My daughter's Boxing Day flight out of Victoria to Vancouver was canceled due to a snow storm. Air Canada's first available rebooking was 5 days later and it required an extra day layover in San Salvador so we were looking at a 6 day interruption on a 16 day vacation. I went online and found flights for the next day on American Airlines thru Seattle. We had trip interruption & cancellation insurance so they would cover us for the difference right? Well I got my daughter to call Access America to double check (I couldn't call because Access America doesn't accept collect calls from Belize) and they told her "no problem". I booked the flights & got my daughter to cancel the rebooks. I also went to Access America's website & initiated a travel claim.

The net cost to us for the flight changes totaled $536US but Access America is refusing to pay. In the fine print of their insurance policy under cancellations due to weather it states "Your airline, cruise line, or tour operator or travel supplier stops offering all services for at least 24 consecutive hours where you’re departing, arriving or making a connection..."

So it does not matter that Air Canada couldn't fly between Victoria & Vancouver for 2 days or they couldn't get us replacement flights until 5 days later, as long as they could make one flight to Timbuktu, we aren't getting reimbursed.