IF you want customer service don't bother come here

As previously mentioned we embarked on the arduous trip into downtown Helsinki in all sorts of freezing weather conditions and blizzards that are for Finns a normal part of daily being even in what i would deam Autumn or Spring.

Having succeeded in reaching the IF office we looked for the customary Finnish service process of taking a number and waiting in line. But wait, FANTASTIC we are the next number, there is no line!!

Having lived in Finland perhaps too long i should have been suspicious but me in my ever naive state just thought that we were lucky!

Well we sat down with the IF agent and within 10 seconds we knew why there was no line. IF offices only sell insurance. There is no "customer service". The if agents cannot even see the data related to the customer such as claim history or current status of claims.

As such we were directed to a phone where we could call their customer support. Nice touch i thought, well that is service. Guess what, the phone service was out of order!

To be fair the agent in the shop tried to help us the best that she could with the limited resources available to her.

As such we explained our story to her. In short we said that we had called the emergency number and that they had said that they would pay but then didn't.

She was clear on one point though. IF do not pay travel insurance claims when companies go bankrupt. This is as Malev did in our case.

I must say i found this very strange, i personally would think that this is one of the things that you would absolutely want insurance for. I guess it would be too expensive if a Finnish company like aurinkomatkat went bankrupt and they would have to fly 10 000 finns back from Phuket. That might actually affect their profitability ;-)

Again though even with this point clearly stated in the small print the agent assured us that as IF had promised to pay by phone when we were in Istanbul that they would probably honour that claim.

Again reassured, but now more than a little annoyed, tired but still hopeful we went home knowing that we would again need to try and make contact with IF again via their phone number as there was once again no info on their web service regarding the claim or how to contest it and we could not get service in their shop.