#ThrowbackThursday with Martino Daniells, travel agent

In January 2005, I had a client who called me and specifically wanted to book the Royal Solaris Hotel in Cabo San Lucas with his wife and 14-year-old son. He had done his research on this hotel and was especially excited about the reviews the resort's steakhouse had received.

I advised him that the undertow and the surf at this particular hotel was very strong and recommended that he take full medical insurance for himself and his family, which he did. As a travel agent you are always happy when you can sell a client insurance because firstly, by law you have to, and secondly if your client does have any issues you know they are  protected.

A day after my client returned from his trip, I received an e-mail from him with the subject line URGENT. It read as follows:

Dear Martino,

My family and I had a wonderful time at the Royal Solaris, but on the third day of our trip I was swimming in the ocean and a giant wave hit me in the head and knocked out my false teeth. I looked everywhere for them but could not find them as the water was very cloudy because of the rough waves. 

Needless to say, I had a great time for the rest of the week, but could not enjoy the tasty steak dinners the rest of my family enjoyed, because I was not able to chew anything. However, I did take out the medical insurance and was wondering if you could assist me with my claim in regards to replacing my teeth.

As an agent, you always want to help out your clients and after calling the insurance provider and explaining my client's dilemma, I was given some bad news: the client was not able to make a claim because the teeth were not his own.

After e-mailing him back with the bad news, I received the following reply:

But the teeth were mine! I paid for them.

I admit that at that point, I broke out laughing, but that quickly subsided when I wondered if I would be responsible for this as I did not read the fine print in his medical policy that specified the loss of teeth is covered but the loss of dentures and teeth that are not permanently secured are not covered. I suddenly had visions of my accounting department coming to me and asking how I wanted to pay for the client's new set of pearly whites.

That said, this story does a have a happy ending as the insurance provider did provide the client with a compensation package he was happy with.