Travel insurance case:
On January 5, the legend of Latvian sport, Olympic athlete Viktors Scerbatihs had an accident on a motorbike in Thailand. Being in an unconscious state, he was taken to the hospital in Phuket with the facial bone fracture, multiple wounds, and a concussion. According to Scerbatihs, the insurers postponed the payment of hospital expenses for five days, bringing the situation to the point that the athlete was promised to be deported.
As Viktors Scerbatihs himself told the Delfi portal, on January 4, he and his friends came to Thailand for holidays. The next day they rented motor scooters… “I don’t remember what happened next – either I was hit by a car, or something else…Anyway, I was hospitalized: I had my eye stitched up, the skull was slightly broken. I was fully bandaged.”
According to Scerbatihs, the next day he started to call the insurers: “You probably know a basketball player Porzingis – he actively advertises the Citadele bank card, which includes BTA insurance. And I also have the same card. At the hospital I said that the insurance will compensate me all the expenses, I phoned the bank, and they gave me the contacts of an international company which is responsible for the insurance – Nova Assistance service center. The woman named Alyona answered and told me: we will definitely solve the issue – no problem. She also added that I am not required to stay in the hospital. Today I came to the hospital to remove stitches and check if the surgery will be needed. It turned out that the insurers did nothing. So, the card, advertised by the basketball player, is a complete trash.
Insurers do nothing for five days. As a result, the stitches cannot be removed, the skull cannot be examined, too. I owe 2 thousand euros (60 000 baht) to the hospital. Although the advertisement showed that you can safely travel with the card, it is total rubbish! They have been feeding me promises all the time. At the hospital I was told that no negotiations are being conducted with them. It seems that our BTA got in with some frauds.
I was informed that if I leave the hospital without paying, I will be deported from the country. And this is not a joke! I have been sitting here already for six hours, but nothing happens – I will have to spend the night here, otherwise I will be deported. At five o’clock banks will close, but there is still no money. But why should I leave? I want to recover and become a human! I planned to stay here until January 20. And now I suffer, I suffer very much.”
Delfi news portal contacted the company Nova Assistance service center on the issue of the organization of medical care. Calling by the phone number given by Viktors Scerbatihs, the woman named Violetta, who was unwilling to give her last name, answered. She said: “At the moment, Viktors is being examined. The stitches have been removed. According to my information, everything will be fine, negotiations with the hospital are being conducted, all the necessary documents are being sent.”
A representative from Citadele bank Aris Dreimanis contacted the Delfi portal and reported that around 14:00 (Riga time) the difficulties with Scerbatihs’ insurance compensation were resolved: “At the moment, all the problems with Mr. Scerbatihs have been resolved. In this case, possibly, the communication difficulties may have affected the issue, as there are too many intermediaries: local insurance company BTA, their international partner, a hospital in Thailand, Mr. Scerbatihs himself... But the good news is that now everything is resolved!”
“Yes, at the present moment I can confirm that everything is already fine,” Viktors Scerbatihs said in a voice message to the Delfi portal. “But wait, it should have happened immediately after the accident, but not four days later, when I raised the devil, and the situation reached the point that they promised to deport me!
I was lucky that there was a Russian girl in the hospital who treated us humanly and helped us to solve all the issues. If she didn’t check the computer all the time to see if there was a payment, and didn’t try to investigate what was going on, I would be either deported, or would have to spend the night in the hospital.
Alyona from Moldova (according to Scerbatihs, the international intermediary company was registered there – Editor’s note) reported that all documents had been sent, but in the hospital, they checked and said that there was nothing... And then again and again the same thing.
Eventually, I received a call from BTA and they said that the issue is being resolved. I had to create such a panic to make it happen! Why couldn’t they close the issue immediately? Therefore, I do not intend to stay silent and I say again: one cannot rely on this card, which was advertised by our basketball player, it is not true at all.”
The director of the marketing and public relations department of BTA Baltic Insurance Company Elina Rasmane told the Delfi portal that the insurance payment was made in accordance with the invoice, and she also said: “We are very sorry that due to bureaucratic and legal procedures in an exotic country there was a delay, which caused inconvenience to the client.”
Viktors Scerbatihs is a prominent former Latvian weightlifter, a two-time Olympic medalist. In 2004 he won a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Athens in the weight category over 105 kg. Four years later, in the same weight category, he won the bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics.
(Source: www.delfi.lv, 01/09/2019.)
A rhetorical question arises:
If a similar situation happened to an ordinary person who is not familiar with the media, would the insurance payment be made, or would there be a deportation from the country?
