i am sparticus: Insurance

Insurance

I went into Barclays yesterday to talk to them about various financial matters (turns out that 'wanting to launch a scientific study into why people are always after me lucky charms' isn't grounds for a loan) including travel insurance. No-one at the branch itself seemed to know anything about travel insurance other than that I was in the unfortunate category of those who had a student + addition account as opposed to a student additions count. There goes my free travel insurance apparently.

So the friendly woman I'm speaking to rings up another branch, or office, or dimension, or something and asks for their travel insurance specialist, she passes on the details I already told her like where and when I'm going and how unlikely to die I am. She then passes over the phone to me and the man on the other end of the phone asks me the same questions again, meanwhile the friendly woman starts to look slightly bored and organises her desk slightly, I irritate her by waiting till she's perpendicularlized everything and then putting the pen she lent me down on the table at a 60 degree angle to the keyboard. Then man on the phone then asks if he can read out the Barclays general statement of disclaimerness, I say yes. He does. For like three thousand hours. In the time it takes him to get through the statement, the friendly woman opposite me has re-rearranged her desk, cleaned her nails, completed all three of today's Soduko in The Telegraph and read through most of The Order Of The Phoenix.

With all that out of the way the man I'm beginning to hate on the telephone asks me about my trip, again. After explaining what I'll be covered for which takes a while (in the time of which the friendly woman has made herself a cup of coffee, from scratch. Her pottery skills are average but she knows how to tend a coffee plant), he finally gives me a quote. It'll cost around forty pounds for insurance for a week. At least it will unless I want extra options. I'm not convinced it's a good idea to ask what these extra options are, but I figure I've already wasted enough time. It's a good thing I did ask because otherwise I would have gone ahead and played golf without any insurance for it whatsoever.

The long and the short of it though is this, The British Mountaineering Council offer cheaper insurance if you're a member and your money gets ploughed into a charity to develop the access to and environment of mountains. And they're more sympathetic to the idea of funding scientific research. Marshmallow and Frosted Oats goodness, here I come.