The reason people buy insurance is – in the immortal words of Chris Rock – “in case s—.”

In the case of travel insurance, you buy it in case your plans change last minute due to no fault of your own.

OP and his brother were both traveling abroad when their father passed.

In 2013, my dad passed away while my brother and I were on our own independent international adventures.

I was in Spain and my brother was in Canada and we needed to get back to Australia.

My travel insurance was dodgy but eventually paid out after a few complaints – which is pretty standard practice.

His brother spent a fortune getting home in time, but his insurance refused to pay.

My brother tried to claim $9k. He could only get one emergency seat on a bunch of connecting flights and with that and his flight back after the funeral etc, and other cancellations, it all added up. Shock horror, his claim was rejected.

Back then, there wasn’t an industry body that dealt with travel insurance companies or if there was, we had no idea what it was.

So my bro went through the usual hurdles involved with the appeals and complaints process.

Eventually they told him that his claim for $9,326.00 was rejected and their determination was final.

So, he grabbed their Twitter handle and logo and started angering potential customers online.

So, back then companies didn’t really have Twitter handles, especially not insurance companies.

So my bro, ever the troll, created a Twitter handle in this insurance company’s name, complete with their official logo.

He quickly set about gaining thousands of followers and legitimately began answering their questions with truthful albeit, quite negative responses.

Things like:

Q- my daughter and I want to travel to Paris. What insurance cover would you recommend?

A- we would recommend you take the premium for our comprehensive cover and burn it. We don’t like to pay out on for any insurable event because it upsets our shareholders. Have fun in Paris. Etc etc

They ended up paying what he wanted.

The insurance company got wind of this and sent him a cease and desist letter.

My brother counter-offered with a contract for the company to purchase the Twitter account (and 2500 potential customers) for the very reasonable price of $9,326.

They agreed.

Reddit’s gotta eat this one up with a spoon!

The top commenter was delighted.

This person says they would have asked for more.

Apparently all travel insurance is a bit dicey.

It pays to be lucky.

Maybe that’s just all insurance.

This is one of my favorite Reddit stories ever.

I love when being bold pays off.

If you liked that story, check out this video from a former Chipotle employee who reveals how the company cheats customers out of food.