STS Vacations Sells Bogus Travel Insurance, Class Action Says

A class action lawsuit says STS Vacations has been selling non-existent travel insurance policies to customers using their website to book a trip.

Plaintiff Rosemary Hocker claims defendant STS Vacations continues to sell travel insurance policies even after it ceased its business relationship with the insurance company that provided those policies.

Hocker says customers can purchase these policies and receive a confirmation email, but upon making a claim, discover the coverage they thought they had paid for does not exist.

According to this STS Vacations class action lawsuit, the defendant is a travel agency that sells vacation-related services across the U.S.

Among other travel-related products, STS Vacations offers customers a trip insurance policy advertised to cover a broad set of possible travel problems like travel delay, travel interruption, lost baggage and emergency medical expenses.

This policy was to be provided by insurance company Travel Guard, which STS Vacations allegedly describes as “the leading travel insurer in North America.”

But STS Vacations does not actually provide this policy to those who buy it, Hocker claims. In fact, she says, STS Vacations no longer has any business relationship with Travel Guard at all.

Nevertheless, Hocker says, STS Vacations continues to advertise this allegedly non-existent Travel Guard insurance policy.

As of mid-December 2016, the defendant’s website still says it “has selected Travel Guard, the leading travel insurer in North America, to provide post departure travel insurance coverage and assistance to its customers.”

Hocker says that in February 2016, she bought two Travel Guard insurance plans, one for herself and one for her husband, to cover them on a planned trip to Jamaica in April.

On that trip, Hocker says she suffered a tear of her left rotator cuff when she slipped and fell on the wet deck of a boat. She says she received treatment for that injury at hospitals in Jamaica and her home state of Pennsylvania.

Upon contacting Travel Guard to make a claim, Hocker says, she was told the insurance company had no record of her policy. The representative Hocker spoke to told her Travel Guard has not sold any policies through STS Vacations since 2014.

Hocker then confronted STS Vacations about the problem and was allegedly told that the travel agency simply does not offer Travel Guard insurance anymore.

The plaintiff is proposing to represent a nationwide Class consisting of all persons who purchased within the U.S. a single-trip travel insurance plan from STS Vacations that included coverage applicable to post-departure risks. She is also proposing a subclass that would represent Class Members from her own state of Pennsylvania.

She seeks a court order barring STS Vacations from selling non-existent travel insurance. She also seeks an award of damages, restitution and disgorgement, court costs and attorneys’ fees.

Hocker is represented by attorneys Marc A. Goldich and Noah Axler of Axler Goldich LLC.

The STS Vacations Fake Travel Insurance Class Action Lawsuit is Rosemary Hocker v. Student Travel Services Inc. d/b/a STS Vacations, Case No. 2:16-cv-06574, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.