"Oh no! My house burnt down! At least I have insurance" "Actually, if you read this tiny line printed in off-white ink on white paper, it clearly states that your insurance only covers fires caused by fire-breathing dragons"

I'm not even from Canada and I find CBC news interesting.

I get the impression that the Canadian gov't doesn't do very much to protect its citizens from deception by businesses.

In the US car insurance is mandatory. You're paying thousands per year, Year after year, Someone hits your bumper and you have to fight with your insurance company for them to cover it, They only pay out half of the costs AND raise your rates, WTF AM I PAYING YOU FOR THEN! Btw 6:24 most canadian interview i've ever seen, Going to a hockey game, No curse words, No rude comments, Even called the guy that hit him a gentlemen.

The insurance companies have no problem collecting premiums. When there are claims, they say the policy is void. If so, they shouldn't have taken the money in the first place.

Agreed. Insurance is THE BIGGEST legal scam ever made.

Screw 'em, sell everything you own, declare bankruptsy and start all over. Never buy anything you can't afford to lose, and screw the insurance companies. They're nothing but rip offs.

1:45 Travel Insurance 6:10 Car Insurance 13:32 Home Insurance

This is where I don’t understand about the freedom in North America. By law you have to pay for many insurance yet when accidents happen, the insurance is useless. It is like paying rent for the stuff that’s already been purchased by you.

The whole industry is a rip off. From the doctors to the grave.

me: i had a heart attack, insurance, will you cover it? insurance: Sorry, but having a heart is a pre existing condition.

Thank you CBC for being one of the best news organizations in the world

Marketplace should do a video on the success rate, in these types of cases, after a lawsuit has been filed against the insurance company. So often the response is 'not our problem'. Its easy for the insurance company to do. That's why you file a lawsuit. I'd like to know how successful lawsuits in these cases are.

For as long as Insurance companies are not regulated and penalizad for not clearly explaining coverages, they getaway like crimínales

A friend of mine thought he had full coverage for theft. The policy stated he had coverage for robbery. His office was broken into overnight, he then tried to file a claim, they said he was NOT covered. You are NOT covered for burglary. Robbery is when someone comes and robs you in daylight, burglary is when someone comes in at night and robs you. He's still fighting the insurance company 16 months later. :(

So if eventually insurance says coverage did not apply... Ive been paying for years a service that would never be given, right? Why not return the friggin money ive been paying every month?

Lol i got an insurance ad in the middle of the video. THEY KNOW. 😂

I'm a plumber and I remember that storm in toronto I was working for almost 3 or 4 days straight no sleep it was insane.

I hate insurance companies. Our governments are in bed with them.

Why not share the two questions on the form they answered incorrectly?????

5 blockages ? That means he has serious heart problems. Also, how often do you have your health checked ?

underwriting should always be done before people start paying the money. it is scamming people when the insurance companies take the money first then start underwriting only after people start to submit claim.

As far as I’m concerned regarding the traveling thing anyway, its best to travel as much as you can before turning 50-55. Do it when you’re younger if possible. I cant talk about car or home ownership. I can sort of talk about the automobile thing to a point but only in that my car is 2005 and its really just a matter of time before it’s not worth worrying about. I don’t purchase brand new vehicles and this episode indirectly discusses part of why that is. My car is wonderful but largely disposable at this point.

I love market place cbc episodes keep it up. great and good job guys.

You think with all the insurance policies that go unclaimed because nothing happens would give the companies enough profit to prevent them from doing all the loophole/scamming bs

Buy an old Toyota or an old Honda and you'll have peace of mind!

Time to make a law against fine print!

Insurance company: we payout insurance claims to those 95 and older... and then ONLY when accompanied by their parents.

DIV is something that is allowed in the US. You can file 1st and 3rd party in GA and 3rd party (if your not at fault) in the rest of the us. There are some caveats about UMPD that change state to state.

Damn $300,000 bill? That alone on paper would trigger illness. I'm just saying, I'll be traveling to Atl to fight the deminish value of my car when I sell it. Lol

This is the reason I like the movie saw

When laws are required to regulate an industry, you can be sure that said industry is run by criminals. I look forward to the day that board members of a corporation are held personally responsible for their crimes. It's coming.

Insurance companies are NOT there to help you. They are there to make money, often in ways that will cheat you out of your money.

It is always good to read and understand your insurance policy wordings and its definitions so that you know what is really covered instead of assuming Coverage. Insurance agents should explain the type of coverage and it is up to the insured to write down any questions or doubts and ask insurance company or their agent to explain some insurance wording before accepting the contract. This can save a lot of misunderstandings and heart aches. Better to have underwriting done at the time of application rather than at the time of claim. Misrepresentations and lack of understanding are some of the reason for claims refused. Remember Insurance companies have lawyers draft their contract so buyer beware!!

I watched lots of CBC News. I wonder, why consumer in Canada did not read the fine print and policy before signup anything?. For this particular video, The customer are guilty of not providing correct information on Travel insurance. No insurance will cover existing illness.

I wish they had CBC in the United States

You are fully covered until you make a claim.

Floods are a special and different insurance in the US too

Wow!! Thanks for that info! There will be lots of fine print reading and digging. Consumers are totally unaware!!

How can this cost 340k $ ?? As much as a home for a surgery ?? Wow

If you’ve been in an auto accident, had a claim on your home or travel insurance, the first call you need to make is to your lawyer. Begin the process of suing immediately. We all used to think litigation was frowned upon however all industry has us set up to fail and you will pay. Get the solicitors on it, give em’ their cut of 25-50% and have them deal with all the scam insurance predators. Insurance was somewhat fair perhaps 30 years ago, not anymore.

Taking advantage of senior citizens. It makes one wonder, is it a good thing to have insurance?

So the long and the short of this is, that huge envelop of papers that every insurance company sends you when you open a policy, the ones that most people just sign the one form, send it back, and throw the rest some where never to be seen again, should actually be closely read before signing. If you have any questions or concerns, you should contact a layer, the internet, or the insurance company if it is about the wording of the policy, and your doctor if it is about questions on the medical form. Every single one of these situations would have been preventable had people actually read their policies, knew their coverage, and made sure all forms were fill out correctly. If you don't do that, and the policy becomes void due to improper filling out of the paper work, then you should be, if not then sue, entitled to a full refund of all premiums paid.

Wow! Natural disaster insurance coverage does not cover natural disaster damages?

@7:21 ..💿 row on the sun visor 👌🏼 ..old skool(ish) ;)

so what can we do besides read policies we have no hope to understand?

The opening form for insurance should be Made more simple so that everyone will understand the term and condition.

No wonder insurance companies are one of the richest businesses and now one has to get a lawyer to fill out a travel health insurance plan? Ridiculous. BTW- ICBC is terrible if you get into an accident.

yes, why we buy our insurance?

You're not covered and never be from Insurance. Build ur own fund aside by yourself. Otherwise God knows.

I fell and cut my brow open on that exact ice rink at Harbourfront during a lunch break in 1986. I was covered thanks to OHIP. I got stitches and was back at work that afternoon. I haven't tried to skate since!

The flood insurance one is a bit different from the rest. Most home fall into one of two categories: 1. you don't need it, 2. the risk is so high that it would be extremely expensive, so much so that some people might not be able to afford "home insurance" if it was default bundled. There are some but rather few homes that fall in between. This is why it should, in fact, be offered as a seperate insurance, as it is too variable to be just attached. The problem is that this isn't always made well known ahead of the fact. The same applies with earthquake insurance where I'm at. It is not covered by regular policy and must be bought seperately, for quite a high cost because it is a high risk, high cost thing, relatively speaking. But the insurance company are required to disclose it *very* clearly. When I didn't have it, I was notified about it on every renewal. P.S. In US, flood insurance is subsidized by the government in most places, so it doesn't reflect the real cost. In all practical terms, normal homes shouldn't be built on flood zones. But there are a lot of difficulty in modifying/eliminating existing homes.

Wow, a cbc video without comments disabled, i guess there is hope for this country yet!

I have learned many many years ago to never buy insurance from a bank...they are not qualified brokers or often not even brokers.You are better off to get a life insurance policy than mortgage insurance as you will pay the same premium no matter how much your balance owing is. Life insurance is for a set amt. better bang for your buck! This is a great episode btw...again helping people avoid issues!!

Travel agencies are insurance companies that sell vacations on the side.

Flood insurance not included. And if basement floods you have to have a special addition to the policy. Now some companies won’t pay unless damage reaches a deductible of 5% of your home’s total value instead of a standard dollar amount deductible.

Only if the car is totaled, you'll get a new car or it's cash value before the accident. But if they can repair it, then bam, diminished value

icbc canada: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Canada), formerly The Bank of East Asia (Canada), was founded in 1991; it was the Canadian unit of the Bank of East Asia Group in Hong Kong.

C'mon CBC! just exactly what was the wrong questions answered on the app for out-of-country ins coverage?

If you ask yourself a few questions, you can understand why "insurance" enjoys special status in Canada. 1 How many "government elected officials " own an insurance agency? 2 Are elected representatives in government obliged to behave in a neutral fashion when voting on legislation? Elected members are obliged to disassociate from their business while sitting in government. Superficially this seems to solve the problem. Insurance is mandated by the law of our land and is guided by regulations our government approves. In practical terms there is no way to know the motivation for how a member votes! What could be done is to establish guidelines for how much representation any industry has in the house. Any tinkering would itself be suspect, clouding the democratic process. Those citizens who want to send the industry a message could vote for a person, not involved in insurance, assuming there is a person running, not a litigator, not owning or working in insurance. The most neutral action would be not to pass this cash cow to the private sector. Easy to see insurance enjoys special status. I call this an entrenched lobby. Very difficult to truly fix it. Once we deemed auto insurance as compulsory, the insurer is in charge. Ken Bowd

Insurance is a profitable business, thus they take more money from you than what they give back.

Have anyone ever received full list of terms and conditions of your policy before buying the insurance, No, Never. In short, it is people looting people in the name of business. Filling someone else pocket at the expense of many people's asset or life. That's the real meaning of Insurance these days.

Youd wonder why some get arrested go to jail when the real ones keep doing etc? Hopfull more people speak out its crazy

The other problem too is that most insurance agents who sell the product/service does not even know what are the ACTUAL coverage when they explain it to the buyer/customer before signing any agreement. Agents misrepresent it or even over talk about what they are selling.

put all your payments into an envelope and when you need it, open the envelope......no denial of claims.

In the US it's called GAP insurance. Covers diminished value. I've always had it on any financed or leased vehicle. Also, that type of confusing form would never fly in US courts. US also has national database of all accident claims matched to VIN Numbers.

If the questionnaire is not in plain language why not just sue the insurer applying the Contra proferentem rule? And this is also why it makes sense to use a middle man - broker. A broker may also be sued for misrepresenting the insured on his behalf. Brokers also have error & omission insurance for those cases. And to stay objective, you were speaking about those cases who were denied coverage. Now please make a report on all of those cases where insurance did pay.

Is travel health insurance a Canadian thing? I'm in Nevada and I haven't heard much of travel health insurance. Ive also never traveled outside of the U.S. since I was 5.

So if you are not aware of any heart disease, and you suddenly had heart disease, then your insurance is void??

Ever since the flooding of Calgary and Bow River areas has effected all Albertians and I don't mean our hearts for those that were effected by this but also all the residents of Alberta. When I renewed my home insurance only to find out that I will be paying more for insurance and when I asked the question of why this is, the person on the other end of the phone just stated that it was just time for them to increase thier policy prices and this was just shortly after the flooding of Calgary. I asked the question is this because of the flooding of Calgary and..there was silence on the other end. To break the silence I started talking and that since I live in Stony Plain which is just west of Edmonton and that there is no rivers close by... So no matter what happens, insurance companies will always find a way to make back there money.

Living in the states, and knowing people who work in the Airline industry... several times we have discussed this issue. Canadians buy travel insurance at a much higher rate than Americans. The reason as I understand it is that Canadian 𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 coverage makes you WAIT for authorization for a procedure. If you’re like that first couple who needed a bypass operation, fly to America, buy travel health insurance, get the work done with no wait, problem solved. It’s common and well known.

So the randomly generated ad right under this video is for medical insurance, nice fail google

I have read here on the internet cases involving house insurance where the beneficiary has been paying for years insurance and suddenly something happens such as a roof problem. They get denied. Ridiculous.

no joke I think that my be my father with the bandana and beer gut sitting with bad posture in a vacation photo. lmao, I literally can't get past that hahaha

11:14 insurance company, the insured or the owner The last two are the same person.

The solution is OBVIOUS! We just have to buy Insurance Policies to cover our Insurance Policies! LoL

how is diminished value the fault of the insurance companies?

Real confirmation here, love this show

The insurance companies have insurance for error and omitted information on application form or information given by selling agent. Or negotiate getting your premiums refunded. This may apply to all type of policies sold legally.

I think there are new rules (based on court rulings) that state the error made on the application must relate to the cause of the loss otherwise it's still covered.

I wonder if the premiums would at least be refunded if the policy wasn't providing meaningful coverage. Small consolation though.

One easy tweak to the legalities would be to legislate that in the event of a policy being retroactively declared null and void then the payments should be returned to the customer; after all the would-be client has obviously been paying, and usually through the nose, to maintain a contract that the company has just defined to be non existent. For that matter I wonder how the rest of the legal framework views that situation; surely if money's changed hands without benefit being received on BOTH sides does it not that render the contract literally non existent, rendering the payment a mistaken transfer requiring correction?

If they weren't covered then they should have gotten their money back.

the litte ones learning to skate are so cute.

If insurers were required to cover capital loss from a no-fault RTC, I'd expect to see a dramatic rise in insurance write-offs. Here's an example: Car A back ends car B. Car B is worth $22 000. Repair cost is $15 000 and capital loss amounts to $8 000. This makes it immediately cheaper for the insurer to simply scrap the car and replace it with an equivalent purchased at its present market value, or refunding the customer the value of the car. One could well argue that at the end of the day the consumer still wins in some way from this arrangement, but there are many people out there who would rather take the capital loss hit than have their car scrapped. It is also one sure way to justify increasing everyone's insurance premiums by 20 to 60%

As I was growing up, I was taught that insurance companies took risks with their money by taking chances that their customers would not have accidents and they would make a profit because the insurer had no or few claims to pay out. If their customers had accidents, then the insurer would have to cover the damages and suffer the financial losses. This was part of insurance business risk factors. The older I got, I found that I was mistaken. The insurance company pays for damages they want to cover but then later raises the premium on the insured to recoup the costs paid out for the repairs or replacements. The insurance company also holds the claims they paid out against the insured with credit scores. Even if no accidents occur, the insurance premium is usually higher the next year. Why, you may ask? I've been told "because our business costs are higher or prices for repairs go up." I sincerely want to know just where are THE TRUE RISKS for the insurance company when they can recoup the monies by upping premiums and even use the customer's credit scores against them, even though the customer has a good credit rating with the insurer company. Many insurance companies are deceptive and purposely dishonest. There are many ands, ifs, or buts in the legalized language of insurance policies. Most customers are required to have car insurance but they do feel ripped off by insurance companies.

You must read everything and the details down to the last sentence, insurance is a dirty industry.

insurance premiums pay the pension of retired government workers. So no government is gonna mess with that.

I got an insurance ad when I was watching this.

There's a reason there's millions of words on those contract forms.

I don't know who supervise Insurance companies in Ontario. Who protects consumers ?

A single insurance company makes multi-millions if not billions of dollars a year and they sure hate to part with any of it. When Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta was devastated by fires MY insurance (I’m hundreds of miles to the south) doubled. DOUBLED!! I was paying $199 a month for car & house. I now pay $399 a month. My insurance broker told me all the insurance companies raised their premiums to cover their losses from Fort McMurray. I researched that and he was right. Insurance companies have to accept that when there are catastrophes that is the risk that THEY have to take. Why aren’t there laws in place to protect citizens from this practice? Because our Canadian Government is run by too many corrupt and self-serving politicians who only protect themselves.

As an American I would be happy if they restore my car and don't up my rates. diminishing value is a fact of life and yes it's unfortunate my car is now worth less but by the time I can afford a new one anyway my cars value is already in the toliet.

Oh my goodness my car ins was cancelled because I didn't check yes in the hard to see little box. Off to side bottom page

WAT WAS DA QUESTIONNAIRE ON VACATION?!?

Now....they will just raise ins premiums

We should all know by now that insurance companies do not want to pay out or pay out as little as possible. Do not make mistakes or lie when filling out the forms. All cars are worth less after an accident and repaired and hence why repaired cars are cheaper to buy after an accident. Obviously people will pay less for any cars that have been involved in accidents, so don't expect as much when selling. Insurance companies want to make money not lose it. Why would you buy a house with a basement in a flood zone? Well summed up with if there is a miss representation in the application the insurance companies are off the hook. I am nearly 60 and have made a few insurance claims over my lifetime and have never once been disappointed with the compensation payout as agreed to in the policies.

I've always thought it unfair that car insurance doesn't cover diminished value... My car was recently serviced and the garage attendant crashed it (there's a dent on the passenger side) and I'm fearful that this may affect her value, really not fair :(

The PROBLEM is that NO ONE bothers to carefully read their entire policy and DON'T BOTHER to ask an insurance broker the necessary questions. People who save themselves a couple of monthly premium dollars pat themselves on the back that THEY managed to do for themselves ONLINE rather than use the services of a PROFESSIONAL-- AN INSURANCE BROKER -- who, if anything goes wrong and then you're not covered because of the broker's mistake, you can then go after the broker's "errors and omissions insurance." And NO, I'm NOT an insurance broker.

BCAA travel insurance only has an extra 10k deductible if you make a mistake on the health questionnaire--you are still covered.