Oh my Ozangel.
Now you raise the ugly truths regarding Blight Centre.
Not issuing the insurance there and then is actionable in itself. As all of the evil empire is company owned I cannot for a second understand why cash was insisted on. Therefore I would demand to see what date the E tickets were issued on and a correct and verified copy of said E tickets. VC did not charge a credit card surcharge as far as I can tell. Have tried to get back into VC E tickets. Their "plate" has been deleted from BSP so the info is no longer available. Thank God I processed refunds on cash tickets before the thing was pulled, but it remains to be seen if they will be honoured.
The alleged E tickets provided by these alleged travel agents is merely an itinerary with ticket numbers and no genuine fare construction. This masks them applying whatever service fee they think they can get away with as there is no crosscheck. That is what happens when a large chunk of your salary comes from what you can gouge out of clients.
Insisting on cash smells very bad and would make one check what was actually receipted into the Blight Centre system. I do hope an official receipt was issued, not one out of a book buyable at Chickenfeed or the Reject Shop.
Bottom line is that if the insurance was signed and paid for on a given date and not issued until a month or so later, the seller of the insurance is in the crosshairs for a world of hurt. Contact the insurer initially as the representative of Captain Plastic is going to do every dodge in the world is the 1st move and if no good there straight to the insurance ombudsman.
Bore it up them. These bastards have been poluting the industry for far too long now with their dodgy practices and secret deals and have been caught out here. In a way I love it, but certainly not for the poor passengers affected.
If it were to come to light that more and more passengers were being pushed by this mob to cash transactions that indicate a major company wide cash flow problem.
We sell 2 seperate insurance companies that are SureSave and a Jetset branded QBE product and have received no notification from either that Strategic/Air Australia is precluded in carrier collapse terms. In fact I can not recall a single carrier exclusion being put in place ever over the 10 or so companies I have sold over far too many years.
There is something basically dodgy going on here and it deserves hard investigation.
Confronting the Blight Centre local manager with the fact that the payment and policy issue is about to go very public if not explained and covered and watch the sparks fly, and do not be bluffed out of action is my call.
I would also suggest that the passenger contacts the Travel Compensation fund who should cover any initial loss and start a formal proceeding against the agency group involved. There are some decidedly dodgy practices here.
Best
EWL