Smiley90

Not directly a travel policy, but a travel medical "emergency" coverage policy:

"All invasive and investigative procedures, including any surgery, angiogram, MRI, PET scan, or CAT scan, must be pre-authorized by -Medical Insurance Provider-."

Great, so if I have a life-threatening emergency and can't call my insurance company in advance, I might not be covered? Isn't that... the point... of emergency medical insurance?

Bandicoot

This surely varies with the law in different countries and such a provision may well be illegal if it really refers to emergency care. For US-based folks, health insurance companies should not (I want to say "cannot" but can't find the relevant statute at the moment) be requiring preauthorization for anything considered necessary for dealing with a medical emergency, even if the same procedures normally require preauthorization in non-emergency situations. Of course, you may be stuck trying to prove to your insurance company afterwards that the MRI, PET scan, etc., was in fact necessary to deal with your medical emergency, which may be even harder if you're traveling abroad with language issues and differing protocols for healthcare in different countries.

Badenoch

If you have a "life-threatening" emergency what difference does it make? Either you live and can sort the paperwork out later or you are dead. If your matter isn't mortal then call in advance.

emma69

Mine has similar language, but further in it does have an exception if you are unable to call the insurance company yourself because of the nature of the emergency.

Often1

The provision is quite common under US insurance policies. It is likely only part of the employer's handbook because the employee runs the risk of being denied coverage if he does not obtain Pre-Certification.

Typically, if you read through the policy, you will find that the provision does not apply when there was a reasonable opportunity to obtain pre-certification without endangering the individual. It is largely a way of cutting off emergency division/room treatment at the point the emergency is controlled. Other issues may be very serious, but are not emergencies.

roberino

Latest one is that we have to take the lowest class of room at a hotel, even if a higher class room comes in on budget. I kind of get why to a certain extent, because people were choosing out of town locations that had cheaper accommodation and upgrading to suites while arguing they were still on budget. Problem was that their taxi receipts became much higher because the commute was further. The new policy has caused issues though because if we book late or in peak times a basic room may not be available. The person processing expenses spots this and reports it upwards and we're being asked to prove that there were no cheaper rooms available - practically impossible.

roberino

A friend's company restarted travel some time ago but now that everyone is back up to normal travel levels they have realised that they are spending a fortune in COVID testing on top of travel costs. The maigcal solution? Declaring that COVID tests are a medical service and as such are excluded for reimbursement by the company travel policy.

Scots_Al

Ridiculous.

Super Mario

This is one of those instances where the "policy" makes sense on paper, but real-world execution is not there. I've definitely seen this with my company. When you're in a large corporation's travel department, you appear good on paper saying "we've controlled travel expense by restricting types of hotels and room options". When in reality, there are options that would violate the rule, but save the company money. Unfortunately, in the world we live today, things that sound good on paper, usually win.

Wilbur

AKA "How we lost our most talented employees almost overnight."

Qwkynuf

Yep, happens all of the time. I have a trip next week where there is an Embassy Suites approximately half a mile from my work location. It is in a downtown area, so the hotel charges for parking, and I will have to also pay to park at the customer site. Unfortunately, the room cost at the Embassy Suites is "out of policy" - by $1.00. Instead, I had to book a hotel 4 miles away that is $3.00 less per night. So, instead of parking my rental at the hotel and walking back and forth for the week (and only paying for parking at the hotel), I will be driving each day, and paying for parking on both ends. I will save $6.00 for the week on my room cost, but pay an extra $45 for parking...

yyznomad

If I ever take on employees, I vow not to make arsface policies like these.
I'm hoping to institute a 4-day work week if it ever comes to having employees.

jrl767

how difficult would it be to copy what you wrote here and paste it into an email to your manager (and whoever else approves your expense reports) with a request that they approve the report despite the policy escape?

alternatively, you might reach out to the hotel and speak to a front desk supervisor to ask about manually reducing the room rate by $1 and increasing the parking charge by $1

Smiley90

The hell? Is a 40 dollar COVID test on top of a 1k+ ticket really worth losing employees? Ridiculous

Qwkynuf

It's not 'end of the world' level annoyance, just an example.

For my company, the challenge isn't in getting the expense approved for reimbursement, it's with getting the out of policy reserved in the first place. We're a big enough company (>80k employees) that all of our travel reservations are required to be booked through our "travel portal" (Egencia). Any out of policy reservation kicks off a process that starts with a notification that the requested reservation is OOP, which requires me to choose from a list of six specific (presumably justifiable) reasons for selecting an OOP option, then the request goes to a senior-level person at the "approval desk" (ha!), who then approves or denies. It is sometimes possible to appeal a denial, but mostly they have created a system that makes the effort more trouble than it's worth in most cases.

The only part that my manager plays in this process is that he is notified of my OOP request and whether it is approved or denied.

I promise that this is not the dumbest policy that I have to deal with, I only shared it to commiserate.