As usual, I’m planning a trip.

The main difference between my usual out of town voyages is that this one involved what I like to call “adult” aspects. This particular holiday requires travel insurance, something that I’ve largely avoided getting because I’m generally a cheap person. This trip requires it though, so I have no choice but to get one.

I asked J, an officemate and a friend who’s been unfortunate enough to have an airline loose his bag during one trip, and he said that he was pretty satisfied with the service that BPI/MS Insurance provided him. The customer service was helpful and they pretty much reimbursed all of his missing things.

Luckily, you can purchase your travel insurance from their website. You would just have to choose between their Gold, Diamond and Platinum plans, pay through bank transfer or via credit card and you’re good to go. I got the Gold plan online one afternoon, thinking that it was enough, and made the purchase with my credit card. I got the PDF copy of my plan the morning of the day after.

Unfortunately, the thing with online purchases is that no one is really there to advise you of the specifics. It turns out, as my travel mate A advised me through text, that the Gold plan doesn’t meet the required coverage for my trip so I had to find a way to fix my boo-boo. I really didn’t want to talk to anyone over the phone so I quickly sent an email during my break at work asking if it was possible to upgrade to the next plan up. Honestly I wasn’t expecting a quick reply; my car is insured with BPI/MS and it takes them ages to reply to my email inquiries but I was pleasantly surprised that a Ms. Edelyn replied almost immediately to my inquiry.

It took a couple of days for it to get sorted but eventually Ms. Edelyn and her team helped me cancel the Gold plan, process the refund back to my credit card and get me the Diamond plan. It was pretty cool stuff because I only transacted with BPI/MS solely via email.

A few days later, I received an email invite that says:

“Dear Ms. Repuyan,

Thank you for choosing BPI/MS Insurance to protect you.

BPI/MS has been providing insurance for 15 years and to show our gratitude to our clients and guests, we are giving you two (2) tickets to a block movie screening of Kong: Island Skull on March 10, 2017, Friday, 7:00 PM at Glorietta 4, Cinema 6.

Kindly confirm your attendance by replying to this email on or before February 21, 2017.

Thank you!

BPI/MS Insurance Corporation”

So by the time that this post goes up, I’ll be seated comfortably in Glorietta 4 Cinema 6 watching a free movie. Cheers to BPI/MS for giving excellent customer service!