Why didn’t insurance cover trip cancellation?

A: The travel insurance you bought through Travelocity should have fully covered your cancellation. The policy you purchased provides a full refund for a medical cancellation. Instead of fulfilling its obligation, Travelocity bounced you to Delta, which only agreed to waive your cancellation fees — not the answer you hoped for.

When a company doesn’t meet its obligations and bounces you to a third party, you usually can put an end to it by starting a and

I was supposed to fly from Sacramento, Calif., to Seattle recently with my sister and mother for a family wedding. Before our trip, my sister had to be rushed to the emergency room with an unexpected heart condition. This prevented us from traveling.

I had purchased travel insurance when I made this booking through Travelocity. Little good that did. Travelocity canceled our flights and sent me directions on how to apply for a refund from Delta Air Lines. Delta has a clause for illness-related cancellations, but the airline decided that it could not give us a refund, but rather would send us a voucher to apply toward a future purchase.

Is there anything else we can do to receive a refund? We charged all three flights on my sister’s credit card. She can’t afford to reimburse me or my mother now. My sister does not wish to fly anywhere, since she’s scheduled for another heart-related procedure and still is under cardiac care. Can you help? paper trail and escalating it to an executive, if necessary. By “paper trail,” I mean keeping everything in writing — no phone calls.

I list the names, numbers and email addresses of all the bigwigs at Travelocity (owned by Expedia) and Delta on my consumer-advocacy site: You could have appealed to one of them and asked for help.

I contacted Travelocity on your behalf. It turns out you were covered, but you hadn’t been given the correct instructions for filing a claim. After you received the information, you filed a claim, and six weeks later, you received an $811 refund.