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I recently had the misfortune of losing my whilst in Amsterdam.

My bank, Lloyds TSB provide me with phone insurance as part of my gold account benefits, crucially for me, is international loss insurance.

I always follow the rules.
My policy states that I must start the claim within 48 hours of me discovering the phone was lost, so that’s what I attempted to do.

A little background…

I was in a taxi (phoned for me by the hotel – CitizenM Amsterdam City) about 11pm. I showed the taxi driver (who must of been the only Dutch person I met who did not speak a word of English!!) a map of my destination on my iPhone.
That was the last time I definitely know that I had my phone.

Some time after I had arrived, I went to get my phone, and realised it was gone. Naturally, I assumed it had been stolen, perhaps I’d been the victim of the notorious Amsterdam pick pockets… So I asked the venue I was at to call it. It was still turned on!
I asked them to call my hotel, and explain to them that perhaps it had been left in the taxi, and could they call the company and ask.

When I returned to the hotel later that evening, the phone had not turned up, and the taxi company said nothing had been found in the taxi.
I asked the hotel to call the phone again in the morning – still turned on.
So where it had gone, is anybody’s guess.
Perhaps it had been stolen, but the thief (for some odd reason) had not turned it off immediately… Or maybe it fell out, and straight down a drain as I got out of the taxi… Who knows!

Later the next day, I admitted defeat, and made contact with O2, and blocked the handset. Also, as per the instructions on my insurance, I made a report to the police (which wasn’t easy – surprisingly, the level of English wasn’t great, and making them understand that the phone was lost, was pretty difficult)

So there we have it. I’m in Amsterdam, with no phone.

When I got back to the hotel, I logged on to Lloyds TSB’s phone insurance portal:
http://www.lifestylegroup.co.uk/lloydstsb/

Since I wanted to get my claim in as soon as possible, I clicked the “make claim online” button:

Next, it asked me for my policy id, which, luckily, I had as part of my documentation I always take on holiday with me. (Obviously, in the below picture I have obscured it)

But then…. password. No idea!

Not a problem I thought, I’ll click the “Forgotten your password?” link

Then…. the biggest problem.

Please enter your Policy ID number and mobile phone number. We will then send you a text message containing your newly generated password.

Are you joking?!

Why would I be logging in to this site, if I was still in possession of my phone… the phone that the new password would be sent to?

This left me completely unable to make the claim within the allotted time – Their offices were shut after 8pm, and I had no time before I was due to check out and meet some friends the next day, before heading to the airport for my flight home.

My plane got into London at 7:30 pm, which still didn’t leave me any time to make contact with their offices!

I made a point of phoning at exactly 8am on Tuesday (about 8 hours after the 48 hour deadline) and explained my problems (including the glaring accessibility / functionality problems highlighted above)

The customer service agent explained to me that as I was abroad, they do take this into account, so fingers crossed they understand the problems I had!