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CALIFORNIA Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi last month ordered a Tennessee-based travel insurance company to stop doing business in the state, saying the company was defrauding the consumers it was supposed to protect.

The insurance commissioner said Trip Assured, which is based in Crossville, Tenn., was selling insurance illegally in California. Trip Assured has disputed that assertion, saying what it sold was not insurance.

"No matter what Trip Assured wants to call it, the product they are offering meets the definition of insurance," Garamendi said in a statement issued Oct. 4. "This company's whole reason for being appears to be to defraud and intimidate senior citizens."

As of the Travel section's deadline Tuesday, Trip Assured had not returned phone calls seeking comment.

California's action comes after state insurance departments in Florida, Michigan, Texas, Tennessee and North Carolina took similar steps in response to complaints about the company. Trip Assured has denied at least 30 claims in California for what the California Department of Insurance calls "questionable reasons."

Sylvia Resnick of Orange was among those whose claims were denied. She bought trip interruption insurance from Trip Assured through her travel agent, Cruise VIP in Van Nuys, for a European trip on Crystal Cruises in May. Resnick, a frequent cruiser, said she scrimped and saved to pay for the higher-end voyage and bought insurance to protect her investment.

"I kept asking … to make sure everything was covered [because I was] going abroad and by myself," said Resnick, who is a senior citizen.

After eight days of touring London, she experienced back problems that she said made it impossible for her to continue. She canceled her cruise and returned home.

She saw her doctor four days after her cancellation — the first available appointment, she said — and obtained a doctor's note certifying that she was medically unable to sail.

Trip Assured denied her claim, saying in a letter to her that she had not seen a physician within 72 hours of cancellation as required in its contract. It further denied her claim because of a contract clause that says, "Unforeseeable sickness or illness … must be so disabling as to reasonably cause a trip to be canceled or interrupted upon the directive of the medical physician."

Resnick's son Barry, a professor of counseling at Santiago Canyon College, said he pored through court records around the country and found more than three dozen other travelers who alleged their claims were wrongly denied. "They're still coming in through the door," he said, "and are mostly senior citizens."

Cruise VIP owner Lewis Kerstine said he had no complaints about Trip Assured before Resnick's claim. But, he said, he stopped selling Trip Assured insurance in July for what he called "business reasons." He declined to elaborate.

Trip insurance is a big and growing business, especially for expensive trips such as cruises and international trips. Americans spent more than $1 billion on trip insurance in 2004, insuring 17 million individuals, according to the U.S. Travel Insurance Assn., a Richmond, Va., trade group founded two years ago to foster best practices.

Nearly a third of leisure travelers taking cruises, air/tour vacations and international trips bought travel insurance in 2004, compared with 10% of U.S. travelers who bought such coverage before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

UStiA members, which are mostly insurance companies, subscribe to a code of ethics that obligates them to, among other things, present their products clearly and accurately and to pay valid claims fairly and promptly. The UStiA website, http://www.ustravelinsurance.org , has a list of its members. Trip Assured was not a member.

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