Vacation Deals: Great Weather or Your Money Back!

ABC's Christophe Schpoliansky reports from Paris: Not enough sun? Get your money back. Insurance broker and risk management provider AON France has launched a new money-back guarantee which allows some French holiday companies to give their customers a refund check if the weather conditions are not in line with their expectations. This new “weather guarantee” is available through companies including Pierre & Vacances, a leader in holiday sector, and France Loc.   Let’s take an example. A vacationer books a 7-day holiday package in Brittany, western France, through Pierre & Vacances and purchases for about $35 this Guarantie Soleil. Good idea, considering the high probability this vacationer will encounter bad weather in this beautiful but yet rather wet area of France. If the sun directly shines for less than 2 hours a day during more than 4 days, the vacationer gets a $215 refund check upon his return from vacation. The sun-deficient customer does not need to fill out any claim or provide any proof of any type. Using daily data provided by METNEXT, a subsidiary company of France’s national weather centre, including satellite photos, AON automatically determines through a computer program if the vacationer did not get enough sunshine and sends the refund check to his home. For France Loc, when booking a campsite, customers can subscribe the same type of weather guarantee. But this time, the rain is concerned: if the camper gets 3 hours of consecutive rain during 4 days or more, the “happy” camper gets a $570 refund check. Other companies in other sectors have adopted AON’s new guarantee. For close to $6 a month, French Power company Poweo gives back to its customers $1.40 for any degree Celcius below a pre-determined threshold.