AMEX trip interruption insurance and the great Iberian blackout

UPDATE (14 May 2025): 

Well, I got it! A $402 check for my lost hotel night!

We had checked out of our Madrid hotel and were waiting to board the AVE high speed train to Barcelona when a massive blackout took out power to the entire country of Spain and parts of its neighbors. It was a big mess, but we absolutely made the best of a rough situation and managed to arrive about 24 hours later than planned. This meant trying to find a hotel in Madrid (with no power and no cell reception) and a missed night of prepaid hotel in Barcelona. 

next-day controlled chaos

cudda been worse: my friends were ON the AVE when the power went out!

Our hotel told us we should give Amex a call when we got home to see if their insurance would cover our added expenses. (FYI - the Barcelona hotel said if we'd booked directly with them, they would have immediately refunded the missed night, but because we booked with "Amex Expedia" they couldn't.)

Here's what I learned:

• After lots of "No, you need to call Amex Travel; no, you need to call Amex" I learned that you need to call the provider of their insurance, AIG. 844-933-0648. You can also file a claim online at https://aig.claimnotify.com/americanexpress
• All of the charges you want compensation for have to be charged to your Amex card. Unfortunately our train tickets were charged on our Sapphire, and my husband charged the hotel to his card.
• You need to have a charge for a round-trip plane/train/car booking on your Amex card to receive compensation. We had a one-way trip to Barcelona from Madrid, not a round-trip.
• You need a letter, or some official acknowledgment of the event from the transportation carrier. All I have is an email from Renfe about the train delay. 
• There are strict categories for the covered delay causes, but since the Spanish government blamed the weather (rather than the suspected cyber attack) as the cause, I probably would have been fine here. 

Despite not meeting many of those criteria, I'm going to submit a claim anyway just for the missed night in Barcelona. Not sure if they'll accept it, but I'm willing to give it a shot. The upload process was really simple and generally pain-free. If this is successful, we'll likely file a second claim on Kelly's card to get the money back for the extra night in Madrid, since he charged that to his Amex card. 

I'll update this when I hear back from AIG.

While I'm on the subject, here's a few things I learned about a big urban blackout:

• My husband's habit of always having $100 worth of local currency hiding deep in his wallet "just in case" was incredibly helpful when all of the nation's card readers suddenly went offline.
• My habit of always having a power bar or two for his legendary hangry fits also came in handy.
• Your charger brick does almost no good when the cell towers lose their internet connection.
• SOOO glad my trip packing list has "download offline Google maps for your destination" on it. I would have been lost with no map. Cell service was gone within an hour of the blackout start. 
• Our Madrid hotel was connected to a casino so they had generators for lights and computers and Wi-Fi (whew!).
• The weather was picture-perfect that day. I can't imagine how unpleasant it could have been if it'd been sweltering or a downpour.