“I FELT terrified and I felt alone.”

That is how a woman from Sherborne St John has described her ordeal after she was left stranded in Hong Kong by her insurance company.

Robyn Watson was taken ill with suspected gastroenteritis whilst on holiday, and despite having three ‘fit to fly’ certificates after she recovered, her insurance company, World First, refused to let her fly until she had an official diagnosis.

“I am furious and disgusted,” Robyn continued. “I wonder how they can sleep at night.

“I expected them to be our piece of mind, I naively expected them to take care of us.”

The insurance company wanted Robyn to have an endoscopy, something that Robyn’s husband Simon called “completely unwarranted and just to satisfy the insurance company”.

“The frustrating part is, what more am I supposed to do to get them to say we’ll send you home? I feel like they don’t have any element of urgency or awareness that they can’t just sit and wait for us knowing we have return flights booked,” Simon continued.

“It really is a nightmare coming true,” continued Robyn, who lives with ulcerative colitis. “We booked this holiday a year ago and we’ve been planning and saving.”

The couple were due to spend a couple of days in Hong Kong, before flying to Japan to meet up with friends to continue their trip of the Far East.

However, they were forced to cut their trip short, and were “stranded” in their hotel before they finally flew home on Monday.

Robyn says she was expecting to be put on a drip as she was dehydrated, but was not expecting to be admitted to hospital.

“I cried,” she says. “When they put me in an ambulance I felt sickened.

“The hospital is woman-only, so Simon had to go straight away. When they asked him to go I sobbed.

“I couldn’t talk to anyone, no one could understand me, they just looked at me blankly.”

A spokesperson for TIF Group, who underwrite Robyn’s insurance policy, said: “We are aware of Mrs Watson’s case and are sorry to learn that she needed medical assistance while abroad.

“Our role as an assistance team is to help bring our customers home when it is medically safe. Flying with a medical condition or injury can have serious long-term health implications, so we have to make sure our specialist aviation doctors are sure that there is no risk attached to taking such a long flight. To allow us to do this, we need a detailed medical report from the treating doctor.

“We have been liaising with the hospital Mrs Watson has been at for a medical report thorough enough for us to fully understand her diagnosis. Unfortunately, the full medical report has taken a few days to obtain and as a result, has caused a delay in their return home.

“We can now confirm that flights have been booked and Mr and Mrs Watson will be returning to the UK (Monday). We sincerely apologise for any stress this delay may have caused.”