Misselling of Travel Insurance?

RoseV

Tesco. We have been with them for car, house etc etc and never had a problem.

Not sure that I feel like renewing again though!

diesel.1

Cancellation Cover

Start and end date of cover: Cover commences on the date you purchase the policy and ends on the day that you leave on that journey providing that both the departure date and return date fall within the period of insurance.

Sorry! If the annual policy had commenced from the day you phoned for quote rather than date you were leaving for states then you would of have been covered. The only time you would have been covered is if it occured the time you left home to start the journey to the airport.

diesel.1

it is also down to you to ensure that the policy meets your needs. They asked you a direct question regarding commencement of policy. Unfortunately they can not be held repsonsible, however if you are still within 14 days of taking insurance out you may be able to get full refund on insurance if you say you have changed your mind.

RoseV

The only thing is, now understanding the consequences, I would have asked them to say:

Do you want it to start on the date of travel or from today? By just giving the travel date it did not raise any question in my mind - especially as we had just agreed single trip to start on that date. But it saved them a bundle and cost me!

Rose

Quentin

diesel.1 wrote: »

And anyway your only covered for cancelation if the tour operator cancels/changes the holiday.!

This is not so.

When you take out travel insurance, the cancellation section covers you for all sorts of possibilities, eg death or illness affecting the policyholder or near relative/jury service/court case witness/redundancy/major disaster (house fire) etc.

Quentin

RoseV wrote: »

The only thing is, now understanding the consequences, I would have asked them to say:

Do you want it to start on the date of travel or from today? By just giving the travel date it did not raise any question in my mind - especially as we had just agreed single trip to start on that date. But it saved them a bundle and cost me!

It may not quite be as you see it as far as costing you. (Though you would have been in trouble costwise had this condition resulted in you having to cancel the holiday).

Even if you had started the policy when everyone was fit, many travel policies still require any changes after the policy started, but before you actually travel to be notified to them.

When notified of changes, they can ask for a premium increase, or decide not to continue cover (refunding the premium), (or of course do nothing and continue with the original policy)

dacouch

OP please do yourself a favour and take the time to read this as it is relevant to you situation. This is a quote from the Ombudsman who your Insurers will have to take notice of. You can request a transcript of the telephone conversation between you and the operator under the data protection laws.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/76/76-travel-insurance.html

76/09
travel insurer turns down claim for cost of cancellation as policy did not come into force before the holiday began
In mid-October Miss W booked a holiday to Tenerife, due to depart a month later on 17 November. She was planning several other foreign trips over the following 12 months, so she told the travel agent she would not take the single-trip insurance policy it offered.
Instead, she contacted an insurer direct and bought an annual travel policy. This was set up to come into effect from 17 November – the date of her departure to Tenerife. Like most travel policies, the benefits it provided included cover against cancellation.
On 1 November, Miss W visited her doctor as she was feeling very unwell. The doctor diagnosed a ‘cardiac arrhythmia’. When Miss W mentioned her forthcoming holiday, the doctor told her that, in the circumstances, it might not be wise to travel abroad. Miss W therefore cancelled the holiday and put in a claim under her travel policy.
The insurer told her it could not meet the claim, as her policy had not yet come into force. Miss W was very upset to learn this and she complained that it was on the advice of the insurer itself that she had agreed the start date for the policy.
She said that the insurer knew the date of her forthcoming holiday, so it should have explained that there was a risk in having a policy that did not come into force until the day that holiday began. If it had done so, she would have insisted on an earlier start date.
The insurer would not discuss the matter further with her but simply repeated that it would not pay the claim. Miss W then referred the matter to us.
complaint upheld
In order to decide this case we had to establish whether the insurer had made Miss W sufficiently aware that, by buying a policy that did not start until the actual day of her holiday, she would not be covered if she had to cancel her trip.
We obtained a tape recording of Miss W’s initial phone conversation with the insurer, when the policy had been arranged. It was clear from this that she had told the insurer she was going to Tenerife on 17 November – and that the representative had suggested that would be a suitable start date for the policy.
While it could not be said that the representative had actually ‘advised’ Miss W to have a policy that started on that date, he had not made any attempt to explain the implications of not having insurance in place before then.
When we raised this with the insurer, it said the policy documents made it clear that the policyholder would not be covered if the holiday was cancelled before the policy came into force.
However, in our view the insurer had not done enough to highlight to Miss W the risk that she was taking. We thought it unlikely that she would have agreed to the start date suggested by the insurer if she had understood this risk.
We told the insurer to treat the claim as if the policy had been in force on the date when Miss W cancelled her holiday. We said it should add interest to any payment due under the policy.


Every little helps