Holiday insurance is (administered by)criminal

TOPSie

This is a story of immense good fortune – until the last bit....
Last summer my wife and I were driving down through Spain to a holiday in Mojacar. We stopped for a break in a motorway services north of Barcelona.
We were approached by a small swarthy guy with some incoherent story. Of course it was a distraction and his accomplice stole two handbags from our car.
We did a quick assessment of what was missing – credit cards, passports, wife’s phone, cash etc. Using my phone, which was in my pocket, we immediately cancelled all the missing cards. Luckily I was also in possession of another card which was useable. We reported the incident to the local security.
We had no choice then but to drive on to our overnight destination – a further 200 miles.
We contacted our daughters back in England and they did some research regarding passport replacement etc. Also some of them were flying down the following day to meet us, so we sent them off to buy replacement of make-up, glasses and all the other things my wife carries in her large handbag.
Amazingly about an hour later one of our daughters rang us to say that the Spanish police had rung her (in England) using contact details in my wife’s phone to say that the bag had been found. We did not know exactly what had been found other than the bag and the phone, but it allowed us to continue our holiday in a better mood. 10 days later we returned north and called in at the designated police station to be reunited with both bags and most of our possessions. In fact the only things missing were some English bank notes (they had left the coins) and one pair of prescription sunglasses. (two other pairs still in the bag)
So a happy ending – a worrying time for a while and a valuable lesson learned about strangers in foreign places – always lock your car even if you are stood next to it.
Returning home and assessing the situation, we totted up the “damage”:
A few frayed nerves and a valuable lesson.
£150 English notes (I had the withdrawal slip as “proof”)
£150 pair of glasses – recent receipt available.
£70 extra charges – a stolen credit card was one of the super no-commission for foreign transactions – the one I was left with wasn’t and the bill showed this amount as “foreign charges”.
~£100 in emergency replacement of “essentials” – well my wife thinks her makeup is essential and she couldn’t do her holiday reading without the stolen glasses.
We had qualified for free travel insurance with our Nationwide accounts so I thought it was worth a claim.
I had to fill in copious paperwork all of which was slanted to make me feel like the criminal – phrases like “it is a criminal offence to make an incorrect claim”
My claim for emergency replacements was rejected as was the extra commission charges. They paid out for the glasses – less the £50 excess and rejected the claim for cash – “as it wasn’t mentioned on the police report”.
Well neither were the glasses – since the police report, in Catalan, listed the items recovered not the missing items.
In the end I wish I hadn’t bothered to claim anything because by the time they paid out anything I feel that I got a much better deal from the Spanish criminals.

InsideInsurance

I have to say that the start of the post was very similar to the one of the jokes going around before.

The charges for using a different card will simply not be covered and replacement items is normally only covered as part of the delayed/ lost baggage section which this was not a claim for.

On the cash front, if you stay it is normal practice for the catalan police to only note recovered and not stolen items then log a complaint about this with the insurer and advise you want a final written response as you intend to take the matter to the FOS