Inflexible Travel Insurance

Shiralco

I have been using the Nationwide Flex Plus worldwide travel insurance for the last few years, but have never had to make a claim. We have a holiday home in France and each year we stay there for a few weeks and then go off for several mini-trips, a few days each time in different parts of France, and we have also driven down into Italy for a few days. Each time it’s a spur of the moment decision as to where and when we will go and we just book cheap hotels or B&Bs on the internet. This year we plan to be away for up to 75 days in total and so contacted Nationwide to extend the policy, for which I had to pay an extra £70. A couple of weeks into the holiday we saw that Ryanair was offering cheap flights to Madrid from Marseilles and booked a flight and five nights accommodation in Madrid. As far as I was concerned this was all part of our 75 day holiday. On contacting Nationwide, however, I was horrified to find that we would not be covered for our Madrid trip, nor indeed any of our mini-trips in France! I was told that all travel, including hotels must be booked in the UK before starting the holiday, and any trips booked whilst on holiday would not be covered. My mind immediately went back to a few years ago when we were staying with relatives in the US and all decided to go on a trip out West. Apparently, if anything had happened on that trip we would not have been covered.

Is this policy normal or are Nationwide different from other insurers? If it is normal then I am sure many people would be caught out, particularly those who like touring and changing travel plans whilst en route. We have now had to buy extra travel insurance to cover our Madrid trip.

System

My thought is that as you own a home in France and your trips are starting from that point then French travel insurance is required and not UK

InsideInsurance

It depends what you mean "not covered".

Generally on a multi-centre holiday you are covered for the entirety, subject to normal terms, of the holiday for the main aspects such as sickness/ injury, liability, curtailment etc. What you arent normally covered for is intermediary journeys in terms of delay, cancellation, missing the flight etc.

So in your example above, if you had fallen ill whilst "out West" then that would have been covered. If however if your journey to the airport to fly out west had been delayed due to the car breaking down and so you missed your flight then that wouldnt have been

Shiralco

InsideInsurance - what you say makes a lot more sense than what I was told. Where can I get a definitive answer on this as far as Nationwide Insurance is concerned as talking to the call centre doesn't always give the correct information?

InsideInsurance

Your policybook should be the bible of the terms, only if the call centre tell you something better than whats in black and white is it really relevant what they say.

If the wording doesnt saying anything about excluding multicentre holidays then they dont.

Shiralco

I have checked the wording and can see no mention of multi-centre holidays being excluded - thanks for this.

rs65

Shiralco wrote: »

I was told that all travel, including hotels must be booked in the UK before starting the holiday, and any trips booked whilst on holiday would not be covered.

I've never heard of that. Is it mentioned in your policy?

Shiralco

This first caught my attention when I received a flyer from Nationwide stating:

You are not covered for – ‘Trips that do not start and end in the UK.’

I checked the policy document which says:

Journey – ‘A journey is a trip within Europe of not more than 31 days that starts and ends at your home address’

As I had extended the policy for trips up to 75 days, I assumed that the start of the trip was when I left my home address, and the end was when I returned to my home address 75 days later.There was no mention of having to book all travel before leaving the UK. What difference does it make to Nationwide whether I book a flight whilst sitting in the UK or sitting somewhere in Europe?It’s the same flight.As far as I can see it’s just another get out clause for the insurer. I would appreciate any other logical explanation.

InsideInsurance

Shiralco wrote: »

You are not covered for – ‘Trips that do not start and end in the UK.’

I checked the policy document which says:

Journey – ‘A journey is a trip within Europe of not more than 31 days that starts and ends at your home address’

These are generally to cover those that don't permanently live in the UK. So my former boss spends 5 months of the year living in warmer climes than here. Insurance with this clause wouldnt cover him going on a holiday from his Caribbean home to somewhere else in the world.

A multi-centre trip however is all one "trip" but you just happen to have multiple aspects to it. You need to read the policybook in its completeness, inc the definitions of words and pay attention to which sections exclusions apply to