MSE News: Travel insurers told to treat holidaymakers who've had a drink fairly

mgdavid

michaels wrote: »

On this one I am with the 'victims' - for a large proportion of people drinking alcohol is part of a normal holiday experience ....... 'tipsy' or even 'drunk' seem to me a normal part of the holiday experience for many.

God, how naff; you've just confirmed my worst suspicions.
I didn't realise one could insure against stupidity.

InsideInsurance

zagfles wrote: »

They should sue them for libel then, if there's factual inaccuracy. But the reality is that it's nothing whatsoever to do with whether the insurer did or didn't do anything wrong in handling the claim, is it.

Morality is subjective and you are highly unlikely to win any libel about being called heartless.

The facts were correct, she was declined under the self harm clause. She was possibly going to lose her home and/ or children etc.

The argument, similar to this one, is if its "fair" that such a clause should exist? As a theorist then there is no argument that it should exist as insurance is for the unknown where as slashing your wrists has relatively predictable results. More so in this case however is also the question of compassion, should an insurer make an exception to terms in certain circumstances? Certainly the press seem to believe so.

zagfles wrote: »

The alternative is to make sure the insurance is not mis-sold. Where there is an "under the influence" exclusion this should be mentioned clearly in the policy summary, not buried in the small print like other stuff such as bungee jumping, which only a tiny % of people do.

Where a travel agent sells a type of holiday where they know consumption of large amounts of alcohol is likely, they should be done for mis-selling if they push insurance which doesn't cover this. Just like the banks were for selling PPI to the self employed.

I've no issues with anything being done against travel agents. There was also certainly stupid miss selling of PPI in some banks, I think the hysteria thats come out about it afterwards is disproportional. I dont doubt that more people have "missclaimed" their PPI back than banks missold to in the first place.

Obviously since the days of PPI selling we now have clear rules on if its an advised or unadvised sale. There has been the introduction of demands and needs, policy summaries and statutory cooling off periods. Certainly 99.99% of travel insurance will be sold on an unadvised basis and so the seller cannot advise the person the policy may or may not be suitable for them but simply present the terms and advise them to read the full policy. Even by choosing if to offer or not offer a policy can be deemed advice if you believe some compliance experts.

People also need to take some responsibility, they are told to the read the policy, as you admit the clauses on alcohol are written in clear english, so why only complain 6 months later after they've split their knee after necking a bottle of vodka that they complain about the clause being there?

Nasqueron

The linked cases from the ombudsman were fair enough I thought?

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/PUBLICATIONS/ombudsman-news/120/120-alcohol-exclusions.html

Someone having a case rejected when blood/alcohol limit was below UK driving limit for "alcohol abuse" was correctly overturned at the FOS as it was an unfair rejection

Someone having a case rejected when they were 4x over the UK drive limit and FOS upheld the rejection seems fair.

Also, I thought PPI largely covered the self-employed, it was just some terms were excessive which meant the cases were supported by the FOS?

InsideInsurance

Nasqueron wrote: »

Also, I thought PPI largely covered the self-employed, it was just some terms were excessive which meant the cases were supported by the FOS?

Certainly some big banks did as almost all the terms the ex used to deal with did cover self employed.

The issues with PPI were in some cases how it was sold, ie snuck in the back door with small print. Others were who it was sold to so seasonal workers who's employment was too short to have unemployment cover or even to unemployed people.

To be honest in a lot of these cases I dont think the PPI selling was necessarily actually that bad, after all the policy did cover the Accident and Sickness even if not the unemployment and if you're looking at MPPI who's to say that in 22 years time you are still only going to be a seasonal worker? Obviously the issue is we dont have a recording of what was said to ensure the customer knew they werent immediately covered.

On the flip side, how did an unemployed person get a 20k loan?? Did they actually declare themselves as unemployed on the application form for the loan?

Now there were certainly some cases of terrible miss selling. I remember the ex coming back on a number of occasions where the bank has sold ASU to someone who has admitted they are terminally ill and the branch staff even gave them the claim form on the day they took the loan out. In these cases the PPI was paid out on but the intracompany agreement was that the branch reimbursed the insurer

You only need to read forums about these topics to see how the overwhelming majority are just seeing it as free money rather than actually feel they were wronged. You even get people posting that they successfully claimed a number of times on the policy but can they still claim it was miss sold? If you challenge most of them they have no grounds for saying it was miss sold but they use a stock template letter and bobs your uncle

zagfles

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Morality is subjective and you are highly unlikely to win any libel about being called heartless.

The facts were correct, she was declined under the self harm clause. She was possibly going to lose her home and/ or children etc.

The argument, similar to this one, is if its "fair" that such a clause should exist? As a theorist then there is no argument that it should exist as insurance is for the unknown where as slashing your wrists has relatively predictable results. More so in this case however is also the question of compassion, should an insurer make an exception to terms in certain circumstances? Certainly the press seem to believe so.

So in such circumstances, and similar ones mentioned before like drunks jumping from balconies, what is the motivation for the insurance company making payments which they don't have to? Is it compassion? Or simply a hard commercial decision that the adverse publicity would cost more than the claim?

If the latter, then it's far worse than refusing the claim. It's basically telling people that the nice fluffy insurance company will look after you whatever happens, it doesn't really matter what the T&Cs say, they'll pay out anyway. There's a middle page spread in the Sun about how the nice insurance company paid a claim it didn't have to because they're such nice caring people.

But they're not, are they? It's a lie. When it happens to you, unless you can get a journalist interested, you can rot. It's basically making sure the consequences of not reading and understanding the T&Cs don't get publicised. So no wonder people don't bother reading them.