Travel insurance confusion!

mippy

Hello

I'm not experienced at all with travel insurance, so I wanted to check how common this was...

I have booked a short break to New York for myself and my mother in February. I took out the insurance when booking everything else, as she is 69 with a few health conditions and I wanted to see whether that meant it would exceed the budget for the trip. After shopping around, I went with Direct2Insure.

At the weekend, she told me she has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which will be controlled with tablets. I phoned up the insurer to see how this affected her policy - I don't want to take the risk of going to the US without proper medical cover, and thought it would be a case of them recalculating and me paying the extra. Turns out that they couldn't now insure her, but gave me a quote from one of their partners of about £200. OK.

Now, I asked whether that £200 included the policy I'd paid for already, or not, and it turns out it was a completely different policy altogether. Again, if it was with one of their partners and not with themselves, that makes sense. I asked what in that case would happen with the original policy as I was insured on it - it seems that I can either leave it as is, and pay for both my insurance and an invalid policy for my mother, or request a 'pro-rata refund' for both polices. It wouldn't be a refund in full, as cancellation cover was included on the policy 'and you could have decided to cancel the holiday'. Is this usual? It seems baffling that this could be cancelled due to a change in circumstances (not because I simply decided I wanted to change insurer etc.) and I won't get a full refund.

Savvy_Sue

It seems reasonable to me that you don't get a full refund, because you have both had the benefit of the policy for the time between when you took it out and now.

It would be worth working through Martin's article on insurance, especially the bit on pre-existing medical conditions.