Travel Insurance Premium increased following accident...

forklifttruck

I'm going on holiday to France on Thursday with my family, and took out travel insurance back in April when we booked the holiday.

Unfortunately our 17 year old was in car accident a couple of weeks, thankfully she is ok. But as her back was hurting after the accident, she was hospitalised overnight and xrayed etc to check nothing serious had happened. But the doctors have given her the all clear to travel as long as she doesn't do anything strenuous.

So I rang our insurance provider to alert them. They said they could cover this, but asked for an extra £56 on top the ~£80 premium we have already paid. I am not impressed at having to pay more, as surely the insurance company is taking on the risk that accidents like this might happen before we travel? If we had had to cancel our holiday we would be getting our money back less the excess. But as we are able to manage, we are being treated in the same as if it was a medical condition we had forgotten to disclose when we purchased the policy.

Has anyone had this? Do I just need to accept reality or have I been hard done by? I ended up paying the premium 'under protest' and asked for their complaints details, as we need our holiday and need the cover and I can follow this up in due course.

EssexExile

This sounds like standard practice, the risk has changed. They want to limit their losses by paying out a relatively small amount in cancellation costs, or they want more money from you to cover the bigger risk.

dj1471

You didn't have to pay the extra, you could have opted not to receive cover for the existing medical condition and met any resulting medical expenses yourself. In practice the EHIC will cover around 70% of medical costs in France anyway.

You declared that all travelers were free of existing medical conditions when you took out the policy, that's what the price you paid was based on.

katejo

forklifttruck wrote: »

I'm going on holiday to France on Thursday with my family, and took out travel insurance back in April when we booked the holiday.

Unfortunately our 17 year old was in car accident a couple of weeks, thankfully she is ok. But as her back was hurting after the accident, she was hospitalised overnight and xrayed etc to check nothing serious had happened. But the doctors have given her the all clear to travel as long as she doesn't do anything strenuous.

So I rang our insurance provider to alert them. They said they could cover this, but asked for an extra £56 on top the ~£80 premium we have already paid. I am not impressed at having to pay more, as surely the insurance company is taking on the risk that accidents like this might happen before we travel? If we had had to cancel our holiday we would be getting our money back less the excess. But as we are able to manage, we are being treated in the same as if it was a medical condition we had forgotten to disclose when we purchased the policy.

Has anyone had this? Do I just need to accept reality or have I been hard done by? I ended up paying the premium 'under protest' and asked for their complaints details, as we need our holiday and need the cover and I can follow this up in due course.

Last August I got myself a quote for a single trip policy in the EU in September. Before I had a chance to actually buy the policy, I had a slight fall with a possible minor wrist fracture. I had to wait 3 weeks for the swelling to reduce before the doctors could confirm either way. I contacted the insurer to declare this but they refused to cover me at all for anything because the fracture hadn't been confirmed. I did find a policy with an another insurer which simply excluded the possible fracture.