LV Travel Insurance Warning

Simon#19

My wife and I have annual travel insurance with LV, which is the top pick for travel insurance on the MSE site.

Having recently tried to make a claim with LV and been quite unhappy with the result it has been a lesson in how to deal with travel insurance claims.

We had to cancel a trip to Vienna in December due to my wifes father being taken ill just before we were due to travel. She is Italian and her family are in Italy so we had to fly it Italy instead of Vienna.

As my wife booked the flights and she is a member of Easy Jet's flight club there is no admin fee to change the flight destination, however the flights to Italy were £170 in total where as the Vienna flights had cost £400 so a difference of £230. At the time the sensible thing to do seemed to be to simply change the flights and claim the £230 difference, rather than cancel the Vienna flights and claim the whole £400 initial cost.

LV have paid for the cancelled hotel but are refusing to pay for the £230 difference in flights because they say we still made use of the flights. The wording of the policy states that they will pay for travel costs that you have had to pay but have not used. My arguement is that I have not used that portion of the travel costs because the later flights were that much cheaper, however because we changed the flights rather than cancelling them they say we used the product that we bought.

So the moral of the story is, don't try to do what seems like the decent thing and minimise the cost of your insurance claim. Just cancel the flight and claim for the whole amount, even if there is a way that you could cut the cost for your insurer, don't bother.

I've been through the complaint process with LV and still gotten nowhere. Now I have to wait up to 8 weeks (yes 8 weeks) to hear from their customer realtions team before I can contact the ombudsman.

Overall very disspointing for a 5 star defacto rated policy and MSE's top pick.

Simon#19

Nick_C wrote: »

Insurance helps you when you have lost something.

You have not lost any money on the flights. You have no claim.

And when you do claim, you have to minimise your losses.

That is not the case, I have lost £230. I paid £400 for flights, I received a product ultimately worth £170.

LV openly agree that had I cancelled the original flights and paid separatley for the new flights they would refund me the £400. The cost of the new flights was £170, I have paid £400, I have therefore lost £230. You can argue whether the money I have lost is or is not insured according to the policy wording, but the fact that I am out of pocket ('lost' if you prefer) £230 is indisputable.

Lorian

You maybe could try the argument that by changing the flights rather than re-booking you have actually acted to limit their losses to £230 rather than the full £400.

Also it might be worth logging on to easy jet an request a FULL invoice. it's gets emailed to you after 2-3 days. My recollection is the costs to change are shown in detail on the FULL nvoice - and there is a tiny hope to cling to that the transaction on their is shown actually as a cancel of the one flight and a rebook of the other. I fly EasyJet a lot, but it's while since I've done a paid change, so not sure hows it's show. Worth a try maybe.

Nick_C

Sorry. I read your original post the wrong way round!

I completely agree that you have been unfairly treated. Make a formal complaint and escalate it to the ombudsman if necessary.

Simon#19

@ Lorian, thanks for the input. This is exactly the arguement I was trying to make which I thought seemed a reaosnable one. When I ask if they would prefer that I claimed £400 rather than £230 they don't seem to have a direct answer.

I have a statement from Easyjet which lists both a 'cancellation fee' (refunded via flightclub) and also a 'change flight fee' (also refudned via flightclub) so it neither helps my case, nor impedes it really as you can still argue it either.

What i find really odd is that LV haven't asked for any documentation whatsoever, literally asked over the telephone how was much the hotel, of fine we'll refund it minus the policy excess, so had I been so minded in the first place I could have just asked them to refund the whole £400 for the flights as well!

Lorian

That's annoying. be persistent with them.

Simon#19

Nick_C wrote: »

Sorry. I read your original post the wrong way round!

I completely agree that you have been unfairly treated. Make a formal complaint and escalate it to the ombudsman if necessary.

Ha ha right ok thank you!

This is the route I will take, it's just a shame that this is what it has to come down to on what is essnetially a technicality that had I had prior knowledge of I would have been able to avoid all the hassle.

As I said I appealed the intial decision and got a call back today from a senior claims advisor to say that he was upholding the original decision. I now have to wait eight weeks for their customer relations team to contact me. I quote;

"Under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulations, our customer relations team will be in contact with you, in writing, within 8 week" - thanks a lot!

littlerock

I am insured with LV. Rang them recently for advice on whether it was worth making a claim on my home contents insurance and got barked at by someone wth a heavy foreign accent clearly reading from a script. Could not get a word in edgeways or get any advice,just generally unhelpful. They have been outsourcing chunks of the business in recent years and I wonder if this means some customer queries/claims have ended up being routed to an overseas call centre where they just work from a script. Last thing you want.

paddyandstumpy

littlerock wrote: »

I am insured with LV. Rang them recently for advice on whether it was worth making a claim on my home contents insurance and got barked at by someone wth a heavy foreign accent clearly reading from a script. Could not get a word in edgeways or get any advice,just generally unhelpful. They have been outsourcing chunks of the business in recent years and I wonder if this means some customer queries/claims have ended up being routed to an overseas call centre where they just work from a script. Last thing you want.

They do not outsource any of their call centres overseas.

littlerock

I know that. All I can say it was a very " noisy" line (lot of background noise) and the person I spoke to was not a native English speaker but had a very strong harsh almost gutteral English accent and barked at me from a script and would not respond to my request to talk through whether or not I should make a claim.

Instead she insisted I had to register full details of my claim with her before she could give me any advice. Which would of course go down as an incident on my file even if I decided not to claim.

I have dealt with my share of overseas call centres - I am a Virgin Media customer - and this sounded exactly like bad experiences in the past. If this was a UK Call centre claims handler, then they were poorly trained, not easy to understand and unwilling to deviate from their script. Depressing.

takman

littlerock wrote: »

I know that. All I can say it was a very " noisy" line (lot of background noise) and the person I spoke to was not a native English speaker but had a very strong harsh almost gutteral English accent and barked at me from a script and would not respond to my request to talk through whether or not I should make a claim.

Instead she insisted I had to register full details of my claim with her before she could give me any advice. Which would of course go down as an incident on my file even if I decided not to claim.

I have dealt with my share of overseas call centres - I am a Virgin Media customer - and this sounded exactly like bad experiences in the past. If this was a UK Call centre claims handler, then they were poorly trained, not easy to understand and unwilling to deviate from their script. Depressing.

Well considering that you need to tell them about any insurable losses you incur even if you don't make a claim then they handled the call correctly. Your the one in the wrong by not telling them about your loss as per your terms and conditions which could be considered fraud.

So really you should be happy that you have got away with not telling them and having a potential increase in your premium.