Holiday cancellation

Meeta

need some help with the following issue:!we booked flights with!travel trolly from London to the states which are non-refundable in August, at the time of booking my father in law already had a cancer diagnosis but was responding well to treatment and the outlook was looking positive, he's now taken a turn for the worse and it looks like we may have to cancel our trip. At the time of booking, we thought it would be best to wait to get insurance as it was in the new year and we wanted to take out annual!for 2020. Travel trolly has said the most they will refund is the cost of the tax. Had a quick look and a lot of policies are saying that insurance!needed to be purchased!within 21days of the original!booking,!Can anyone advise on an insurance company/policy that we could use to get a full refund or any other method that could help?!

soolin

Meeta wrote: »

need some help with the following issue:!we booked flights with!travel trolly from London to the states which are non-refundable in August, at the time of booking my father in law already had a cancer diagnosis but was responding well to treatment and the outlook was looking positive, he's now taken a turn for the worse and it looks like we may have to cancel our trip. At the time of booking, we thought it would be best to wait to get insurance as it was in the new year and we wanted to take out annual!for 2020. Travel trolly has said the most they will refund is the cost of the tax. Had a quick look and a lot of policies are saying that insurance!needed to be purchased!within 21days of the original!booking,!Can anyone advise on an insurance company/policy that we could use to get a full refund or any other method that could help?!

i suspect any insurance now with full disclosure is going to be hard to find and expensive if you do find it. I really don't understand why you didn't take insurance out when you book, or why anyone doesn't - the excuse about an annual policy is nonsense as an annual policy is just that, a year from when you take it out. My annual insurance renews sometime in May for instance.

If phoning round for insurance (and this isn't something that is likely to be possible on a comparison site) I urge you to be honest with the situation even if that means they refuse to insure you. Hiding the situation will only come back to bite you if you need to claim later.

comeandgo

You can't get insurance for something that has happened.

Caz3121

If you can find a policy you would need to declare the situation if you expect to be covered for it meaning a high premium or more likely being excluded from the cover.
I would hang on to the booking in the slim hope that there is a schedule change between now and August that may allow you to cancel for refund

TELLIT01

Insurance is there to protect against future issues which may prevent travel. It will not cover for an existing problem. If it did, nobody would take out insurance until the wotsit hit the fan.

NoodleDoodleMan

You can't get insurance for something that has happened.

Insurance is there to protect against future issues which may prevent travel. It will not cover for an existing problem. If it did, nobody would take out insurance until the wotsit hit the fan.

Retrospective insurance is a contradictory concept.

leylandsunaddict

You're not going to get travel insurance to cover you now. It might have been possible if you took it out immediately you booked. You would obviously have had to declare his condition, so any cover may have come at a high cost, if you could get cover at all.

You'll just have to hope for a schedule change that allows you to cancel. Otherwise you'll have to stand the cost yourself. Always take out insurance immediately you part with any money you're not prepared to lose, and always disclose all medical conditions. Even if a person isn't travelling, if their health affects a decision you may make to cancel or curtail it should be declared and the insurance company may accept or decline to cover that risk.

maman

I think that as the amount of tax refunded is relatively small I'd hang onto the reservations and hope for the best.

I really don't understand your reasoning about insurance for 2020. Did you really think each January, all annual policies come out and just last for the calendar year? Surely not.

Although, even if you had taken out insurance (unless very specific) then you'd have been unlikely to get a refund as the diagnosis was known at the time of booking.

LittleMrsThrifty

I'd suggest keeping hold of the flights since any tax refund will be minimal. You can then decide much nearer the time if you want to go or not.

If you want to book accommodation, go for somewhere fully refundable. Don't book car hire or anything else until you've decided if you're going or not.

And as others have said, in future take out insurance when you book the holiday (although in all honesty I don't think it will have made any difference on this occasion).

zippygeorgeandben

You would have probably had to state his pre existing condition anyway, I do anyway for myself and partner. Like someone else says, annual insurance is for 12 months, not from 01/01/2020.

NoodleDoodleMan

Insurance would have been rendered null and void if the gentleman's pre-existing condition were not notified at the time of booking and he had (God forbid) taken unwell on holiday.

Nor would it have mattered if the illness were unconnected to his existing condition - the non disclosure clause is the insurance company's "get out" route.

The US medical system without insurance is a bad news scenario.