Coronavirus and ESURE

leighfletcher

Hi all, my family and I currently have a package holiday booked for July through TUI. Whilst I'm holding out hope that they honour the booking (or at least provide a full refund), I just received a tone-deaf and irresponsible email from esure, with whom we took out our travel insurance, and I thought this forum would be interested (sadly I can't link to it here, but it's on their website under "faqs"). They state that "There is no cover provided if you choose not to travel due to the coronavirus, this is because your policy has specific reasons for cancellation and FCO advice is not one of those reasons."  Furthermore:  "If you cancel your trip due to a health professional or official Government advice telling you to self-isolate/quarantine at home but you are not ill, you will not be covered for cancellation under your policy."   They'll only cover people who are actually demonstrably ill (and would likely need proof of this, meaning being a burden on our NHS).   This is 100% against all the guidance that the public are being given and (of course) was not mentioned when we took out the insurance. Is this something all insurers are doing, or is ESURE just a particularly evil one? Of course, I fully expect this all to be dealt with through TUI, but I still find the attitude of ESURE quite remarkable.

Aylesbury_Duck

leighfletcher said:

Hi all, my family and I currently have a package holiday booked for July through TUI. Whilst I'm holding out hope that they honour the booking (or at least provide a full refund), I just received a tone-deaf and irresponsible email from esure, with whom we took out our travel insurance, and I thought this forum would be interested (sadly I can't link to it here, but it's on their website under "faqs"). They state that "There is no cover provided if you choose not to travel due to the coronavirus, this is because your policy has specific reasons for cancellation and FCO advice is not one of those reasons."  Furthermore:  "If you cancel your trip due to a health professional or official Government advice telling you to self-isolate/quarantine at home but you are not ill, you will not be covered for cancellation under your policy."   They'll only cover people who are actually demonstrably ill (and would likely need proof of this, meaning being a burden on our NHS).   This is 100% against all the guidance that the public are being given and (of course) was not mentioned when we took out the insurance. Is this something all insurers are doing, or is ESURE just a particularly evil one? Of course, I fully expect this all to be dealt with through TUI, but I still find the attitude of ESURE quite remarkable.

I assume the terms of the policy were clear when you took the policy out?  Have they changed those terms since or are they the same?  If they haven't changed then I'm afraid they're correct and that if you wanted cover for FCO advice, you needed a different level of cover.

I don't see the problem myself.  It's annoying of course, but they're doing nothing wrong.

leighfletcher

Hi Aylesbury_Duck.  The policy wording is spread over 4 documents. It states helpful things like "This policy covers you if you are unable to go on your trip" and "You will not be covered if you travel to a country or region when the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has advised against all travel or all but essential travel."   That originally seemed clear to me, but maybe they were attempting to be vague.  Having spent ten minutes searching the four PDFs, I genuinely cannot see anywhere suggesting that FCO advice wasn't covered by this policy, but I confess I'm not a lawyer nor an expert on reading T&Cs.  The "we will not cover you if you are in self-isolation" information on their website is new and not part of my policy. 

Like I said, I hope that I will not have to deal with ESURE directly, but posted this for comment from other customers, wondering whether other insurers were taking the same line.

mi_piace

Hi leighfletcher, I received the same disheartening message from Esure. I even phoned them up before taking out the policy, and specifically asked them if they covered cancellations due to pandemics. They said yes. I asked twice, and even made a point of saying that other policies normally exclude those scenarios, but their response was that they do include it as standard.

I said that I would be prepared to pay extra to have that option included, but once again they told me that there was no need, and in fact there was no optional extra to chose when I bought the policy.

I bought this policy because another policy I had through work explicitly stated that they didn't cover cancellations following governmental advice, like in the case of FCO.

I then checked the documents from Esure, and there was no such statement, so I assumed that the sales representative was correct.

So now I have two policies, neither of which covers the cost of the trip, which unfortunately was purchased privately.

Is there a way to get Esure to accept their false statement and mis selling?

Aylesbury_Duck

mi_piace said:

Hi leighfletcher, I received the same disheartening message from Esure. I even phoned them up before taking out the policy, and specifically asked them if they covered cancellations due to pandemics. They said yes. I asked twice, and even made a point of saying that other policies normally exclude those scenarios, but their response was that they do include it as standard.

I said that I would be prepared to pay extra to have that option included, but once again they told me that there was no need, and in fact there was no optional extra to chose when I bought the policy.

I bought this policy because another policy I had through work explicitly stated that they didn't cover cancellations following governmental advice, like in the case of FCO.

I then checked the documents from Esure, and there was no such statement, so I assumed that the sales representative was correct.

So now I have two policies, neither of which covers the cost of the trip, which unfortunately was purchased privately.

Is there a way to get Esure to accept their false statement and mis selling?

Raise a dispute and ask them to send you the recording of the call, although the fact that you then checked the documents, noticed the cover you specifically asked for wasn't included, and you didn't therefore cancel within the 14 day cooling-off period doesn't bode well for your case.

Check the call record and take it from there.