voucher refunds and travel insurance claims

xenial

Does anyone know whether travel insurance will pay claims if the airline/travel agency is offering vouchers for cancelled flights, but not cash refunds?
Thank you. 

PS. I booked with lastminute.com and my travel insurance is with Nationwide via their FlexPlus account. 

kevin81

Hi, last week week when i spoke to my travel insurance (via natwest) they said that no, travel insurance wont cover travel vouchers. i expected that answer as who is to say we wouldn't use the voucher after we have claimed on the insurance as well. i was advised to look at section 75 claim on my credit card though, which i haven't looked into yet. Natwest did say to keep checking back as they had a lot of questions about the vouchers and things were changing all the time. Personally i can't see it happening though. we have 5 flights in Singapore/Vietnam/Indonesia that are only giving vouchers and obvs aren't covered under the EU regs.

xenial

I meant if I am refusing the credit vouchers. Lastminute cannot physically give us vouchers if we don't take that option (you need to claim the voucher, it's not automatically issued), so I guess my question is - if the travel agency is offering vouchers and we refuse to accept them and they don't pay cash, will travel insurance pay for the claim? I guess there is no clear answer to this... 

xenial

Btw, this is the latest email received from lastminute (I asked for cash refund, not vouchers). They are clearly waiting for the regulations to change...

Thank you for your email. 

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do here at lastminute.com. 

Clearly, we find ourselves in an unprecedented environment due to the ongoing pandemic of the coronavirus and, even if our company mission has not changed, we are obliged to take extraordinary measures at these difficult times. 

The reimbursement in the form of a voucher enables us to efficiently manage thousands of cancellation requests we are receiving at the present time and allows our customers to reschedule their trips/holidays over the next 12 months with complete flexibility. In addition, this is in line with the emergency measures requested by the travel industry to the Government, which you can find on ABTA website. 

We hope this answers your questions and we appreciate your understanding in these difficult circumstances. 　 

We remain at your dispsoal 

Best regards 

Customer care team 

xenial

Hi,
has anyone successfully obtained a cash refund from lastminute.com for cancelled flights? If yes, how? I was due to fly 12-19 April and both flights were cancelled (outgoing one was cancelled by the airline, the return one by the government of the country I was flying to). For the outbound flight I got an email from lastminute offering vouchers, but I did not apply for the voucher. For the return flight there was no communication from lastminute and the flight still shows as active, but the government of that country I was flying to has banned all flights to/from UK effective 5 April.
I've emailed customer care but they are not responding, apart from automatic emails. 
Thanks. 

riverrock83

I can claim flights for our holiday from the airline, but hotel booking isn't refundable.  
The French hotel says that technically they are still open but as a gesture of good will they can issue a voucher but due to other circumstances (will soon have a baby!) we wont be able to go to the hotel in the future.  
So we are covered by Nationwide travel insurance but they are saying that as the hotel are offering a voucher, we can't claim for the cancellation as the cost is recoverable via voucher.  
That doesn't seem right - as we can't use a voucher to recover the costs.  Have others been able to get the money from travel insurance?

Life__Goes__On

riverrock83 said:

I can claim flights for our holiday from the airline, but hotel booking isn't refundable.  
The French hotel says that technically they are still open but as a gesture of good will they can issue a voucher but due to other circumstances (will soon have a baby!) we wont be able to go to the hotel in the future.  
So we are covered by Nationwide travel insurance but they are saying that as the hotel are offering a voucher, we can't claim for the cancellation as the cost is recoverable via voucher.  
That doesn't seem right - as we can't use a voucher to recover the costs.  Have others been able to get the money from travel insurance?

You can always complain and if they still won't pay out in cash,  take it to the Ombudsman.