Clarification of insurance claims

potatoman3

Hi,

Sorry if this has also been answered somewhere, I can't find clearly what my rights are.

I have travel insurance with my Nationwide FlexPlus account and currently have a holiday to Majorca booked in mid-July, booked with easyJet and the hotel separately (after the original booking was cancelled due to the Thomas Cook collapse...). Anyway, I'm expecting to still not be able to travel then and like a lot of others even if we can my partner really doesn't want to go.

I don't like the idea of moving the bookings to another time, I'd rather have the cash and rebook when we're ready to go again. I know that if/when the flight is cancelled we can get a refund from easyJet but I think the hotel is just offering for bookings to be moved.

My travel insurance policy covers cancellations due to Foreign Office travel advice up to 28 days in the future but Nationwide mention on their site and their phone lines about speaking to your travel providers and taking up offers of moving the booking.

My question is whether we really have to take the hotel's offer to move the booking of if the travel policy has to pay out if the travel advice is still in place 28 days before the holiday is due to start regardless of what the hotel is offering?

Thanks so much.

Life__Goes__On

Nationwide wants people to take up offers of re-booking as it saves them money.
Have a look at your contract and see if you must re-book.
If not leave it till mid June then claim your refund due to FCO advice.

SevenOfNine

I have a Nationwide Flexplus policy. Like most insurers, IMO they're slippery to deal with!

There is a line elsewhere which muddies what initially looks simple. 
"Specific Exclusions"
1.  Recoverable costs: Any costs that you can recover from elsewhere.

Nothing about being obliged to accept rebooking, though they may well try to push you to do that. But it would likely leave you booked for some date in the future when it's probable your current insurance policy would have expired. Any new policy, won't include pandemic like your current one does, or might have a huge excess, or be as an added, costly, extra.

I rang them, ignored the answerphone messages & just stayed on the line, got through within a couple of rings, most surprised.

I'd call & ask, to be sure. I hate to tell someone who probably already knows, but I always note who, date, time.

potatoman3

Thanks so much for your advice both. I had suspected the things you mentioned but wanted to know if there was some clearer definition of rights I had before I spoke with them.

I'll ring and see what they say. I guess there's an argument to make that transferring the booking to a new date isn't actually recovering the cost.

I'll reply to this thread with what happens incase it becomes a useful reference for anyone in the future....watch this space.

spy

SevenOfNine said:

I have a Nationwide Flexplus policy. Like most insurers, IMO they're slippery to deal with!

There is a line elsewhere which muddies what initially looks simple. 
"Specific Exclusions"
1.  Recoverable costs: Any costs that you can recover from elsewhere.

Nothing about being obliged to accept rebooking, though they may well try to push you to do that. But it would likely leave you booked for some date in the future when it's probable your current insurance policy would have expired. Any new policy, won't include pandemic like your current one does, or might have a huge excess, or be as an added, costly, extra.

I rang them, ignored the answerphone messages & just stayed on the line, got through within a couple of rings, most surprised.

I'd call & ask, to be sure. I hate to tell someone who probably already knows, but I always note who, date, time.

What did they say when you called them?

i have a hotel booking with Expedia and they have offered vouchers. My flight is cancelled and when I asked if the hotel was open they said no but they don’t know when it will open. If the hotel is closed then presumably I can do a chargeback on my card but if not then want to know if I can claim on the insurance.  As you say the actual policy terms say costs you can recover elsewhere - I don’t see how a voucher is recovering the cost! Surely normally if a holiday company just moved your holiday to when they felt like you would be able to claim on insurance!

riverrock83

I'm also wondering - as Nationwide say that as hotel is offering us a voucher (which we can't take up - new baby coming!) for our non-refundable hotel booking, they say we can't claim that hotel cost via their travel insurance.

mattyprice4004

riverrock83 said:

I'm also wondering - as Nationwide say that as hotel is offering us a voucher (which we can't take up - new baby coming!) for our non-refundable hotel booking, they say we can't claim that hotel cost via their travel insurance.

If the hotel is offering a voucher, then most policies are seeing that as acceptable - while the timing is poor in your case, unfortunately that's not their issue. 
Congrats on the new addition, though!