Southdown / Axa insurance - refused claim for honeymoon

bettyb88

My partner and I were due to travel to Bali on 30 May 2020 for our honeymoon, from Scotland. Self-booked trip with flights and accommodation booked separately. Flights were eventually cancelled by Singapore Airline on 04 May 2020 - we got a full refund for these as did not want to rebook next year due to uncertainty of Covid-19 situation. We also got a full refund for the other hotels that were booked through booking.com with free cancellation. Unfortunately, we booked the Kuta Beach Heritage Hotel directly through the Accor website, and paid a non-refundable rate. We contacted the hotel both on 03 April 2020 and later on 16 May 2020 as the global situation developed to request a refund - although a on-refundable rate, they were offering refunds for these kinds of bookings in their hotels in other countries. However on both occasions they refused a refund, citing "management imposed restriction", and only offered to rebook the hotel at a later date in 2021. On both occasions, the FCO advice was against all but essential travel, the UK Government had restricted travel out of the UK, and the Indonesian Government had banned tourists from entering the country at all, with an "indefinite" timescale. Therefore, there was no way we could have travelled for our stay, and did not know when it would be safe to do so, and so did not want vouchers or to rebook.

Our insurance is with Southdown, who appear to act under Axa. We contacted them to make a claim approximately mid-May, prior to our date of travel. We provided them with the information, and the requested documents showing booking / communication with the hotel. They recently requested a cancellation notice, however I did not have one as I did not explicitly request one, and the hotel correspondence continued to ignore our request for cancellation / refund, and their replies offered rebooking. This is probably my fault for not directly requesting a cancellation notice. We have since sent a further email to the hotel requesting one, to evidence that we did not stay there, but have not had a reply from them, and this was approximately a week ago we emailed.

This has been going on for some time, and Southdown Insurance have since replied to me today 14 July 2020 stating:
"Kindly note that after assessing your case with the directives, we will not be able to provide coverage on your circumstance as you have received the option to rebook for the hotel which is considered as a refund.

A piece of advice that we can offer you on how to get a refund is that under the consumer's act your providers are legally obliged to give you a full monetary refund as they have not provided you with the service which you have paid for."

However, the hotel have been clear that they are not going to offer a monetary refund (£645). We also sought advice from the Citizen's Advice Bureau last week, who stated that they considered the option of contacting my Credit Card provider under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, but if the hotel was open and still able to provide the service we booked, we are not able to claim a refund as the provider did not break their agreement with us.

At a loss of what to do now??

Thanks, Beth

[Deleted User]

Oh the perils of booking non refundable hotel rooms direct with hotel eh?      You are pretty much at their mercy as you are finding out.   

You could try a chargeback on your card?   Citing that the hotel could not provide the services you paid for?    It is almost certain the hotel would have been closed during the period in question, however, if they didn't actually 'cancel' your hotel booking themselves they might argue they were open or you cancelled!    But you can only try that or an S75 and see what happens.    Other than that I don't think you can do much else especially as your insurers have declined as well.

Nebulous2

You could complain to the insurer and then go to the ombudsman. A voucher for next year is not a viable alternative if you don’t want to go. A lot of insurers are taking that line, but it may not stand up to challenge from the ombudsman / courts.