Insurance company refusing to pay out!

Teddy18

Please help! We were supposed to be travelling via Eurostar to Paris today but due to current restrictions made by the French Government we are unable to travel. The apartment, booked through Booking.com, have asked us to pay for one night's accommodation, 404 euros. Our insurance, Eurostar Travel Insurance, backed by Allianz, are refusing to reimburse us. On the Product Information received by Allianz it clearly states that we are covered for "Cancelling/cutting short your journey - loss of pre-paid travel and accommodation expenses. However, when we rang Allianz we were told that we were not covered because of laws made by another country. The Allianz agent initially couldn't find where abouts this was written on the Policy Wording document but after coming back to us she found it on page 21 written in minute print, " any restriction caused by the law of any country or people enforcing these laws." Not going on the long awaited holiday is a disappointment but finding out we've been victims of a misleading con is heartbreaking. We did book by credit card so I wonder if we covered that way? Any advice would be gratefully received. 

[Deleted User]

Your credit card simply gives you the same rights against them as with Booking.com. It doesn't sound as if you are due a refund from Booking.com and therefore no claim against your credit card.

If your insurance doesn't cover this scenario, there's nothing you can do. There doesn't appear to have been any con carried out.

Brie

I don't think a credit card dispute will help as that would be against booking.com or the apartment owner, not the insurance company.

I think there wording is dubious.  I get that "any restriction caused by law of any country" is fairly straightforward but the bit about "people enforcing these laws" is dreadfully ambiguous.  Who are these people?  Ok so immigration may not let you enter the country but also Eurostar staff might not let you board the train.  

I also think however unless there is some clear statement such as "covers all losses due to covid" or similar you may be out of luck.

onashoestring

Is it this Eurostar Travel Insurance  policy ?

https://magroup-webservice.com/EST/GB/EN/Eurostar_GB_ST_IPID.pdf

This Eurostar policy says it does not cover pandemics ( except if you are  diagnosed with an epidemic or pandemic disease, such as COVID-19).

As the UK has not banned or advised against travel to France, many are finding that their insurance policies don’t cover the situation where another country has banned tourists from entry but UK Gov hasn’t banned travel to that country.