cancelling travel insurance

colcurly

any ideas whether the travel insurance company we have a policy with for a short break to rome in January, refuse a refund.  we have had to cancel due to personal reasons; and i have asked for a refund of the policy cost, seeing that the holiday has been cancelled, car parking cancelled and refunded and we havent claimed against the travel insurance, they are saying the reason for cancelling isnt "bad enough" to offer us a refund.
Can they just get away with this? its not a large amount of money, <£50 , and i havent read through the full T&C's yet, but seems a bit petty to us , seeing we are a few weeks from the actual date of the holiday,and the cancellation reasons are serious enough to us to cancel the holiday break.

la531983

You have still been insured since the policy was taken out - they arent "getting away" with anything. You arent just insured for the 3/4/5/whatever days of the trip, but also in the buildup in case of illness etc.

LightFlare

As above - when did you take out the policy ?

They have assumed insurance risks from that date untill now and presumably have incurred costs associated with the policy.

MyRealNameToo

colcurly said:

any ideas whether the travel insurance company we have a policy with for a short break to rome in January, refuse a refund.  we have had to cancel due to personal reasons; and i have asked for a refund of the policy cost, seeing that the holiday has been cancelled, car parking cancelled and refunded and we havent claimed against the travel insurance, they are saying the reason for cancelling isnt "bad enough" to offer us a refund.
Can they just get away with this? its not a large amount of money, <£50 , and i havent read through the full T&C's yet, but seems a bit petty to us , seeing we are a few weeks from the actual date of the holiday,and the cancellation reasons are serious enough to us to cancel the holiday break.

You have a 14 day cooling off period from the date the policy incepted, after that there is no legal obligation for them to have to offer an option to cancel at all. For bigger insurances like Motor and Home insurers normally do anyway but small policies like Travel etc it's not uncommon that they won't. 

In reality were they to allow a refund then they would have to have a cancellation fee to cover the sunk costs that they cannot recover back, like the fees paid to aggregators for creating the sale. Several years ago the FSA as it was determined that for Motor a fee up to £50 was reasonable and inflation would most likely have pushed that up since then. Whilst costs in Travel are generally lower there would be a significant risk that for the likes of yourself it costs more to cancel it then to see the policy through to completion and it would only give refunds to those with significant medical conditions who are paying much higher premiums. 

DeathByFluffy

Get away with what? They're under no obligation to refund outside of the cooling off period - there's likely to be policy benefits that have already been in force, and they'll have paid costs as mentioned elsewhere in the thread. 

It's sad you've had to cancel the trip, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to a refund I'm afraid. 

sheramber

You need to check your policy document.

Are the reasons for you cancelling included in the cover provided by your policy.?


There will be details of what is covered.

Is there an excess to pay which would cancel  the amount of your claim?