Post Office Travel Insurance

JoeNew2000

Purchased Travel insurance from the Post Office, which is underwritten by Collinson Insurance Services Limited.Having filled out the "online claim form" I waited and then followed up by email, only to be sent

• a claim form in pdf format
• list of proof of ownership Proof that you own the items you’re claiming for. Of course, we know that you might not have receipts, so we can accept bank and credit card statements (as long as they clearly show the purchase). If you don’t have any written proof, we can take photographs into consideration.
• Trip booking Invoice- needs to show a breakdown of charges.
• PIR/report from transport
• Loss/theft Report (police/hotel/tour operator)
• Original Purchase receipts for the items claimed or other proof of ownership  and value
• A boarding pass, email or other evidence of your outward and return journeys to the UK. We use this information to make sure the journey happened while you were covered by our insurance.
• Consent to check if coverage was provided by "others" house or credit card insurance and permission to offset cost of claim against house or credit card insurances. DETAILS OF OTHER INSURANCES - Failure to provide the information requested below may delay your claim
• Some bank accounts and credit cards come with Travel Insurance benefits and if you did have cover of this nature, we may seek a contribution from the other company once your claim is settled.  A loss that is covered by more than one policy will routinely be shared so each Insurer can keep their premiums as competitive as possible, but the contributing Insurer cannot alter the price of terms of its policy unless there has been a claim direct from a policyholder.
• The confirmation (sometimes called a ‘booking invoice’) from your travel agent / airline / tour operator. For your claim, we need to see a breakdown of costs including taxes, fees and charges.
• A full description of what happened leading up to the incident. It will need to be written down, so it’s probably easier to put it in an email.  In your description you’ll need to tell us where you were in relation to the item(s) that were lost/ stolen. If it’s easier to draw a diagram to explain, that’s fine.  Just send it to us with the description of what happened.
• The police report confirming the details surrounding the incident and item(s) lost or stolen. We need to see this so we can be sure that the loss happened while you were insured with us. You might have reported the loss to your hotel, tour operator or onboard ship. If you did,
• that’s fine, you can send us that report instead.  If you didn’t report your loss to anyone, you’ll need to tell us why.
• Some home contents insurance policies extend to cover outside of the home. If you have cover of this nature we may seek a contribution from the other company once your claim is settled. A loss that is covered by more than one policy will routinely be shared so each Insurer can keep their premiums as competitive as possible, but the contributing Insurer should not alter the price of terms of its policy unless there has been a claim direct from a policyholder.

This has now been ongoing for over two months for a claim totalling around £500!

All I get is an auto response "Thank you for getting in touch with us. We do apologize for any inconvenience caused and delay in responding. I can confirm receipt of your recent correspondence and added this to your claim for the claim handler to assess. Once this has been completed, we will contact you. "Yours sincerely The Claims Department For and on behalf of Collinson Insurance Services Limited.

 
Is this normal behaviour for a small travel insurance claim?

Have you had any previous encounters with this firm, it seems they are just prolonging the claim process to attempt to make me give up on the claim.

Any advice would be grateful

elsien

Formal complaint if you’re past the normal eight weeks in which you can expect some sort of response.

Worried_fool

I made a claim on this policy late in 2024…

I made many unsuccessful attempts to get an appropriate claim form (they provided forms for travel delay, but I was claiming for a theft while I was abroad). Eventually we spoke by telephone, and they took details like that. In the course of the conversation we discussed what documentation I had and what they needed, and so I sent the required documents as email attachments directly to the claim handler who had called me. From this point on, the claim was settled reasonably rapidly and professionally.