HELP! Travel Insurance wont pay out full amount!

Aimee1505

Hi! I'm hoping someone can help me!

Last Sept me and my partner went on a lovely holiday to Venice. Upon getting to the airport we find nearly all flights are cancelled because of strike action-including ours! The airline had just left letters on the check in desk to say the flight would go the next day and to sort ourselves out-we would have no help from them.

As we live on the Isle of Man we had brought our car over on the boat then driven down to Heathrow. We were due on a connecting boat journey home the next day so would miss this.

Weighing things up we would have to pay EUR110 each way for water taxi, another EUR360 to stay in the hotel an additional night, plus food and the additional parking charges for the car staying a day over our time limit at Heathrow.

Therefore we decided we would pay £384 to get on a flight to East Midlands then get a friend to drive us to Heathrow to get the car so we could make our boat home.

We assumed the travel insurance company would pay out to cover this, however after many months of wrangling they've agreed to pay us only a paltry £60! £30 for each of us because of the delay. We asked them would they have paid the hotel costs etc if we'd have been forced to stay overnight and they said no!

We had originally got our travel insurance through a very well known comparison site after following Martin Lewis' advice about buying a years insurance however we now feel cheated.

What can we say to get our money back??

Lady_E

I can only speak about policies that I have taken out in the past and the current one I have , which first of all indicates that there is normally an excess (usually £50) and then there is a max payout for delays or repatriation or medical emergencies etc. Which company was it? Have you checked your policy to see if any of this applies?

Aimee1505

There isn't anything in it at all to specify a maximum payout for delays. It really is such a scam, the money we've had barely covers the extra petrol and we'd have been left even further out of pocket if we'd have had to stay the night and take the delayed flight the next day. It's not fair that you have to pay out for travel insurance yet they wont reimburse you when things go wrong, i've never had problems like this with my car insurance!

meester

it should be in the terms.

Post the terms here, you need to read insurance terms very carefully.

THey like to find any excuse not to pay.

M4RKM

could have slept in the airport, and got the flight the next day, thus there being no hotel costs involved.... i've done that before. As it was strike action, that is not controlled by the airline, so they are not liable to put you up in a hotel, and in the T&Cs of you Travel Insurance it would probably have a similar exclusion. You would have got back to the UK if you had waited, thus the insurance company not wanting to pay out for travel that really is unnecessary...

(just my opinion!)

Aimee1505

If we hadn't gotten back that day we would have missed our boat. If you ever go/have been to the Isle of Man you will see how expensive it is to get on and off-it cost us £370 return, it can be as much as £300 one way, especially if only booking late and they dont do refunds!

If you've ever been to Venice airport you'll know it's tiny, and there are no seats anywhere. And when you've had a fairly serious 'ladies problem' operation only 3 weeks before the idea of sleeping in an airport is not a nice one...

The strike action was only planned a couple weeks before therefore we were at least entitled to a full refund of the flights that we did not take because when we booked them there was no strike action planned but the airline keep directing us to our travel insurance and the travel insurance wont even cover the flights we didnt take. We even called our insurance company at the time and they assured us we'd be fully reimbursed for any costs yet they haven't kept their word.

M4RKM

keep complaining then to your insurance company... your other options are the insurance industry body thingymibob...

mystic_trev

I think you'll find that many Insurance Policies have a strikes, riots and Civil commotions exclusion clause.

RibAd

with some policies, strikes or industrial action existing or notification of intent at the time of booking the trip are excluded.

insurance company probably didn't pay out if you didnt call their assistance company to inform them of flight cancelation; had it been you may have gotton back some of the costs.