Travel Insurance Claim Issue - Refuse to Pay

[Balfour]

My family and I were supposed to go to Italy last Sunday. Unfortunately my little daughter got sick and was unable to travel thus we were not able to travel.

Rang up the insurance company last Saturday and told them what happened, they told us we would be covered. They said for us to ring back on Monday to confirm details.

We rang them on Monday and told them we brought our daughter to A&E on Friday night the 17th, she was admitted to the ward at approximately 2am on the 18th.

They told us that we would not be covered because our policy started on the 18th and because our daughter was brought to hospital on the 17th, we are not covered.

I would appreciate comments on the above, can they do this, we have a letter from the doctor stating she could not travel, surely they cannot do this

Thanks in advance

 

[Leo]

Unfortunately you're not the first person to be caught out by this misunderstanding. Your policy must be in effect when the insured event takes place. So you need to have travel policies commence from when you book travel, not from closer to the departure date.

Read through the T&Cs, this will be covered.

Previous thread here also.

 

[rob oyle]

Read through the T&Cs, this will be covered.

Previous thread here also.

Yep, I learned the hard way on that front. Travel insurance is a misnomer in a way, you're insuring the travelling party rather than the travel itself. Once you have travel plans made, you need to have your coverage in place from that date.

 

[huskerdu]

When did you buy the travel insurance? If you bought it before the 17th why did it only come into effect then?

 

[peteb]

If he took out an annual policy and set a future date for inception, that is likely what happened. But i guess we wait.

 

[Monbretia]

I bought travel insurance few months ago for a holiday, it asked what date I wanted it to start from, luckily I knew it had to start immediately as I had already booked if I wanted cover from booking until end of holiday but if you didn't know that you could think the date to put in would be the start date of the actual holiday.

 

[huskerdu]

Thanks monbretia.

I have never been asked and assumed its always from the date of paying for the insurance. One of the main reasons I get travel insurance is to avoid losing the cost of the holiday if I can't travel.

 

[postman pat]

Just a general comment on this,Its like all insurance is a scam or a lottery,When an accident/incident happens its stressful enough,but the REAL stress is dealing with insurance companies and the minefield you have to tiptoe through when you make a claim....

 

[Balfour]

Unfortunately you're not the first person to be caught out by this misunderstanding. Your policy must be in effect when the insured event takes place. So you need to have travel policies commence from when you book travel, not from closer to the departure date.

Read through the T&Cs, this will be covered.

Previous thread here also.

Agreed, but as stated in one of your threads(16/09/2015) I was only informed by the doctor on the 18th not to travel, this is the same day my policy started, we were all going on holiday up to that point. Surely that itself says something

 

[rob oyle]

Agreed, but as stated in one of your threads(16/09/2015) I was only informed by the doctor on the 18th not to travel, this is the same day my policy started, we were all going on holiday up to that point. Surely that itself says something

Read the other thread linked above that I started - unfortunately the event that occurred which caused disruption to your travel plans was outside of the dates that the policy was in place so there's no comeback.

 

[peteb]

Just a general comment on this,Its like all insurance is a scam or a lottery,When an accident/incident happens its stressful enough,but the REAL stress is dealing with insurance companies and the minefield you have to tiptoe through when you make a claim....

No. you just need to read the terms and conditions when availing of a quote and you will be just fine.

 

[Leo]

Agreed, but as stated in one of your threads(16/09/2015) I was only informed by the doctor on the 18th not to travel, this is the same day my policy started, we were all going on holiday up to that point. Surely that itself says something

As Rob has pointed out, the insurable event in this case isn't the doctor saying you can't go on the 18th, it's the getting sick on the 17th.

 

[trasneoir]

Just a general comment on this,Its like all insurance is a scam or a lottery

All insurance is a lottery. You are betting the insurer that unlikely events x, y or z will happen during the term of the policy.

Say you backed a horse to place and it finished third of seven starters. You've lost the bet fair and square, but if you didn't know the rules you might feel like you've been scammed. I wouldn't blame the bookie, I'd blame you for being a bad consumer - buying a product you didn't bother to research.

I'd have some sympathy if the rules were deliberately obfuscated, but I don't think that's the case here.

 

[odyssey06]

I think for the general public there is a bit of confusion between the old type travel insurance where you were covered for a specific trip and you specified the dates you were travelling ON, and the relatively newer annual policies.

With the specific trip cover, if you couldn't make the holiday even if the event occurred before the start date of the trip, you were covered.
With an annual policy, you are insuring yourself not specific trips.

It would be helpful if the travel insurance companies spelt this out with an example in their FAQs rather than T&Cs
e.g.
Q: "I'm due to go on holidays on 10th June but break my leg on 27th May. Am I entitled to claim if my policy starts on 1st June?"
A: "No. You are only covered if the accident happened after the 1st June. This is why we recommend customers start their travel policies well in advance of their actual journey date."

 

[postman pat]

All insurance is a lottery. You are betting the insurer that unlikely events x, y or z will happen during the term of the policy.

Say you backed a horse to place and it finished third of seven starters. You've lost the bet fair and square, but if you didn't know the rules you might feel like you've been scammed. I wouldn't blame the bookie, I'd blame you for being a bad consumer - buying a product you didn't bother to research.

I'd have some sympathy if the rules were deliberately obfuscated, but I don't think that's the case here.

So insurance is like backing a horse Trasneoir....interesting

 

[cremeegg]

So insurance is like backing a horse Trasneoir....interesting

Except bookies generally pay up.!

 

[trasneoir]

So insurance is like backing a horse Trasneoir....interesting

Yes, insurance is a wager.
The maths for an insurer calculating a premium is fundamentally the same as the maths for setting odds in a bookies. The biggest difference I can think of is that the payout structure is different - instead of "if x happens, we will pay you y", the proposition is "if x happens, we will pay (some portion of) your costs".

Except bookies generally pay up.!

2 reasons for this I think.

• The outcomes in sports betting are simple - a game of soccer can only result in a win/loss, a draw or a cancellation. My comparison, the number of possible outcomes for an insured person's health are vast.
• The insured person wants to win a sports bet, so they visualize the outcome and collecting their winnings. Crashed cars, ash clouds, and cancer are less enjoyable to think about, so we tend to pay our premium and stick the contract in the drawer.

 

[postman pat]

Trasneoir, do you work in the insurance industry,if you do, do you really believe that insurance companies act in the interests of their customers,I know these are commercial enterprises,as we have seen this year their premiums rising by 20,30 and 40% and they blamed the cost of claims which we found out lately have hardly risen at all and were less that the cost of claims in 2011.
At least with the bookies you have a fighting chance!!

 

[trasneoir]

Trasneoir, do you work in the insurance industry

No.

do you really believe that insurance companies act in the interests of their customers

Of course not. Like any other public companies, they are amoral and act only in the interest of their shareholders.
It's up to consumers and regulators to keep them honest, and we're doing a bad job of it. Independent advisers could help, except they are largely paid by the insurers rather than the consumer.

At least with the bookies you have a fighting chance!!

Long term, the house always wins. PaddyPower-Betfair is worth more than any of the Irish insurers - the 7th biggest Irish traded company.

 

[Leper]

Unless somebody is going to get seriously ill on holidays and needs to be "airambulanced" home, travel insurance is almost worthless. The fact that the customer here has contact with the insurers is a bonus.

Several years ago we had an almost identical case as the OP. My daughter could not travel due to a foot operation before we were due to travel. We had taken out insurance from the time we booked and through a travel agent that advertised it was All-Irish. The insurers were based in London and could not be contacted except by fax. By the time our claim was settled we would have been financially better off by not claiming at all with the cost Medical Reports, telephone calls, shoe-leather etc. Travel Insurance is a total rip-off and a licence to print money for the insurers.