Hello,

I’m desperately seeking help regard a claim with my travel insurance. Here is my situation:

- Policy: Economy Light (attached) - Insure and Go is the insurance company

- Incident while abroad: Money and travel documents stolen from inside our hotel room in Lyon, France, on the 1st night of the trip (22nd December 2017). Unfortunately they were not in the hotel safe.

- Travel plans: The trip was originally organized in 2 parts:

o 1 week in France: starting in Lyon (where the theft happened) and going to the south of France (Nice, Marseille and Perpignan)

o 1 week in Morocco: Departure from Perpignan to Marrakesh and flying from Marrakesh back to London Luton.

- Consequences of the incident: Cancellation of hotels in south of France (as we had to go to Paris instead in order to sort new passports) and complete cancellation of the Morocco trip as we couldn’t get passports in time. Extra accommodation and tickets to get home to the UK from Paris (1 week earlier as we missed the holidays in Morocco).

- Claims I made:

o Section I3: Passport and Travel documents: Seeking for payment to replace the documents (£100 each)

o Section I2 - Personal money: Seeking for payment of the U$450 stolen

o Section J - Cancelling and cutting short your holiday: Seeking for compensation of having cut my trip short because of the passports being stolen

- Response from the Insurance:

o Section I3: Passport and Travel documents: They agreed to pay but under this section it’s saying it includes all the extra expenses incurred in order to replace the passports (£100 doesn’t even cover the costs of the new passports, let alone all the extra expenses!!)

o Section I2 - Personal money: They are saying there is an exclusion for this: (4. Cash or passports that you do not carry with you on your person (unless they are held in a locked safety deposit box).)"- so I guess I won’t be able to get this money back.

o Section J - Cancelling and cutting short your holiday: They are saying that passports being stolen is not in policy as a reason to cut the trip short (which for me is more than absurd as without a passport you cannot travel!). But I don’t see it in the exclusions. They are saying that only these reasons are covered: "Travel and accommodation expenses that you have paid or have agreed to pay under a contract and which you cannot get back, including any local prepaid excursions, tours or activities, if it is necessary and you cannot avoid cancelling or cutting short your trip; and reasonable extra travel costs if it is necessary and you cannot avoid cutting short your trip." I really feel that passports being stolen affect the trip and in my case made me miss flights and my trip and accommodation in Morocco.

- Costs incurred: Amongst hotels we missed, extra accommodation in Paris, flights missed and extra ticket to get back to the UK we spent over 2,000 euros!

Is there anything I can do to get any compensation under Section J (or any other section that apply better to my situation)??? I’m considering to raise this with the Travel Ombudsman, but not sure how to approach.

Please help.. this has ruined my Christmas and my 2 weeks holidays and I’m trying to get a sensible response from the Insurance, but so far I only got “rejections” of my claims.

I would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions you can give me!

Travel Insurance Policy.pdf

you will initially have to ask them to revisit the section J bit and ask them exactly why your claim does not fulfil this criteria and show you where exactly in the terms it states that stolen passports are excluded as a reason for a claim for curtailment.

Basiclaly they are trying to tell you that they have alist of thisngs they pay out on rather than a list of exclusions. that is something that courts and the insurance ombudsman has pulled insurers up on many times before so they know that they are on thin ice with thsi but want you to do all of the work in the hope you may just give up in despair.

HI ericsbrother, I just read again the policy and the Section J has an exclusion for Passports lost or stolen....:/ I guess I have no chance to claim for it now, correct? Is it worth sendng to the Ombudsman anyway?

you cant send anything to the ombudsman until you have exhausted their appeals system so you write again to formally complain that they havent looked at the claim properly.

Also read up on what they pay out for cost of replacing stolen passport, you may have them on that point.

The Passport section only covers £100 for all the below, which is just ridiculous to assume that £100 would cover for anything but the document replacement itself:

It does sound unbelievable that they want to include all the costs within the section that covers the bear minimum amount they pay.... of course that someone that had to incurr extra expenses will spend at least 10 times more than what they are paying...

Not sure if there is any way to argue this though..... any ideias?

If your passport is excluded because it wasn’t in a safe, then surely the rest of the claim for consequential is also excluded?

Also, £100 is not much at all. It always pays to read the full terms before buying insurance...

Sorry to say this, but you seem to have bought the wrong type of Travel Insurance. Most people think that Travel Insurances are mostly the same. This is not true.

A basic Travel policy is onlly really suited to covering say a 2 week holiday to one destination in Spain. Where you are travelling to more than one place, you really need a policy to cover a more complicated trip, which covers the issues mentioned. More expensive policies which offer more cover for independent travellers are designed to cover people who leave the UK, to go to one destination, then other destinations followed by a return to the UK.

If you are travelling like this again, then do more research. Brokers like PJ Hayman offer a wide variety of policy options. Tell them details of the trip and what you want covered and you should then obtain a more appropriate policy.

In regard to your claim, the Insurers will simply look at what you are tryng to claim for and then apply this against the section of the policy. If you are reading/interpreting the policy differently, then put a complaint in writing

Thank you all for your comments.

It seems that I don't have a lot to go on,

I will still complain as I feel that not having passports is a very obvious reason why someone would have to cancel trips.

Lesson learned for next time

- have a better,

more robust insurance.

Thank you all again for your thoughts.