Best insurance?
 

Like many, I’m sure, I had planned to travel in Europe this Summer (I’m in the UK) - these plans are now on hold. The BBC has told travellers of all types to contact their insurance companies in the first instance to see what they can do regarding potential refunds. I contacted my insurance company (I’ll not mention which one purposely, as I don’t want to derail my question) to ask them about potential recourse, they weren’t even slightly interested; flatly refused to even discuss anything (and I was only putting out feelers of possibility, not even asking for anything specifically!). I appreciate the fact they’re a business and all associated conversations.

My question (sorry for the preamble) is are there ANY insurance companies that would take into account the UK foreign office statements regarding recourse to things like the travel bans in place at the moment? Perhaps none of them do this? Which ones do you rate? My current one doesn’t take theee things into account - I’ll read the small print more carefully in the future!

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

We're talking about travel insurance, not vehicle insurance - is that right? If it is here's my recent experience. I bought travel insurance for a USA bike trip back in early March (ie before lockdown). The trip itself was due to happen in early April and fell foul of the lockdown so I couldn't travel. I contacted the insurance company - Holiday Extras - to ask them what's happening to the policy as I'm not allowed to travel and the flight has been cancelled (the most important bit).

It took some doing as their staff were all working from home so not answering phone calls and, for a while, not responding to emails. When they came back to me (10 days ago) they said as I hadn't claimed for anything, and wasn't going to claim, I could choose between 50% of the premium back or defer the policy into the future. When I chose the latter (we still want to do the trip, but who knows when) they said there will be a £50 'admin' surcharge ... Better than nothing but not much as the flight was refunded completely and I'm sure they have as much 'admin' to do as the insurance companies.

Yes, travel not vehicle insurance. My point to my insurer was that I was being told I could not travel, not me deciding to not go (for whatever reason).

I might ask mine again about deferment- they just shut me down and didn’t offer me anything. Perhaps I need to ask specifically.