Renewed Travel Insurance

Well that was an interesting conversation. I have a family travel insurance policy which I get for “free” with a monthly payment bank account (hence the “free” bit!) and each year I need o renew my medical conditin that has been declared. Last year the additional cost was £60 and I was quite happy with that. The renewal came through, £63, inflation and costs etc fair enough so I called the bank to renew. We went through the questions again and it came to the do i use walkign aids question. Last year I rarely used my chair, but with time I use my chair more often so I declared I used a chair rather than a stick.

Guess what, my premium went up from £63 to £103, £40 more if you use a chair rather than a stick! Ok, £103 is far cheaper than anywhere else and I do get other benefits in the account but a simple change to one answer and an increase of this size really did feel unfair. I did follow up with a “does this insurance include the actual chair?” hardly surprisingly “no” was the answer.

I expressed my displeasure on the phone but was left with no real option than to accept the price rise. I will be writing to them to express my disappointment to see if they can justify the blatant premium applied to someone in a wheel chair.

thoughts anyone??

Charlie

Charlie, I’m very very surprised at this ? I also have one of those add on packages with my bank that includes travel insurance.

Every time we travel abroad all I need to do is inform the bank when and where we are travelling and thats it, no extra payment no penalty or clauses.

A few weeks ago we travelled to Mexico, I rang up the bank who put me through to their travel insurance department, I explained that we had an “Additions Package” on our account and that we were going abroad, I told them where and when we were going, they made a note on their system, the following day we had written confirmation that the details had been added to our policy, also included was a breakdown of cover provided with emergency phone numbers.

It clearly noted on all the paperwork my MS had been noted.

Its like that every time we travel, ring them up, give them all the details, they make a note of everything, then send out written confirmation, simple.

Maybe not all these packages are the same ?

We’ve had ours for many many many years. I know that if you take out one of these Addition Packages today, you dont get the same cover that people on the “older” types get and its more expensive !

A while ago we considered stopping all our packages but the lady at the bank warned us that if we did stop them and then decided later on to add them again the cover they provided would change and also the cost be higher.