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Forums Other Flight changes and cancellations help Does travel insurance cover price increases for medically delayed trip?

  • 289 posts

    Not quite sure of the answer to this.
    Booked a small European break costing £800 (Eurostar and hotel).
    We will have to delay this due to needing a medical procedure done.
    Moving train and hotel a few weeks back bumps the price up a few hundred pounds.
    Would Amex Platinum cover the difference??
    The hotel is cancellable but the train is not, so the extra cost (£350) would actually be less than the cost of cancelling the train (£500).
    Any thoughts much appreciated.

    818 posts

    I believe they will just cover the price paid for the train which can’t be cancelled – they wouldn’t cover the cost of the cancellable hotel or pay for a trip for you at a later date.

    289 posts

    Yeh that’s what I thought sadly. Annoying as booking early to get the best prices becomes irrelevant. Will just suck up the increased cost of the hotel and new train tickets…

    6,628 posts

    Not quite sure of the answer to this.
    Booked a small European break costing £800 (Eurostar and hotel).
    We will have to delay this due to needing a medical procedure done.
    Moving train and hotel a few weeks back bumps the price up a few hundred pounds.
    Would Amex Platinum cover the difference??
    The hotel is cancellable but the train is not, so the extra cost (£350) would actually be less than the cost of cancelling the train (£500).
    Any thoughts much appreciated.

    The policy says it will cover fees to change a trip if cancelled/rebooked within the terms of the policy; it doesn’t mention the higher cost of rebooking and I wouldn’t expect that to be recoverable. You could try to put the case that changing is cheaper than cancelling but insurers (and airlines similarly) don’t really think like that. They would have covered the cost of the hotel, had it been non-refundable. Also, they will check that the condition now requiring a procedure and causing the trip to be cancelled/postponed wasn’t known about at the time of taking out your card and/or time of booking.

    289 posts

    Not quite sure of the answer to this.
    Booked a small European break costing £800 (Eurostar and hotel).
    We will have to delay this due to needing a medical procedure done.
    Moving train and hotel a few weeks back bumps the price up a few hundred pounds.
    Would Amex Platinum cover the difference??
    The hotel is cancellable but the train is not, so the extra cost (£350) would actually be less than the cost of cancelling the train (£500).
    Any thoughts much appreciated.

    The policy says it will cover fees to change a trip if cancelled/rebooked within the terms of the policy; it doesn’t mention the higher cost of rebooking and I wouldn’t expect that to be recoverable. You could try to put the case that changing is cheaper than cancelling but insurers (and airlines similarly) don’t really think like that. They would have covered the cost of the hotel, had it been non-refundable. Also, they will check that the condition now requiring a procedure and causing the trip to be cancelled/postponed wasn’t known about at the time of taking out your card and/or time of booking.

    Thanks JDB – agree with all the above. It’s a few hundred quid. I’ll just put it down to the “health before wealth” mantra.

    3,324 posts

    Have you actually contacted Eurostar to ask them or have you just tried to change online?

    Sometimes travel operators can be helpful in circumstances like yours but you need to speak to them.

    336 posts

    I recently made a claim for postponed travel due to a medical emergency on Amex Platinum. They paid the entire cost of rebooking the itinerary, including an increased base fare. It may be relevant that my rebooked itinerary was identical (even same days of week), just several weeks later.

    I agree that the wording ‘any fee’ in the policy is a bit ambiguous, but I called up twice to check before I sunk the cost of rebooking and both agents confirmed that they would cover any cost up to the policy limit including changes to underlying fare.

    This has really changed my view of the value of the policy. A lot of policies only cover cancellation, not postponement, and of course it can be hard to rebook an itinerary at a similar cost several months down the line.

    289 posts

    I recently made a claim for postponed travel due to a medical emergency on Amex Platinum. They paid the entire cost of rebooking the itinerary, including an increased base fare. It may be relevant that my rebooked itinerary was identical (even same days of week), just several weeks later.

    I agree that the wording ‘any fee’ in the policy is a bit ambiguous, but I called up twice to check before I sunk the cost of rebooking and both agents confirmed that they would cover any cost up to the policy limit including changes to underlying fare.

    This has really changed my view of the value of the policy. A lot of policies only cover cancellation, not postponement, and of course it can be hard to rebook an itinerary at a similar cost several months down the line.

    That’s fantastic to know. This is why I was intrigued with the “postponement” word, as opposed to pure ‘cancellation”. As this would be a postponement. We are going to re-book the identical trip exactly 14 days later.

    I will keep give them a call.

    Many thanks

    247 posts

    I recently made a claim for postponed travel due to a medical emergency on Amex Platinum. They paid the entire cost of rebooking the itinerary, including an increased base fare. It may be relevant that my rebooked itinerary was identical (even same days of week), just several weeks later.

    I agree that the wording ‘any fee’ in the policy is a bit ambiguous, but I called up twice to check before I sunk the cost of rebooking and both agents confirmed that they would cover any cost up to the policy limit including changes to underlying fare.

    This has really changed my view of the value of the policy. A lot of policies only cover cancellation, not postponement, and of course it can be hard to rebook an itinerary at a similar cost several months down the line.

    +1 for this. Had an injury last summer which would have ruined my family trip, so we rebooked, and the AMEX insurance paid for the increased cost of BA taxes (which had gone up since booking) as well as the additional cost of my hotel and the value of non-cancellable train tickets to the airport. I called and the process was very smooth.

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