Another day, another person with inadequate travel insurance

I have a medical condition my travel insurance is sky high which is fine if i want to go on holiday, I think ordinary healthy people get the TI and don't think anything else about it,

I have been travelling and arranging my own insurance for 48 years now and obviously it has got more and more expensive as I have aged.
Despite never once claiming on insurance I am sure the insurance company would try their best to wriggle out of paying. Of course they are going to shaft you, every other company does why should insurance companies be any different? There would be no consideration of the premiums I had paid over the years and the fact that I am clearly not a fraudulent claimant.

Personally I think it should be compulsory to have travel insurance at the point of booking/ paying for the holiday.
If you go on a cruise you HAVE to show evidence of travel insurance which is why I always use the cruise lines insurance.
I see so many ‘go fund me’ pages on social media for people who couldn’t be assed to pay for travel insurance. Bloody cheek really!

Not sure why the women in question couldn’t have had her spouse cremated then bring the ashes back with her - maybe they don’t cremate in Cape Verde?

They probably thought it came with the policy and didn't expect him to die,

my friends expect husband in his 50s collapsed and died in Spain he had gone for his hobby, they were fortune enough that his family and hobby club paid to have him Repatriated, and he had decent Travel insurance because of what he was doing, Insurance companies don't want to advertise they don't repatriate, imothey let people assume things will be taken care of.

You bring a body home so that it's in a place of your, or their, choosing, I think. Some people like a grave or a place to visit to remember the person who has died.

Cape Verde doesn’t have much infrastructure so this may not have been an option.

I’m fact, reading the story, it seems very vague.

‘Mrs Timsom said she believed she did not have adequate travel insurance to repatriate her husband's body back home, "and I thought it would have been too expensive".’

Doesn’t actually say whether she had any travel insurance, whether the insurance was inaccurate or she just wasn’t able to understand the policy, she doesn’t seem to have sought or been given assistance by anyone… The stories are more around the conditions at the hotel than the insurance aspect.

I doubt that the grave has to be unmarked.

Ianal but I came across some interesting case law recently at work. Essentially an insurance was trying to wriggle out of paying in a scenario and the judge was like... "Isn't this why people buy insurance, for this exact scenario? And if this scenario isn't included, what on earth is the purpose of the insurance?"

Add in the consumer rights act and other settled law about "interpretation" and I think there's at least an argument to be heard that a reasonable consumer would expect repatriation to be the bare minimum of every policy no matter how "no frills". It's the ultimate worst case scenario/never event.

Unfortunately there's no option to cremate on CV. Why anyone would fly a body home otherwise unless for religious reasons is beyond me.

Travel insurance as standard normally covers repatriation doesn't it? I think they've been a bit shafted really, no one thinks they might die and need repatriating and checks carefully that it's buried somewhere in the t's and c's.

Travel insurance like any insurance often leaves you high and dry if they can IME.

What was stopping her having him cremated and bringing his ashes home? One of my relatives sadly died while on holiday abroad (with travel insurance) and we did this as it was far easier than repatriating a body.

It’s quite unusual for a policy not to include repatriation surely? I always buy travel insurance from well known providers but I’m not sure I’ve ever specifically checked repatriation, just noticed it while checking other bits.

They may have fucked around but that’s a hell of a way to find out.

@youalright worded it better than me!

I think you’re being unfair. She had bought travel insurance. She might have thought she’d bought a standard policy which covered repatriation? I was just looking for the case, didn’t see it but saw another online and the initial paragraph included they had travel insurance so body repatriated. I’d assume it was standard cover. I agree with you about the people who go abroad with no insurance though.

It depends whether they where aware of what there insurance covers I've just spent 100s on insurance but it doesn't mean the insurance company isn't going to do everything possible to get out of paying if something happened they know people aren't going to read 20 pages of small print. People with no insurance i have no sympathy. People with insurance that find it doesn't cover certain aspects because of some small print and don't realise until they need it i have sympathy for the person not the disgusting practices some insurance companies use.

People feel entitled to go to exotic places, without understanding the hidden costs of that. Human rights, health and safety, health insurance- we complain about the UK but don’t realise the many privileges we enjoy here.

And are shocked to be without them elsewhere.