My heart bleeds for them

[junipersjuice]

The bbc are reporting that a family booked a Skiing chalet costing £17'000 and are now expecting the small family run firm to give them a refund. They don't have insurance for cancellation. The company are still open for business as far as the chalets are concerned because the area where the chalet is hasn't forced them to close which is needed for them to be able to cancel.

Surely you'd have the gumption to take out insurance if you are spending 17k on your holiday accommodation? We've had to cancel our holidays and one wouldn't give us a refund but we are insured so it's not an issue.

Not sure what your AIBU is?

Nasty.

I imagine that the family were unreasonable for not taking out insurance, or that op is not unreasonable for having little sympathy. easy really

They are being nasty expecting a small family run business to take the financial rap for them not having insurance.

Ok. I just thought it felt like a sneerying at wealthy people type of OP that's all. Perhaps I was mistaken.

sneering

It's a goady BBC post. If you read the article the booking was for 20.

If you can afford £17k just for accommodation you can afford insurance!
Anyone who doesn't take out holiday insurance is an idiot especially when skiing when there is more chance of broken bones!

So it’s not one family but 20 people?

So the OP is goady nonsense then?

If they cannot use the service then the company should refund - surely the company has insurance to cover it.

If they don't then it serves them right.

Doesn’t matter if it is one person or 20. They should have taken out insurance when booking.

We've refunded all our upcoming guests in full. It's a massive hit to take and I'm quite upset most didn't think to take out insurance, but this is a shit situation and I couldn't in good conscience keeps someone's money for a holiday when I couldn't provide that service.

If they don't then it serves them right

Bingo! I think that this is exactly the response that the OP was angling for.

Actually the booking was a family holiday for 20 people, so £850 per person. That's not a mega expensive holiday.

Whatever happened to being kind? This is just a mean and sneering post.

Having just read the article it doesn’t actually say the group didn’t have adequate travel insurance just that the company wouldn’t be offering any refund or the choice to rebook and that this group should go through the insurance company.

Oh and the article doesn't say anything about them not having insurance. A lot of insurance companies wouldn't pay out because the accommodation is still available.

It's a shit situation for all as the business can't get help because France won't order hotels to close and the family can't get there to keep their booking.

Your post is quite misleading when it was a booking for 20 people so not exactly just a small family holiday. I often don’t get travel insurance until fairly near my holidays; very rarely do I get it straight away after booking it although I will rethink that now so possibly that was this family’s plan and they didn’t envisage something that would mean that the entire party wouldn’t be able to go as I’m sure none of us did. My family (6 of us) are set to lose several hundred pounds due to a similar mistake when booking in the U.K. for this summer so your post feels particularly unkind in a time when none of us need it.

Exactly, insurances are not paying in this instance, but let's assume they didn't act responsible so we can feel good at their deserved loss!

Ridiculous thread.

The holiday company will not cancel the booking so how can the 20 members of the group that have booked the chalet claim on insurance? The accommodation is technically still available.

But by all means don't let facts get in the way of your viewpoint.

Doubt insurance would pay out anyway.

Yeah well I don’t know of any travel insurance companies where I’m from (Australia) that include pandemics in their cover. We paid travel insurance BEFORE the covid outbreakvia a very reputable insurance company, and booked flights and a tour via a massive travel chain .. flight centre, Emirates and intrepid. We’re meant to be leaving today for the trip of a lifetime to Morocco with 5 kids and of the £13,000 we paid we’ve seen NOTHING back from the agent and don’t know if we even will with travel companies and airlines going under. This was meant to be our once in a lifetime trip, international travel is banned and anyone would be crazy to go anywhere even if they could, the most we’ve ever spent on a holiday previously has been about £3,000 so take your bitchiness elsewhere OP, there’s always another side. And if some stupid family run chalet is still expecting people to travel all that will happen is they all get covid.

Presumably they could claim based on not being able to get there.

But poss travel company is relying on trains still running including Eurostar?

If they cannot use the service then the company should refund - surely the company has insurance to cover it.

That's the oppostite of how travel insurance works.

If the small, family run business is charging 17 k for a week's holiday or whatever then I very much doubt they're searching down the back of the sofa for spare change.

They should have done the decent thing and allowed them to change dates at least.