Travel insurance retrospectively changing terms

[Rhayader]

AIBU to be pissed off about this or should I have known better?

We have fairly premium travel insurance that covers just about everything (DHs company pay for it because he travels for work a lot and it covers our whole family).

On the 18th of March EasyJet opened their flights for a large portion of next year, and although COVID was happening I booked our flights for Feb half term 2021 knowing that we were covered in the event that things were still bad in 11 months time.

I received a letter today from my insurer stating that they will not be covering any COVID related cancellations for trips booked after the 14th of March (9am) - so a few days before I booked. Is this legal? If I had known at the time I would have thought a bit more about booking, I feel like they can’t just tell us more than a month after....

Don’t want to drip feed: I booked on a credit card so I might be able to claim it back but I don’t know if there is a time cut off for doing that if it is cancelled because of COVID.

changing terms and conditions with retrospective effect would definitely not be valid, no. Can you prove that the terms that applied at the date you booked would have covered your booking? If so, they would have to fulfil them.

I suspect your policy wordingalready excludes pandemics, and maybe 14 March was when it was declared a pandemic in the UK. So they are just writing now to point this out. But when you booked your trip on 18 March, the policy you had already excluded it.

My annual cover is the same, very annoying because I specifically checked pandemic cover when I bought it in January. I haven't booked my summer trip yet though

What would annoy me the most is that they can change things yet you as the customer usually can’t or at least it costs loads. Any company that did that to me would lose my custom.