Another day, another person with inadequate travel insurance

[JulietteHasAGun]

So very sadly a British man has died in Cape Verde while on an all inclusive Tui holiday with his wife.

She believes his travel insurance wouldn’t cover repatriation of his body so has buried him in an unmarked grave over there and had to come home without him. Which must be very distressing for her. I do sympathise but also think why on earth don’t people get adequate travel insurance. I know it’s expensive as you get older and have pre existing conditions, etc.

friend of mine it cost 5k in travel insurance for her mum to go to Florida for 2 weeks when terminally ill but they paid it. I pay £hundreds for Dd due to her medical issues.

If i couldn’t afford it I wouldn’t go. They could have gone to Spain and had a cheaper holiday, then afforded holiday insurance as well plus being covered by ghic…..though obviously that wouldn’t cover repatriation.

Have to say I’m surprised Tui didn’t help out as they have their own planes especially because there’s lots of rumblings about Brits dying in their hotels over there due to Norovirus, stomach bugs being rampant in their hotels and this guy died after a severe episode of d&v.

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.

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.

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.

@youalright worded it better than me!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I doubt that the grave has to be unmarked.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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,

As an aside we wanted to go to CV last year but chose somewhere else, then ive read about the norovirus that goes around and put us off, that poor man and his wife just wanted a nice holiday.

When I went on a cruise I had to give details of my travel insurance before I was able to travel. All package holidays should stipulate this.

Obviously it wouldn’t cover those who travel independently but it would resolve a lot of these cases.

I know. That’s what I’d do too. It may not be what people want but sometimes you just have to accept that you can’t always have everything you want. I think the media printing all these stories with families next to the hospital bedside don’t help.

She ran straight to the daily mail so maybe they gave her some money.

I generally very much admire Martin Lewis for the work he has done in financially educating the public.

And he DOES harp on about buying insurance "ASAB" (as soon as you book) -all great. BUT I find his messaging on it to be very much "here is a way/links to the cheapest policies possible", which seems very much like it's ticking a box, not that it might actually cover you in your hour of need. I am not sure that is financially wise.

That said, I too would assume repatriation would be a standard clause in travel insurance, and if not, policy documents would do well to spell it out in big bold letters, not tucked away in dense legal text on page 36 of a policy document that actually covers 10 different policy levels and you have to work out which applies to you.

(Side rage: every single policy should have documentation for that exact policy, not multiple levels of cover in one. Hell, 15+ years ago I was working with a company that produced individually tailored packs for a postal marketing campaign, so it is quite possible to generate a policy document for each customer!)

There is no crematoriums.on cape verde.

You can’t put a stone up until the ground has settled after the burial- a year or so, in the uk. I don’t know what the soil in Cape Verde is like. It will probably be marked with a small plaque or cross at the moment. My local has started with small, black, plastic gravestone shaped markers as the temporary measure.

The wording is very vague. Most of these stories are about people who didn’t take out travel insurance. It doesn’t say that here. She ‘thought’ she didn’t have ‘adequate’ insurance and ‘thought’ it would be too expensive. So we have no idea if 1. She had insurance 2. She actually checked whether it was covered 3. She actually checked the cost of repatriation. It’s a very strange and unclear story.