Chill Travel Insurance

Daniel1986

My wife was going on holidays and like always we decide to protect from unknown circumstances.

She was flying to the Philippines together with two kids.

Her flight Ireland to the Philippines went without any complications.
While she was in Manila, She received the Information that her return flight SQ921, scheduled to depart on 22 Mar 2020 at 19:00 from Manila, has been cancelled.

She spent hours trying to contact anyone, trying to reschedule, but it looked like Singapore airline was simply shutting down and they ground all the flights.

This left us with no choice, and we had to purchase new return tickets from Emirates airline Manila to Dublin. That ticket cost us €1096, that we are trying to make a claim for.

Chill Insurance told us that:

“It is with regret that we must inform you that your policy does not provide cover for cancellation of a trip or holiday as a result of travel advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs to avoid all but essential travel. We are not therefore in a position to offer cover for your claim.”

The policy was purchased at 23/02/2020.

When she was purchasing the policy there were no travel restrictions, and on Chill Insurance website she clearly told them where she was flying and there was no warning sign or anything informing us that "I should not go there and your policy will not cover anything", they were more than happy to accept our money.

When she flew to Philipines there was also no restrictions in place, everything happened when she was already there. We spend over a thousand euro to get her home safe and now they are telling us we are not covered because they can BACKDATE every event.

Any point in fighting this?

GerardKeating

Daniel1986 wrote: »

When she flew to Philipines there was also no restrictions in place, everything happened when she was already there. We spend over a thousand euro to get her home safe and now they are telling us we are not covered because they can BACKDATE every event.

Any point in fighting this?

Not technically true, depending on what part of the philipines your wife travelled to, there has been a travel advisory against travel to western and central Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago for several years.

Daniel1986

GerardKeating wrote: »

Not technically true, depending on what part of the philipines your wife travelled to, there has been a travel advisory against travel to western and central Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago for several years.

She went to Manila city. And if like I said before when purchasing the insurance there was nothing there about "restricted area" that insurance will not cover.

Salary Negotiator

Read the policy docs and see what it says about cancellations, from memory Chill actually cover very little without paying extra for Travel Disruption.

L1011

Title edited

L1011

The reply looks like a form reply based on an assumption that the outbound leg was after advisories came in - I am presuming this is not the case?

I would reply making that bit blatantly clear.

GerardKeating

Daniel1986 wrote: »

She went to Manila city. And if like I said before when purchasing the insurance there was nothing there about "restricted area" that insurance will not cover.

As other said, perhaps Chill assume the travel started after the advisary, have you stated to them that it was before the travel advisary.

Also, all policies come with terms and conditions and you are asked to confirm (when you purchased the policy) that you actually read them.