HilFly

[QUOTE=sunrisegirl;17976674]Because they're supposed to honour their side of an agreement you make with them when you purchase the policy. @:-)

I've had a couple of claims through my travel insurance over the years. Neither have had anything to do with open heart surgery in the US, so to suggest that's all they're useful for is ridiculous. As you say you only have one case to go on so perhaps your judgement on them is clouded. And on both occasions they paid quickly, ie. within 2-3 weeks, without any fuss whatsoever.

Why should BA pay compensation for something which wasn't their fault? I can assure you the last thing BA want or need is snow.[/QUOTE]

Maybe because they're supposed to honour their side of an agreement you make with them when you purchase the ticket?

BAHumbug

Well again, I'm not going to requote in order to save electrons.

I never said the delay of 3 days was financially catastrophic. I was pointing out that your claim people should self-insure was not a good one. I still haven't had a reasonable explanation for what you think people should do if they don't buy insurance.

What if, for example, you go to Thailand as you describe, you've arranged your own trip, pre-paid your hotels and so on, and the hotel you're due to stay in for 14 days has gone bust, or flooded, or burned to the ground ?

The credit card might well be an option to temporarily fix the problem, but walk-up rates in hotels are not cheap. Perhaps you might be happy to swallow that bill in lieu of insurance; I'm not so sure I would be.

The point I made about insurance earlier was that it is there to mitigate your losses. I might be able to absorb such a loss, it doesn't mean I want to when a much cheaper option (i.e. annual travel insurance) is available to me.

Your continual banging of the drum about how poor value some insurance policies are mystifies me. I daresay some people do buy the first policy they see, but to turn your argument back on itself - I would hazard a guess someone flying in F to Thailand is reasonably savvy and would know to shop around, compare deals and all the rest of it. Or perhaps have a broker to do that schlep for him. The point is that good insurance policies exist and they aren't buried under some rock at the bottom of a distant ocean; they are available easily for all and sundry to buy.

Now we come to your claim that using the NHS doesn't materially affect the fact it costs money. It's the same as your claim that seeking reparation (sorry, can't think of a better word) from BA doesn't materially affect the ticket price. It's a common fallacy to argue that one person claiming makes no difference. It doesn't, of course it doesn't, but the point is that it wouldn't stop at one. Once people realised that BA were going to pay out they're all going to rush like little piggies towards the 'free money' till and bonanza time...until the ticket prices go up.

If you don't believe me, think how insurance costs in certain areas (I'm thinking of car insurance) have rocketed since the claims market opened up so much. Surely that illustrates my point ?

Your idea that you should claim, no matter what, is, with due respect, one of the big problems in society today. Instead of taking responsibility for oneself, you absolve yourself of it and place the burden onto someone else with an entitlement attitude. It does nobody any favours, and ultimately ends up costing everyone more.

BAH

HilFly

Do airlines carry insurance for events such as these?

sunrisegirl

Which they are doing by getting the OP home on the earliest flight that's available.

I'm not querying whether any expenses should be paid, but why should anybody benefit by receiving compensation for something that was not the fault of the airline, or anybody really except perhaps God

This compensation culture is costing us ALL in higher ticket prices, higher insurance premiums, etc, etc and I, personally (not as a BA employee) but SRG as a person, find it galling.

I would never dream of seeking compensation from a company doing all it can to help me in difficult circumstances. Yes, I would ask reimbursement for expenses, but compensation ..... never.

BAHumbug

I genuinely have no idea and I was wondering the same thing.

In the area I work, we insure our clients against loss of earnings (basically to protect our commission) but the excess on any one client is £50k, and more for some others, mainly due to age.

BAH

HilFly

Although the OP uses the word compensation in his post he then talks about extra expenses incurred.

BAHumbug

To be fair I think we've all agreed all the way down the thread that his out-of-pocket expenses should be covered by BA...

BAH

sunrisegirl

But he says he feels he should be compensated by being comped a Gold card. So he certainly appears to want compensation beyond his expenses.

golfmad

BA probably has a £20 policy from moneysupermarket.com. Either that or they'll self-insure

TravellerFrequently

Good points, sunrisegirl. ^

IAMORGAN

Sorry, but I don't think any compensation is due.

Whilst I agree that BA isn't totally innocent in all this, they merely have a duty of care. If you send in receipts for maybe some groceries or a reasonable meal out then they should pay.

If you're really bothered, send the wine/car bill & point out you haven't claimed for a hotel but would appreciate a couple of quid towards your liquidity fund!

Try your insurance company- unless you were on a package, this isn't really BA's problem.

HilFly

I think the OP was suggesting comping a gold card in lieu of payment for expenses. I agree with those who have told him not to complicate the issue and just to request reimbursement for expenses.

HilFly

Airlines in the US probably get turned down for insurance due to pre-existing conditions!

Maybe one has to have gone through the pain of buying travel insurance in the US to appreciate that one.

meester69

Depends where you stay tbh. As you say, the credit card will refund the accommodation. And 'walk-up' (rack rate) is not necessary, the last time I landed in Bangkok I booked accommodation online using the internet terminal, before checking in a couple of hours later.

And besides which I'm not entirely convinced that this is an insured risk under (m)any policies anyway. If you want a package, you book a package, if there's a problem with the accommodation, the operator finds you something else. If you book accommodation yourself, if there's a problem with it, you find something else. Your insurer is not going to cover you if you have booked a s**thole and decide you don't like it. That's, in my view, an uninsurable risk (and one I'm quite happy to take) associated with independent travel.

Clearly it cannot be cheaper, because the insurance company are making profit, paying people to handle claims, running offices, and so on.

Well it depends how you define 'easily'. The top google hits for 'travel insurance' all relate to the cheap variety. It's not necessarily a good use of someone's time to find a 'good' insurance policy, when you've failed to come up with a contingency that would really cause a savvy person much difficulty absent travel insuance (and excepting truly catastrophic events, such as the aforementioned medical/public liability). I always say to my wife when we go away 'Have we got our passports?' 'Yes' 'Good, everything else is optional, as long as we've got passports, we can buy anything else we might need'.

Well my car insurance hasn't gone up, I make a point of checking each year that I have the cheapest (and I go for the £500 excess to reduce my premium as much as possible).

But anyway, while this is a substantial digression from the slightly more relevant issue of travel insurance, it is nothing to do with people not being self-reliant that insurance premiums have gone up. Profit margins are up, there are more personal injury claims (some fraudulent), these personal injury claims are driven by no-win, no-fee lawyers advertising on TV, and finally the insurance companies themselves operate expensive 'claims management' subsidiaries. Even then, the fact that fraudsters are making fraudulent whiplash claims doesn't mean that you, as an individual, choosing to claim for a genuine whiplash case are somehow contributing to the breakdown of society.

An individual choosing not to claim on their insurance/claim their benefits/use the NHS makes NO difference to society as a whole.

Oh yes, we need to get rid of all those nasty laws protecting people don't we.

People should just look after themselves, that system works really well doesn't it?

There is a very clear law, originating from the EU, that states that BA is liable for care. If you don't like that law, or the extensive consumer protection regulation that we have in this country, you are entirely at liberty [well, you might not be, depending on visa regulations, but the point is there.....] to go live somewhere where they don't have such burdensome regulations, and companies can do what they like.

There's really no point at all in living in pretending we live in some sort of individualistic society where it's every man looking after himself. We don't, and, despite your protestations, in a world where people DO use the NHS, people DO claim for care from airlines, your decision to look after yourself only harms YOU, and doesn't stop the 'moral breakdown of society/entitlement attitude/insert melodramatic nonsense here' that you are talking about.

sunrisegirl

And nobody is arguing with the duty of care aspect.

What is wrong is the additional claim for compensation when this is nobody's fault.

As for your last para ..... little OTT maybe.