Three weeks ago, my girlfriend and I decided to visit the lovely city of Dundee for our three-year anniversary. We live in Hampshire, a long drive away, so with only a week's holiday, we didn't want to spend half of it in the car. We decided to fly, and visited a travel agent to help us plan the break. I was surprised to see an extra £27.50 on the travel agency's quote for travel insurance, why would we need travel insurance for a holiday in the UK?
I couldn't see the point at all, they have plenty of hospitals in Dundee, it's no different to England. But later on, while nestled in front of the TV, I started to think more about it.
Things could go badly wrong wherever you are, not just on a foreign holiday - so I wrote down a list of potential circumstances that could affect our holiday:
One of us could become ill before we leave, enough so that we would have to cancel the trip. Both the flight and hotel are booked and they don't offer refunds, so we'd be out of pocket.
My girlfriend's Grandmother has not been very well recently, if she got worse and had to go into hospital, we couldn't go away – we'd have to cancel.
Jury service – either of us could be called up at any time.
Flights are often delayed and cancelled, we might need to arrange an overnight stay at the airport.
Luggage sometimes gets lost at the airport, it happened to a friend of mine on a trip to Australia and she never got it back. Luckily, she was insured.
I have a very expensive digital camera, I only bought it last weekend. If I lost that or it was stolen, I wouldn't be able to afford to replace it.
After writing the list, I remembered my Home & Contents insurance policy, maybe that would cover my belongings on a holiday in the UK? I looked out the policy and read the list of inclusions and exclusions. No, only listed personal possessions counted, so all my clothes etc in the suitcase wouldn't be covered, and I'd have to call the insurance company to get the camera listed on the policy.
I also realised a serious glitch, with over 4 years of no claims discount already, making a claim would mean I'd lose the no claims discount, and the premiums would increase significantly. The premium was already quite high, at £304 a year. I made a mental note to myself to look for a better deal on Home & Contents insurance when it comes up for renewal.
I was already starting to think that considering the list of things that could go wrong, travel insurance was a pretty good idea.
I've always been a bargain hunter, so even though I had decided that I did want travel insurance after all, I was still going to look for a cheaper deal.
I went onto the Internet to see if I could get a cheaper quote. The first few sites I looked at didn't do insurance for single trips in the UK, but after 10 or 15 minutes of searching, I found what I wanted: a single trip travel policy for the UK, at around £10 less than the quote provided by the travel agent.
I read the list of inclusions, and was happy to see that my list of potential problems was all covered.
With baited breath, I then read the list of exclusions. Surely the policy would have a downside. Well the downsides didn't apply to me. The only problem would be if the trip was less than 25 miles from our home address, or if the holiday was to last less than 2 nights. Luckily, that didn't apply. The only other downside was that we'd have to pay the first £30 of any claim, which is to be expected anyway.
I accepted the quotation, and bought the insurance there and then with my debit card. Two minutes later I received the email confirmation that the trip was covered. I got a great deal, and it took me less than 20 minutes!
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