Where travel insurance is sold as a stand-alone product, customers seem more often influenced by price rather than by details of the cover provided, and rarely, if ever, by the quality of claims administration. Travel policies are far from straightforward. This has led to repeated complaints about their content and their requirements from customers.

There is a general expectation that travel policies provide a financial remedy for almost every loss which can occur on a holiday, although almost all travel insurance policies contain strict limitations as to the sort of loss covered and the amounts the insurer may have to pay. Travellers do not often understand that they need to read every detail of the policy they take out and to make sure it covers their specific holiday and what they do there and what they take there.

One of the main causes of dispute is the exclusion for any existing medical condition or for a condition about which the consumer has seen a doctor before buying the insurance. Policyholders often complain about this and have interpreted this as meaning that only illnesses that have been diagnosed are excluded. However, the standard exclusion applies to all medical conditions, regardless of whether the policyholder’s doctor has identified the cause of the problem.

Medical conditions that exist prior to purchase of your policy will not be covered unless you have disclosed them and had them accepted, and that includes cancellation claims arising from the condition. Emergency medical repatriation is covered, but it is not the policyholder’s choice. The decision over whether a traveller to be repatriated is made by consultation between the insurers medical experts and the treating doctors.

Medical cover on travel insurance is only for necessary and emergency treatment. There have been occasions where elements of medical bills have been thrown out, because they are not considered by the insurers to have been necessary or could have waited till the insured returned home.

Another ‘usual suspect’ of complaint concerns cancellations. You are only covered against cancellation for reasons such as illness of yourself, travelling companion, close family member, or for redundancy or jury service. Cancellation due to unwillingness to travel, financial circumstances, split up from partner etc are not covered.Cancellation due to an airline or tour operator becoming insolvent or cancelling part of your trip are not usually covered by travel insurance. Your policy will state, in the small print, exactly what circumstances are covered in the event of cancellation, but they can be very limited.

Curtailment cover is usually an area rife with complaints but is also the least understood by policyholders.On the vast majority of travel insurance policies the curtailment section is only designed to pay the additional costs that you might incur in cutting a trip short due to the illness or death of a close relative back home. These costs are usually very small or non-existent, as the insurers will utilise your existing tickets, where possible, to get you home and the airlines usually change dates or reroute those tickets for little or no extra cost. You are not covered for curtailment if you have travelled on one-way tickets as the insurers say that you would have had to buy a ticket home anyway.