If the policy that ended on the 18th was an annual plan then it covered your holiday for events that happened between buying it and the expiry date, the renewal covers from that date to the holiday end. This is where it gets dodgy, if you had been taken ill before the 18th and declared unfit to travel you have a clear date of event. But the strike would have been after renewal even though it was announced before and therefore excluded. One way round that might have been to buy the insurance renewal in advance on the day you bought the first part of the holiday, but the company might not have allowed that.

In any case, whether it covered the case of missing a cruise because a flight was cancelled is much more complicated. This is a very grey area and not usually covered in mass market policies which tend to cover only failing to reach the UK departure point (and often exclude internal flights). Had you bought the whole fly/cruise deal as a package then the tour operator would have been liable for the lot and you wouldn't have needed to worry about what the insurance covered.

And yes, I'm afraid you are supposed to keep up to date with the news! The Union made clear it's intention to ballot well before it did - in fact it's already announced that it will hold a new ballot but will avoid an Easter strike. In the case of travel problems this site is your easiest way and probably the BBC News website. There is no way any insurance company would cover you for things that you didn't see in the paper! How could they prove what you saw? Bear in mind the whole business case of the Travel Insurance industry is that they take money off you and don't pay out!

Which is why I'm keeping my fingers crossed that BA's next possible strike either doesn't take place or is over before I'm due to fly with them on 24th April.

Airline strikes are nothing new. Whilst I appreciate that insurance companies may have a get out clause in such an event have you spoken with the cruise operator? You will not be the only person with this problem.

fwh

jacky

Which insurance company is that with? May be one for members to avoid.

luci

Luci

I think it would be more interesting if anyone could find a company that didn't take that attitude!

You must always assume that travel insurers will try to not pay out and if you read your own policy that way you'll probably find the wording they will use in this type of event. There were 2 issues here, a strike that was announced before insurance was taken out and consequential losses - the latter being something the insurance industry always runs away from!

No, I wouldn't expect any company to cover consequential losses, but I would expect them to cover the event of a strike before it was announced.

luci

Why should a company offer cover for an announced strike - Before you have taken out a policy. Insurance cover is based on risk assessment - even if existing policies gave cover it would not make sense to take on more until the matter had been resolved.

Covering consequential losses/damage is an area in which I have some experience from the motor trade. On several occasions I was charged with investigating such claims. It is a complicated and time consuming exercise with mixed results.

I have already asked the question - has the OP spoken with the cruise operator? Strikes take place all over the world not just here in the UK. I would think they will have a procedure in place that could assist in this case. My personal experience within industry has been that when companies/customers are effected a solution can often be found.

fwh

Luci

the insurance might have covered the strike except if you read the original post carefully there seems to be a problem with dates. It's true that the strike ballot was announced after the holiday was bought but the insurance was renewed after that announcement. The original policy would not cover anything that happened after it had expired and the new one would not cover anything that was known about before it was bought.

As I said before, if they had renewed the insurance in advance on the day they bought the holiday then the announcement would have come later and the insurance company would have no get out - but whether they would have been allowed to renew well in advance is another matter which is worth investigating for future reference. It's an interesting point, but if you've spent several thousand pounds on a holiday it may be worth "wasting" a few pounds renewing your insurance before it has expired.

Bu it also makes me think of all these people who are even now buying holidays for summer 2011 - just what cover will they have since an annual plan bought now will expire before they go and I've never seen anyone selling insurance for more than a year!

a lot of food for thought here. I have honestly never thought about potential problems when buying annual insurance.

Steve

I agree that no insurance would cover strike action if it was taken out after the action was announced.

However what we are discussing here is only the intention to ballot which is different from actually taking action. IMO that should be covered as the ballot may not even result in strike action. Also the strike dates would not be announced at that point if the vote was for industrial action rather than against it. It is only an intention to ballot at that point and not a decision to take industrial action.

The grey area is once the results have been announced in favour of industrial action. Should insurance taken out between then and the date the strike dates are announced cover travel?

Again, IMO, travel should be covered provided the policy was taken out before the strike dates were announced as this is an unknown until that point.

luci

That's like saying an insurance company should cover your car when someone has announced an intention to try and steal it.

And I'm afraid your opinion doesn't really matter - what we are dealing with here is the reality of travel insurance. I'm not getting into any long drawn out discussion about what would be morally right - just what it is we are up against. As i have said before on this board - the basic business plan for travel insurance is that they take your money on the assumption that they probably won't have to pay out.

Just compare what happens when you want to insure your house/car. They ask all sorts of questions about yourself and then when they know you better than your mother they ask even more questions about house/car and what you intend to do with it. Then just before you lose the will to live the system goes away and calculates a very specific quote. This is based on a risk assessment of your case and if you do the same thing the next night it will probably give a different price because market conditions have changed. And if you do claim they know that you will still need cover next year and they can get the money back by putting up the premium.

Now look at travel insurance - they actually list the prices in the adverts. So, unless you have the dreaded "pre existing condition", they aren't bothered with a risk assessment. That should ring an alarm bell, if an insurance company isn't bothered about risk it means one of two things, either they aren't going to be around for very long or they don't intend paying many claims! And have you ever seen a No Claims Discount system for travel insurance?

I think that it is going to boil down to the exact policy wording.

For example, my annual insurance says:

What is not covered
strike or industrial action existing or declared publicly by the date this insurance is purchased by You.

It specifically states strike (not ballot which preceedes a strike) existing or declared pubicly by the date you purchase the insurance.

Therefore - in my humble opinion - if I purchase the insurance on the 1st January and a ballot was held on the 20th December this clause would cover me in the event that a strike was declared on the 5th January.

The only grey area lies around the word "industrial action" which strangely enough is not described in the definitions section so should be wide open to interpretation.

For one of the definitions of "industrial action": http://www.answers.com/topic/industrial-action which to me looks like "work to rule", "slow down" and such with a ballot not falling under it as work is resuming as normal whilst the ballot is conducted.

Mark

My annual policy states under exclusions:-

strike or industrial action which began or was announced before the start date of your policy or when you booked your trip.

I agree Mark, a ballot is not a strike and should therefore be covered.

luci

Holding a strike ballot in the UK is covered by laws regarding industrial action and is recognised as such. You will recall that BA stopped the strike not by negotiating a way out but by getting a judge to say the ballot didn't meet the legal requirements.

As the orignal post states, as soon as the question was asked the insurance company consulted it's lawyers and started to prepare to say no.

BA went to court to get an injunction on the strike as a result of the strike ballot being illegal. It had known about this when the ballot was ongoing but couldn't do anything about it whilst the ballot was ongoing.

See also this link:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/TradeUnions/Tradeunionsintheworkplace/DG_179203

© Crown copyright:

In addition, a trade union wishing to call industrial action must ballot all the members it is thinking of asking to take part in the action.

Can't put my own bold on due to the copyright restrictions but note that it must ballot their members before calling industrial action therefore making the ballot and industrial action two distinct differences.

What law are you referring to Steve?

Mark

There is an interesting article in The Sunday Times Travel section today. No link yet available - that answers some of the question on this topic.

fwh

Sometimes the best form of defence is attack.

How about the Insurance Company accepting the OP and insuring them knowing that "the insurance was taken out Nov19th after the BA Union announced their intention to hold a ballot".

Should it (the insurance Company) not have an obligation to inform their customers that if they are intending to fly with BA there is no point buying this - in their opinion - null and void insurance?

The more I think about it the more I am convinced that this particular insurance Company has it wrong.

Mark

The relevant legislation re ballots and industrial action appears to be the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 Sections 226 & 227

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts1992/ukpga_19920052_en_13#pt5-pb3-l1g227

I seem to remember the last attempt to strike failed because the union balloted members no longer employed by BA.

Peter

Thanks Peter, saved me finding it!

Mark, you have a point about the insurers pointing out that they wouldn't cover that particular risk but I think their liabilty might be limited to refunding the premium. And how would they know that a BA flight was part of this holiday - as I said last night, they don't ask many questions.