I would strongly recommend that you did not use this travel insurer. I put in a claim with OUL Direct when my baggage was broken into whilst checked in at an airport in Spain, they didn't pay out as they said the are not permitted to do so for a checked in piece of baggage. They also lost my claim forms for 2 weeks before they came to this conclusion. The customer service was a disgrace.

Lynne

What I would suggest that you do is write and complain to the company, advising that you want the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) to review the matter. Therefore you are asking them to review the claim and respond with their final response.

The company will not be happy about you possibly going to the FOS as they will be charged a £450 case fee and it will cost you nothing. In these situations a lot of companies will often reverse their decision or start being a lot more helpful.

Send the complaint to OUL direct by recorded delivery to the complaints address shown in the policy wording.

You have nothing to lose, apart from a little time and a bit of postage. I don't think you will be disapointed if you took this course of action.

Huckster

Their policy does in fact cover items that have been checked in, however I suspect the problem is that they require you to report any problems with checked in baggage to the airline and obtain a report from them before you leave the baggage claim area.

I can't copy and paste it, but it's on page 6 of this link

http://www.ouldirect.com/pdfs/2/travelwording.pdf

Did you obtain the relevant report?

If you do succeed in claiming their excess is pretty high at £150 and is per person per section of cover so if two of you are claiming the excess is £300 so you may not get much if any back.

As Huckster has mentioned you could try the Ombudsman but this is a long process.

Thank you so much for your help. I will give it a go.

Lynne

There is a clause which states that they don't cover items which are lost or damamged when they are out with the owners control, the checked in baggage falls under this category. I reported the theft to the airline and to the police and have documentary evidence to support this. I didn't realise items had been taken until I got home so couldn't obtain a report at the airport unfortunately.

I'm curently going through my home insurance now with the claim, hopefully I will have some luck there they seem pretty positive about it.

Malaga airport certainly seems to have a problem with their baggage handlers. The police have informed me that several other passengers on my flight have had a similar issue of theft of items and other people in my party travelling home the following day had the same problem.

There is a well hidden clause excluding claims for "Valuables" or "Money" stolen when outside of your control, if the items that were stolen are within their definition of valuables then it would not be covered.

Their policy is very difficult to follow as they have reduced it to as few pages as possible and crammed it all in rather than make it easy to follow.

A complaint along the lines Huckster described might work due to the way they have laid out their policy.

You will probably find you get a much larger pay out from your home insurers anyway (Unless its Direct Line) as they will pay on a new for old basis, only one excess and have higher limits.