Essential cover at a bargin price! (Norwich Union)

Member Name: unknownlunatic

Product:	Norwich Union
Date:	01/08/03 (313 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Good level of cover, Freephone tel no.

Disadvantages: Bit of a wait on the phone

As I am soon to go on holiday, I spent ages looking around at travel insurance. I finally decided to go with Norwich Union, for a number of reasons. The main reason however, was the price!

The Holiday:
I will be spending 2 weeks in the USA at the beginning of September, and only wanted cover for that period, not a whole annual policy. I know that annual policys aren't that much more expensive, but I can't afford nore holidays :(

Anyway...... after that bit of essential information, I'll now talk about the insurance.

One thing that impressed me about Norwich Union is their website. It's nice and clear, with all the information you want easialy avaliable. You are able to get a quote instantly online after filling in the various questions about your holiday etc.. Your quote is then saved, so you can go back to it later if you want to. Also, buying online gives you a 10% discount, which is always nice!!

I went through the whole form filling, which only took about 2 minutes, and got my quote. It came up with a price of £29.67. The list of what you get covered for this price is quite extensive, and about the same as what you would get from other insurers. You get all the usual, medical expenses, baggage cover (although this is optional, so you can save a bit more money by not choosing this), your money is covered, and you are covered for if you loose your passport. Other things like legal expenses, cancellation, delayed departure, mugging/hijack are covered. As you would expect, there are also exclusions, things like bungee jumping, white water rafting, and winter sports. You can get Winter Sports cover as an optional extra for if you want to go skiing.

Anyhow, I got my quote, but it says you may invalidate your insurance if you don't declare any 'medical conditions'. Now, that covers quite a lot of things, so I decided to get some clarification of what I needed to tell them about. Specifically,
I have had malaria (not pleasant, I don't reccomend it) in the last year, and wondered if I needed to tell them this.

On their site there is a handy feature called 'Live Chat'. This lets you chat to someone and ask for more information. It's basically a one to one chat room with an advisor. I asked for more information there, and after saying about malaria, was advised that I would need to tell them if I booked insurance. However the advisor was unable to say if/how this would affect my cover, and told me that I should phone them up to discuss it.

So, off the internet, and onto the phone. I was pleasantly surprised that the have a freephone number, so it didn't cost me anything. As it was a free call, I wasn't too bothered to be kept on hold because 'all our advisors are busy at the moment' for about 20 minutes.

When I did get through to someone they were polite and helpful, and apologised for the wait. The lady I was speaking to was able to bring up the quote I had got on the internet, so had the information about when I was going etc, which speeded up the call. I then mentioned about malaria, and she went off to talk to a manager or someone to see if it would affect my cover.

When she came back she told me that the only effect it would have is that they will put a clause on the insurance saying that i'm covered for everything, unless it's to do with malaria. It would cost the same too.

As I had originally got the quote off of the internet, I was still able to get the 10% discount even though I actually bought the insurance over the phone.

Overall I was very impresses with the service, price, and cover provided. When I'v had my holiday, I'll update this review if I have to use the insurance.

Summary: