Telfordian
Newbie
- Messages
- 1
- Type of diabetes
- Type 2
I am 73 and had heart attacks in 1996 and 2001 and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2005, my wife is 74 and has no medical problems – not that I see mine as “problems”. We are both regular hill walkers with a large allotment.
In December Saga, as they have for many years, renewed our annual travel insurance for £340 with a confirmation e-mail on January 3. On that basis we made the bookings for a part-package, part-independent month in Greece totalling some £4,000. Later that month I was diagnosed with polymyalgia. Several contributors to polymyalgia web forums said their insurers had added no premiums. So, despite believing that this condition would not affect our holidays, we did what the policy asked and told Saga.
Saga took me through a full questionnaire then cancelled our policy. When I tried to get to the documents attached to the January 3 email, they were marked cancelled and could not be retrieved, robbing my of anything on which to base my case. That’s the last time I agree to e-mailed documents. Let them pay their own printing and postage costs.
But they would insure us on a trip only basis! The cost of covering the two main holidays we take, instead of £340, was nearer £1,000 and we would still not have the retirement luxury of grabbing a special offer city break that caught our eye. Nor could we be sure that the computer points systems would not have been rejigged if we sought cover later in the year.
All the companies we tried now operate an almost identical questionnaire which draws no distinction between someone who can just make 200 yards on the flat without collapsing and someone who is happy to spend eight hours hill walking. After the rejection I steamed off some of my anger by spending three hours manually sawing up the posts from the fence we had just pulled up.
This appears to be no more than a way of screwing more money out of the growing, and increasingly active, retired market. Two days ago I was a reasonably fit bloke all considered. Now I'm just a cash cow.
In December Saga, as they have for many years, renewed our annual travel insurance for £340 with a confirmation e-mail on January 3. On that basis we made the bookings for a part-package, part-independent month in Greece totalling some £4,000. Later that month I was diagnosed with polymyalgia. Several contributors to polymyalgia web forums said their insurers had added no premiums. So, despite believing that this condition would not affect our holidays, we did what the policy asked and told Saga.
Saga took me through a full questionnaire then cancelled our policy. When I tried to get to the documents attached to the January 3 email, they were marked cancelled and could not be retrieved, robbing my of anything on which to base my case. That’s the last time I agree to e-mailed documents. Let them pay their own printing and postage costs.
But they would insure us on a trip only basis! The cost of covering the two main holidays we take, instead of £340, was nearer £1,000 and we would still not have the retirement luxury of grabbing a special offer city break that caught our eye. Nor could we be sure that the computer points systems would not have been rejigged if we sought cover later in the year.
All the companies we tried now operate an almost identical questionnaire which draws no distinction between someone who can just make 200 yards on the flat without collapsing and someone who is happy to spend eight hours hill walking. After the rejection I steamed off some of my anger by spending three hours manually sawing up the posts from the fence we had just pulled up.
This appears to be no more than a way of screwing more money out of the growing, and increasingly active, retired market. Two days ago I was a reasonably fit bloke all considered. Now I'm just a cash cow.
