Insurer won’t pay for cancelled train

This is my first claim in all the 31 years I have held any travel policy and so I am particularly disappointed that Fogg Travel is turning it down. ALISTAIR KING, HERTS

The train you were booked on from Grenoble to Geneva to connect with a flight to Luton was cancelled because of a strike. The next one ran the following morning.

So you hired a car for €449 (£390) paying by credit card and keeping the paperwork. You also spent €50 on tolls and €15 on petrol although, not yet anticipating making a claim, you did not obtain receipts for either.

Fogg Travel, which acts as a claims manager on behalf of insurers, wanted absolute proof not only that the train had been cancelled, which you had provided, but the cause of the delay, how long it had been for and whether there had been a substitution providing alternative travel. You tried to obtain the information in the required format but could not do so.

I suggested to Fogg Travel that online research might be a way around all this. Then, on the basis of unofficial online comments substantiating what you had told it about the train, the insurers met the hire car part of the claim.

However, lacking receipts it did not pay for the tolls and petrol.

I argued that you cannot drive invisibly through tolls and cars don’t run on air. At my prompting you provided the relevant information via online tools.

Reluctantly, Fogg Travel approached the German underwriter and these costs were reimbursed too.

Fogg Travel said it is not its role to research such a claim in this way.

It adds original receipts are usually essential to thwart people from making multiple claims. It has made an exception in this case.

I feel you have endured a lot of unnecessary rigmarole that could have been avoided had the matter been escalated appropriately at the start.