‘Revolut left me with £122k medical bill after honeymoon from hell’

QJust over a year ago my wife and I got married in the Lake District. We had a picture-perfect wedding celebrating the best of Indian and British traditions. Little did we know that our nascent married life would begin with a honeymoon from hell.

My wife and I flew to Costa Rica on July 28, wide-eyed and full of enthusiasm, looking to learn from the region’s biodiversity and relax on the beautiful beaches. After a few days in Costa Rica we made our way to a remote island in Panama near Bocas del Toro.

It was on this island that my wife suddenly fell ill. She had intense headaches and diarrhoea. As I co-ordinated with the owners of the hotel for a plan to get medical help, things escalated and my wife started seizuring. It was one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen. We carried her in a hammock and took a boat to the nearest medical centre.

While my wife was being attended to with urgent care, I started co-ordinating our insurance plan knowing that we might need airlifting.

Both my wife and I are premium Revolut customers, with which travel cover was included. We only went with these accounts for this perk, along with the currency exchange benefits. To my horror, when I spoke to the insurance company they told me that Revolut had cancelled my wife’s insurance. I couldn’t get any more details from Revolut as they said she would need to consent. She was unconscious and unable to, but they just didn’t seem to care.

After scans in the hospital my wife was diagnosed with fungal meningitis. She was put on a ventilator in an induced coma and the doctors couldn’t say how long it would take to treat her.

In the meantime, I contacted one of the top ICU doctors in Panama City who was willing to take her in. However, to get this care we would need to airlift my wife and also pay for the private hospital. They wouldn’t take her without a letter of guarantee. Usually, this would come from the travel insurance. In this desperate circumstance, I spoke to my employer who decided to pay for the expenses as a loan.

We completed the airlift to get her to the best care, where she spent another seven days in a coma, and a further seven days in hospital. Luckily, my wife made it through with the amazing care of the doctors in Panama City. However, we ended up spending £122,000 on medical expenses as a result of this, all of which should have been covered by insurance.

After her discharge, I logged into Revolut. Her premium membership had been deducted in March 2022 (£72) for the whole year ahead. I contacted support for the claim and they said her insurance was cancelled owing to lack of provision of the statement of finances. After this, they also refunded £66, the “unused” premium membership money. I looked through the documentation and showed them that we had indeed provided the finance statement.

Then the customer service agent changed their tune and said the reason for the downgrade and cancelling the insurance had been that my wife’s balance had become negative.

We were getting nowhere with Revolut and they were not engaging with us. We ended up having to go down the legal route and to date have spent £6,900 on legal fees complaining to Revolut. Eventually our complaint was escalated to the Financial Ombudsman Service ( FOS), which has provisionally sided with Revolut. We are at our wits’ end and don’t know what else we can do other than making one final plea to the FOS. We recently came across your column and wondered if there might be anything you could do to help us?

– SR, via email

Dear Reader

AWhen your wife finally came out of her coma after 12 days she was screaming and suffering from delusions, including that she was having triplets and that you had gambled away all their money. She even told you your marriage was over, before coming to her senses and realising none of it was real.

I was sorry to hear that what should have been your dream honeymoon had descended into such a terrible ordeal, which had left you both traumatised and in debt to the tune of £122,000. It was lucky your employer was willing to stump up the cash on loan for your wife’s medical treatment. It’s painful to think about, but without this cash injection saving her life might not have been possible. I spoke to your wife and she said she had not had any communication or warnings about her insurance having been cancelled.

The only email she had received, she said, was one on May 9 2022, saying her account had been downgraded. I asked to see this email, and when she forwarded it to me, I felt it may have been in breach of FCA rules, which state that key information about policies must be communicated clearly to customers, leaving no room for confusion.

Crucially, the email in question did not specifically say that her insurance had been cancelled. The bottom line is it really should have. The email should have laid out exactly what services the premium account came with, and what the standard account came with, so she could be in no doubt about what she had lost. What happened instead was that Revolut assumed she knew what the “account downgrade” meant, which of course she did not. The effect of this communication failure was catastrophic.

It left your wife in a vulnerable situation where she was unknowingly uninsured on her honeymoon, effectively denying her from buying another policy to cover herself in the event of becoming ill abroad. She could have died, but the reality is it has caused you to become in debt to the tune of £122,000. On this basis I asked Revolut to consider paying your claim in full.

To my mind it seemed like such a clear- cut case, so I was interested to know how had the Ombudsman come to take Revolut’s side in the initial adjudication? I was shocked to learn that, when asked for evidence of what correspondence it had with your wife, it submitted a different version of the “account downgrade” email, which it said your wife had received on May

‘My wife was diagnosed with fungal meningitis. She was on a ventilator in an induced coma’

5 2022. Unlike the email your wife received on May 9 2022, this version of the email contained a big red box with a specific warning that her travel insurance would be cancelled.

This smelt extremely fishy, so I asked Revolut outright: was your wife’s complaint (which it claims is the only one of its kind) what made it realise it was potentially breaking FCA rules, therefore prompting it to introduce the big red box warning in “account downgrade” emails? And if this was the case, did it also deliberately mislead the Ombudsman by pretending your wife had received this new version of the email, when in fact she actually received the old version? Revolut categorically denies both of these things.

It said it updated its emails “over a year ago before it was made aware of this incident”, and is adamant that it submitted the wrong version to the Ombudsman owing to a “human error”, not because it wanted to avoid a £122,000 payout.

Whatever the case, I was deeply unimpressed. But then some good news came, which was that it was going to cover the claim in full. A Revolut spokesman said: “We apologise to Ms M for the distress this situation has caused her. When her plan changed we should have communicated the impact this would have on her insurance more clearly. Revolut plans to cover the cost of Ms M’s insurance claim and we have issued £ 500 compensation for her customer experience, which fell well below our usually high standards.”

You and your wife were shaking as I told you the life-changing news. I’m so pleased you’ll now be able to start your family life together free of debt, and although it initially refused, I’ve also persuaded Revolut to pay your £6,900 legal fees. Your story is a stark warning to anyone with a packaged bank account to keep close tabs on their account and associated perks. After this you say you’ll never buy insurance this way again, and frankly, who could blame you?