Avoid Voyages Jules Verne insurance

I booked a holiday with Voyages Jules Verne.  I took "their" insurance because I felt that, if I had to cancel, at least I would be dealing with just the one firm.  Even though it was clearly overpriced.

Today I had to cancel the holiday, because of a medical problem that won't go away in time for the holiday.

So I ring up Voyages Jules Verne.  They told me to send them an email.  I asked about the insurance. "Oh you have to call the insurance company separately," they tell me.  I point out that I bought insurance from them, but it cuts no ice.  I enquire whether the insurance company are any good.  There is perceptible hesitation.

I start reading the fine print.  It looks as if you are prevented from cancelling under nearly all circumstances.  I'm going to have to talk to a doctor, and he is going to have to recommend that I don't go.  Well, I think he will -- he saw me last week about it -- but he will have to take my word for how bad it is right now.  But ... what sort of person cancels their holiday fraudulently?  I can't imagine that.

Worse still, I see a presumption on the form that you've talked to the doctor before you cancel.  But of course most of us know when we are too sick to travel!  We'd get a sick note if we had to.

And what would happen, pray, if we had to cancel our annual holiday -- our one, precious, annual holiday -- under pressure from work?  No-one wants to cancel a holiday.  In these days of cutbacks and recession, if your boss was a beast, you might have no choice.  But I am pretty sure that the Voyages Jules Verne policy would ensure you couldn't get your money back.

So here I am.  I'm fed up, because I've had to cancel a long-awaited holiday.  And the insurance I bought, far from reassuring me, is causing me stress and worry.  Nice, hmm? 

And the firm that has this nice policy?  Europ-Assistance.  Of course I have no contractual relationship with them that I know about -- I paid Voyages Jules Verne, not Europ-Assistance.  So if I have to sue, who do I sue?

Don't buy travel insurance from Voyages Jules Verne.  There is no advantage to doing so, the price is silly, the policy looks customer-hostile, and the company looks and smells really bad at this point.

UPDATE: Sure enough, the insurer bilked me.  They deducted £220 under one pretext or another from the claim.  They had the impudence to tell me that their conditions for paying out were "very strict".  Unlike their conditions for taking our money, of course.