I'm having a nervous break down.

[dmitri]

I know, I should not post this in such a state, but I don't care right now.
We booked with my wife for 5 days of my holiday a flight to Israel to visit our friends. Today we were supposed to fly.
We started off to the Gatwick airport 3 hours before the check-in opens (5 hours before the flight). Normally it would take
1 hour and a half to get there from Abingdon. I don't know what happened today but we stood in traffic jams for 5 hours.
Obviously we missed the flight. The flight operator refused to amend the booking. The travel insurer, if you must know Norwich
Union through our HSBC account Plus service, refused to cover since we were travelling to the airport by car rather than
by public transport. To be honest I'm swearing while writing it.
All in all, I lost my holiday, we lost £600 and it appears I'm having a break down now.
Ta-ta.

[jamdat]

Oh no.
I'm sure everybody here can sympathize with your situation.
Is there an ombudsman or something like that that you can talk to? Perhaps try consumerist.com - somebody there may have gone through something similar and has some useful information.

Take care of yourself!

[elrules]

I'm sorry man! please don't get nervous or sad. Your health is more important than a trip
As we say here in Spain: "more was lost in Cuba's war, ..and they came singing..."
Try contacting some consumer association in your town as jamdat said.

Good look! and keep us informed if there are news

[japi]

I'm sorry
As everybody is saying, your health worths more than a trip, keep that in mind!
Life will give you another trip soon, guaranteed.

We support you !

Japi

[gastric]

If you paid with a credit card contact your credit card services to see if they provide any additional benefits that may cover trip interruption, etc. Or, if you can discard your scruples temporarily, you can try to concoct some believable lie that meets the criteria of either the travel insurance/credit card services/air travel company to generate a refund or at least a voucher or discount for future travel.

Here in the US, at least 8 years ago when I missed a departure by literally 5 minutes (saw the plane just start pulling away from the gate as I banged helplessly on the windows just like in a movie), I simply had to pay $100 fee to change the ticket to a future departure. And that was without any additional travel insurance. I'm assuming my easy $100 fee is thanks to trillions of dollars spent on litigation that eventually results in the vast consumer protectionism that exists in the US.

[Synthex]

It is really horrible !!

[dmitri]

Thanks to all of you for your support! I've calmed down and all right now.