My mother-in-law took out an annual travel policy with Holiday Extras last May when booking a week’s holiday to southern France for July. 

She paid £4,998 for the trip for her and her husband. 

Unfortunately, in June she had a mini-stroke and her consultant advised her not to fly until tests were done, so she had to cancel. 

Neither the holiday firm nor the insurer would offer a full refund. 

You are our last hope of getting her money back.

G.R., Hertfordshire.

Sally Hamilton replies: You told me that after the mini-stroke, your mother-in-law had a full stroke and you suspected that the stress of losing what amounted to most of her life savings on top of missing out on the holiday itself – a cruise along the Rhone on MS Lord Byron – had contributed to it. 

You didn’t want to let the issue lie as you felt it was undermining your 76-year-old mother-in-law’s recovery.

The insurer had offered to refund just the holiday deposit, rather than the full balance paid by your mother-in-law. You did not think this was enough as she took out the insurance in May, before her health issues arose.

Holiday Extras explained that although the policy was bought in May, it didn’t begin until the day the trip began in July.

You thought it unlikely your mother-in-law would have chosen this policy had she not thought it included vital cancellation cover.

It seemed odd to me too that it did not cover cancellation before travel, as this is one of the most useful parts of travel insurance.

Even if your insurer asks when your trip starts, you are still generally covered if the trip is cancelled between the time you purchase it and your departure.

I asked Holiday Extras to explain itself and reconsider her claim. I am pleased to say it did not take the company long to turn the ship around and agree to meet the claim after all.

A Holiday Extras spokesman says: ‘When the customer first contacted us, our team explained accurately that their policy did not provide cancellation cover.

‘Upon a further review of the circumstances, we recognise the customer’s potential vulnerability given the nature of their claim. With this in mind... we have accepted the cost of the claim.

‘We are committed to supporting our customers, especially during challenging times.’

I urge all readers to buy travel insurance as a priority when booking a trip – and check with the provider that cancellation before the travel date is covered.

Energy broker's demanding £2,700 in fees 

I run a pottery business and have three energy meters – two domestic (for our house and chalets where potters work) and one for the main pottery.

Before the contracts on the meters were up for renewal in September 2023, I had many calls, some quite aggressive, from energy brokers.

I have always used a broker to find deals for the meters. In the thick of this, I inadvertently signed agreements with two brokers. All three contracts were renewed with the same suppliers I had previously via one broker.

The second, Utility Bidder, had arranged new energy deals for all three meters, but these didn’t go through when the renewals kicked in.

Utility Bidder demanded £750 in lost brokerage fees for each meter – plus VAT – a total of £2,700. 

I was threatened with legal action if I didn’t pay. eventually the broker said it would settle if I paid £1,890.

I am hazy about how it all happened, but I don’t understand why the second broker didn’t check whether my contracts were available to be renewed. What can I do?

 S.W., Isle of Skye.

Sally Hamilton replies: Small businesses can go direct to gas and electricity suppliers or use a comparison service, just like domestic customers.

But many like you find it less stressful to let a broker do the donkey work and negotiate the deals. Brokers can be helpful for busy businesses that might otherwise struggle to find the right deal in a crowded market of perplexing gas and electricity tariffs.

While comparison services get a commission from a supplier when a customer switches – often up to £50 – brokers are more likely to get higher and more variable commissions often paid in the form of an uplift to the energy unit rate offered to the customer. 

The more energy a customer uses the more commission the broker gets.

Brokers are unregulated, something the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero hopes to change, knowing some companies can take advantage of customers with opaque pricing, aggressive cold calling and limited access to dispute resolution.

Not all suppliers can be found via brokers. Octopus Energy, for one, won’t work with them, describing the broker system as ‘unfair’ for customers.

Energy regulator Ofgem has tried to improve matters by requiring suppliers – when securing a micro business contract like yours – to work with a broker only if it is a member of a redress scheme for customers with an unresolved complaint.

Happily, Utility Bidder is signed up with disputeresolutionombudsman.org. Before trying this, you tried to resolve the pricey mistake directly with Utility Bidder. But you felt aggrieved when it only offered to reduce the penalty charge to £1,890.

As a small pottery business, you could not afford to throw away that kind of money. You were so fired up you wrote to local paper, the West Highland Free Press, in which a friend of mine happened to read your letter and reported your dilemma to me. Intrigued, I contacted you directly.

I couldn’t see how trawling the market for an energy deal that didn’t proceed merited such a high penalty. I asked Utility Bidder to re-examine your case.

A spokesman for the broker says: ‘Our terms and conditions, which the customer agreed to be bound by, state that the customer is entering into a legally binding contract and should not have arranged duplicate contracts.

‘There isn’t an easy way for us to know via a central system that another contract had been agreed upon.’

You say theirs was the second one to be set up. They dispute it.

The company asserts it acted reasonably. However, as a goodwill gesture, following my intervention, it reduced your charge to £500, which the company described as ‘very reasonable’ for the hours it had put in.

The lesson in this case is that it pays not to sign up to any deal in haste as the penalties of pulling out can be painful.

• Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email [email protected] — include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.