Do you purchase trip insurance? Companies to avoid? Good experiences (if you’ve made a claim)?
We don’t purchase insurance to cover the cost of the airfare, etc. However, we have purchased medical/evacuation insurance. Most recently, our son spent time in Nicaragua and then backpacked around Europe for 6 weeks. We purchased a RoamRight policy through Squaremouth.com for around $45 (for the Europe trip) I think. It provided some extra medical coverage while in Europe, but we mostly bought it for the medical evacuation insurance. We don’t purchase travel insurance as there are usually so many restrictions that it is not worth it to us. For domestic travel we try to use Southwest so if something happens, we can just cancel with no penalties.
We’ve only purchased travel insurance once for a Club Med vacation because there were 28 people and all kinds of things can happen. Had to cancel and it was a terrible experience. For one, they had charged us the cost of insurance for the three babies travelling. When I pointed out to them that the air fare was free for a lap baby and they stayed in the room of the parents for free and therefore, travel insurance was unnecessary they told us it was policy. So we wasted $68 X three. They kept saying that all the costs of the trip (except insurance) would be refunded. But the cost of the trip for those three was zero. We then had to provide a ridiculous amount of paper work for EACH traveler and go through numerous hurdles. Which I found frustrating since we cancelled before the time that the trip would have not refunded us the entire cost anyway. So basically, we spent hours of time dealing with it and for this had to pay 28 times the insurance cost for absolutely nothing. Never again.
I’ll chime in with a positive experience.
We often bought travel insurance over our years of travel, and I know that my husband had a few claims when traveling with our son on Colorado ski trips - delayed luggage, missed flight due major traffic on the way to the airport etc.
Just last February, we had a claim for a missed connection on our return from our Caribbean timeshare, resulting in an overnight stay and meals in Charlotte. My MIL was over 90 and in failing health, so I had purchased the travel insurance offered with the airline ticket purchase. Although the missed connection was the fault of American Airlines(a story for another time), American denied us any hotel or food vouchers, but later I did get a chunk of frequent flyer miles from them. The travel insurance was with Allianz Global. I had all our expenses reimbursed within 10 days, including the additional charge for the extra day for long-term parking at our home airport.
For a bike and barge trip in France that we took for last summer, we definitely wanted travel insurance for the medical evacuation protection. After the good experience with Allianz, I perused their options and ended up purchasing an annual travel insurance plan. It covers any trip over 100 miles from home, so it covers a lot of trips for us. Unfortunately, an 80-something friend who was on the trip with us had a cycling accident resulting in a fractured pelvis. He also had Allianz travel insurance, and after a couple of days in a French hospital, he was flown home in first class, with his daughter and a nurse as caregivers on the flight. Allianz paid for the nurse and daughter to fly from the US to accompany him back to the US, and yes, they were in first class with him on the return.
Our annual insurance expires while we will be on another international trip. I will just start another annual plan to begin when the first one expires. Until we are no longer frequent travelers, I will likely continue to have an annual travel insurance plan.
I buy it through Expedia when I book travel. Out of the two trips we have booked for March both now need to be adjusted so it’s worth it to me to have a tiny bit of wiggle room. Like most insurance, I would rather have it and not use it than need it and not have it.
We had to use cancellation insurance once - we were scheduled to take a cruise over Christmas, and a few weeks before, I started experiencing some health issues related to my thyroid, that kind of spiraled down. I went back into my old emails and found the replies about the claims from a company called Berkley, but when I google Berkley travel insurance, I get to this website:
http://www.berkely.com/sites/berkely/Pages/Home.aspx
But it seems to be a service of Aon. Can’t remember if it was then or not. But once I provided a letter from one of my physicians (I think it was my endocrinologist), they honored the claim. It took about three months to process everything, but they didn’t fight it. If I fly Southwest, I usually don’t purchase trip insurance, unless we have spent a lot on vacation rentals that won’t be refunded if we cancel. If we fly another airline, I will sometimes purchase the insurance.
One company I’ve heard good things about is TravelGuard.
If you have a Costco membership, they have a travel group and offer insurance.
I have relied upon the travel insurance that comes with our CCard–I believe it was a visa. I bought us all plane tickets to Europe for June 2000 and then the Icelandic volcano erupted and I got a terrible respiratory infection and my lung MD ordered me to cancel. I submitted his letter to the CC company’s travel insurance and they refunded me the change fees for all of us. I also got refunds of all our reservations and basically was made whole, including non refundable lodging.
For insurance to fly back to your home and/or home country reimbursed by medical insurance, you have to read the fine print and be sure it provides the coverage you want, especially if you have pre-existing medical conditions.
Another time, I bought nonrefundable tickets with United but got a bad infection and my docs ordered me not to fly. United credited us the cost of the tickets and refunded the change fee when we sent in the MD note with new reservations.
I generally have travel insurance through a credit card. Had to file a claim once and while they were very exacting about the requirements (and I was relying on a faraway teenager to get me the receipts), they did pony up. This was for a delay resulting in overnight stay in hotel, extra meals, etc.
On another occasion I learned the hard way that the cc insurance only covers round trip tickets. Sometimes it works out better for me to piece together two one way tickets. After the fact an agent told me two one ways that obviously form a round trip, would qualify for insurance coverage, but I have yet to put it to the test.
If I buy a one way ticket and the add on insurance is something like $16 I buy it, usually Allianz, but haven’t had to file a claim.
I bought my D longer term Allianz insurance when she spent 3 months in Mexico as an exchange student. The pricing was still based on the plane fare but it covered the whole time from departure to arrival back home (maybe that’s always the case??).That policy covered other things besides airfare, such as medical coverage and hospital admission guarantees, etc. Agree with the recommendation to read the fine print, exclusions, etc.
When we went to Africa I bought MedJet because it had the best medical evacuation coverage. For not much more than a policy just covering our trip, I bought coverage for a year, since D attended school out of state. If she had been hospitalized at school, it would have brought her home for treatment. Medical evacuation coverage is often just to nearest hospital capable of treating the condition rather than coming back home.
I’ve bought travel insurance only a few times. Usually only when there is a huge expense involved and I would not otherwise be able to get a refund. (Airfare and hotels I can easily cancel wouldn’t typically make me purchase insurance.) I’ve only needed to make a claim once. My S needed to see a doctor. We paid cash at the office and got reimbursement from the insurance. It was painless. We got the insurance through USAA.
I’ve only been concerned when I am paying a lot of expenses up front (traveling to a foreign country, tour that requires a large non-refundable deposits and other amounts, etc). I also am not overly concerned about travel and medical care within the US, since we mainly travel to large cities with medical care that is likely better than I receive in Honolulu.
We’re considering for an EU trip. Premiums are pricey at our ages. I’m not as concerned about trip cancellation (would not be happy, but could manage non-refundable expenses). I’m more concerned about unforseen emergency return (for us or to return to family). Narrowed it down to Trip Insured Int’l, Travelex or RoamRight for our particular needs. I liked dealing with RoamRight, but that is only pre-sale, and I had never heard of them before.
The last time I got travel insurance, I found it lacking. The flight was cancelled due to weather, and the insurance company said they would not pay if our flight was rescheduled within 24 hours. This is perhaps a reasonable policy, but the trip was for an interview the next morning, and this 24 hours rule would have put us there after the interview. The insurance company would not have paid, but the good news is that united refunded the airfare paid in full. When I told the agent that the flight would have put us there too late for an interview, she just put in for a refund, and we got a credit on on credit card.
Perhaps in other circumstances the insurance would have been worth the price paid.
My H and S just returned from a dive vacation in Indonesia. We purchased Travelex insurance as we wanted to make sure that they had good medical/evacuation coverage in addition to trip interruption/cancellation. One of their domestic flights in Indonesia was delayed, so they purchased tickets for another flight on a different airline in order to catch their connecting flight. They would have missed their 10 day dive boat otherwise. They filed a claim when they returned home and Travelex reimbursed us for the extra flight. Luckily, they had no other issues.
We never buy it. Our view is that what we would have paid for it over many years of travelling would have covered at least one, and probably multiple, cancelled trips. The only time we ever had to cut a trip short and pay extra for a trip home was for the funeral of a family friend–something the insurance would not have covered.
(Note: this is why we never buy extended warranties, either.)
I buy it only for big trips that are planned (and paid for) months ahead of departure, like cruises. Rationale: can’t predict the future and never know what might be happening down the road.
Travelex. D got sick on a trip and had to see two doctors, they covered it all without any out of pocket from me and just a couple of forms afterward. A+service, truly.
I buy it partly for the cancellation/delay insurance but primarily for medical and medical evacuation coverage - I travel in Jamaica somewhat often and hospitals there are not where I’d want to be if truly injured or sick.
Last time my family went it was $120 for all 3 of us. Well worth it IMO.
I get it “free” as a credit card benefit when I buy travel with the credit card–Sapphire Preferred or United Visa. I’ve not made a claim but it makes me more comfortable, especially for packaged tours that require $1000s of non-refundable $$ up front. I don’t feel it’s nearly as important for plane trips.