trip cancellation/delay insurance??

[Animorph]

We were supposed to be on an Iceland cruise right now. I tested positive for COVID, couldn't board the ship, and the entire cruise will be refunded (they say!). Although I bought trip insurance via World Nomads, the only cruise related travel was from Iceland back home. I payed for a refundable ticket voluntarily for the first time, so that refund is also on the way (already approved, but the process was nuts). Just out the unused insurance.

I had occasion to try to make a travel insurance claim when a cruise ship was damaged at dock and that cruise was canceled by the cruise line. We got credit from the cruise company, but our nonrefundable flights and hotels were not covered by the insurance (World Nomads). They simply did not cover that reason for cancelation.

 

[Dash man]

Has anyone successfully filed a claim on any type of travel insurance?



My fear is that they will find a reason to deny claims.

Back in 2019 we had to cancel a family cruise with six of us going. We were reimbursed as expected after providing some documentation.

 

[braumeister]

Has anyone successfully filed a claim on any type of travel insurance?

My fear is that they will find a reason to deny claims.

I've claimed twice.

One claim paid me just a percentage of my loss that was fairly reasonable, but still far below the premium I had paid. They also made me jump through a great many unnecessary hoops, argue with them repeatedly, and endure a delay of months. This was an Berkshire policy (bhtp.com).

The second time they made up a lot of totally unreasonable and impossible conditions I had to satisfy to justify the claim, and I eventually just wrote it off. This was with Allianz.

I doubt I'll ever get trip insurance again. I have medical evacuation insurance and that should be enough.

 

[donheff]

I made an unintended aerial maneuver on a bike trip in France and broke my collarbone. It was at the end of the trip and the insurer upgraded me to business class for the flight. I’m sure they saw that as preferable to me staying in France for the surgery.

 

[SecondAttempt]

What we do buy, though, is evacuation insurance in countries where English is not widely spoken and medical infrastructure may be dicey. The main reason for this is logistics support from the insuror. Neither of us wants to be trying to make things happen when we can't speak the language and we don't know what our options are. A secondary reason, of course, is financial protection as we have read horror stories of what evacuations can cost. So for recent trips we have bought evacuation insurance in Southeast Asia and Ethiopia.

As mentioned in other threads, we subscribed to Global Rescue evacuation insurance starting this year. I hope we are wasting our money. The advantage in non-English speaking countries is one thing. But living in Hawaii, even a trip to California could trigger an expensive evacuation. My island girl partner has snow skiing on her bucket list so that is on the agneda in December. She's in pretty good shape and ice skating went well in March but you just never know!

 

[mystang52]

Has anyone successfully filed a claim on any type of travel insurance?

My fear is that they will find a reason to deny claims.

I've had 2 claims over the years. Both times I successfully collected, however the experience was 180 degrees different between the 2. The first was with a company based in Colorado (I forget their name), and despite having all of the documentation they kept moving the goalpost for additional information. At the time (20 years ago), I was a VP of a major insurance company subsidiary. I told them I'd be visiting the Dept. of Insurance, mention my job title, and file complaint. I got approved the next day.
The 2nd claim was in 2019, all done online. That process was painless and reimbursement very quick.

 

[mystang52]

Re: evacuation insurance. Does this cover returning to the USA if one gets seriously ill or injured while overseas but medical facilities are available locally?
I'd consider this type of insurance if I had a choice of seeking local care,or flying home for that care.

 

[braumeister]

Re: evacuation insurance. Does this cover returning to the USA if one gets seriously ill or injured while overseas but medical facilities are available locally?
I'd consider this type of insurance if I had a choice of seeking local care,or flying home for that care.

Some do, some don't, and it usually depends on exactly what is needed.
You have to read the contract carefully, since advertising terms tend to be vague.

 

[explanade]

Re: evacuation insurance. Does this cover returning to the USA if one gets seriously ill or injured while overseas but medical facilities are available locally?
I'd consider this type of insurance if I had a choice of seeking local care,or flying home for that care.

I've been using a Green Amex card to book airline flights, for the points but also on the assumption that it offered the evacuation insurance that the Amex Platinum card offers.

But there's no sign that any Amex card other than the Platinum includes evacuation insurance and they don't advertise it much.

I remember there was a WSJ article about someone being evacuated and Amex paying over $100k.


I heard most evacuation policies, the insurer decides if they will evacuate you and to where.

So if you're in Africa, they might only evacuate you to Europe, not all the way back to the US.

And I forget the determination process for whether to evacuate. Probably mostly at their discretion, though what is their incentive to keep you alive? Avoid bad publicity?

Because unless they also underwrote life insurance for you, what is to prevent them from saying that you have good care and don't meet their criteria for being evacuated to another country?

 

[OldShooter]

Some do, some don't, and it usually depends on exactly what is needed.
You have to read the contract carefully, since advertising terms tend to be vague.

This. Policies are not standardized and, worst, for evacuation "services" you may not be dealing with a company that is legally an insurance company, so no recourse with the state insurance commissions.

IIRC Wirtanen also talks about priority for payment. I don't remember the technical term, but some policies are second-to-pay, after you first apply your regular insurance company coverage. This can string things out for quite a while. Others pay immediately regardless of other insurance.

 

[braumeister]

I heard most evacuation policies, the insurer decides if they will evacuate you and to where.

I saw it in action just once, when a member of our party in Denali NP had his back go out and needed evacuation. The nearest hospital that could treat him was in Anchorage, about 170 miles away by helicopter.

Fortunately, he had evacuation insurance and we could reach them by sat phone, but they wanted a doctor's approval before sending the chopper. Even more fortunately, another member of our party was a physician who was able to certify the need over the phone.

All went well in that case, but I think it would probably have been more complicated and taken longer in different circumstances.

OTOH, I have heard that helicopter evacuation from cruise ships has become fairly routine.

 

[explanade]

This. Policies are not standardized and, worst, for evacuation "services" you may not be dealing with a company that is legally an insurance company, so no recourse with the state insurance commissions.

IIRC Wirtanen also talks about priority for payment. I don't remember the technical term, but some policies are second-to-pay, after you first apply your regular insurance company coverage. This can string things out for quite a while. Others pay immediately regardless of other insurance.

Travel insurance policies offer medical coverage as primary or secondary insurer.

I think the latter is more common, meaning that you are expected to show them that you've exhausted all claims against your main health insurance, which may not explicitly cover overseas.

Turns out some health insurance policies will offer emergency coverage so if you're hospitalized, you can make a claim against your insurance and if nothing else, have it counted vs. your deductible.

But it's not clear how much a secondary coverage under travel insurance would pay. They could say well your primary insurance covered it and applied the money to your deductible.

I've gotten travel insurance with primary medical coverage but never had to submit a claim. I think you're suppose to pay out of pocket and submit the claim for reimbursement.

But they got all kinds of language about pre-existing conditions and such.

 

[travelover]

..........I've gotten travel insurance with primary medical coverage but never had to submit a claim. I think you're suppose to pay out of pocket and submit the claim for reimbursement...........

Good points. In my case, I have Medicare with high deductible F coverage, so even though F covers medical overseas, I would have been stuck with the first $2500 or so. As it turned out, I got billed for $2300 to laser my retinal tear and the insurance I'd bought fully reimbursed me. Fortunately, there was no back and forth about other coverage or deductibles, etc. I can see where, depending on the contract, it could have been a lot harder to collect.

 

[OldShooter]

Travel insurance policies offer medical coverage as primary or secondary insurer. ...

Thank you for the terms. IIRC Wirtanen recommends that the travel/evacuation insuror be primary, so apparently that kind of coverage is or was available. Following the link and search in my post #2 should get to columns where he discusses this. Also, of course, travel insurance specialists as already mentioned here should also know.

 

[explanade]

Good points. In my case, I have Medicare with high deductible F coverage, so even though F covers medical overseas, I would have been stuck with the first $2500 or so. As it turned out, I got billed for $2300 to laser my retinal tear and the insurance I'd bought fully reimbursed me. Fortunately, there was no back and forth about other coverage or deductibles, etc. I can see where, depending on the contract, it could have been a lot harder to collect.

So your travel insurance paid out the claim as secondary coverage?

Did your Medicare F policy also apply the bill to your deductible that year?

 

[rodi]

I bought trip insurance for 2 parts of our (cancelled) cruise this past spring. The repositioning cruise was cancelled by the cruise line and we were only offered credit. Insurance company continued to deny because (time limited) credit was offered. If we'd been rejected because we had covid, we would have been able to collect... But the cruise line cancelling on us (against our wishes) wasn't covered. Had to fight the cruise line over a long period of time to turn the credit into a refund. The other part that was insured was our flight from San Diego to get the cruise. Again, if we'd had covid, we'd have been able to collect... but because we were cancelling because the cruise was cancelled, that wasn't covered. The airline gave us credit which I was able to use for a trip my husband wanted to take. The third leg was our return from Europe to San Diego. I hadn't insured that. They offered credit. But then wouldn't let us use the credit for another trip because it had been "paid for in Euros". Took about 3 hours on the phone explaining to various people that I had purchased the tickets from San Diego and my credit card billed in dollars. Finally got a senior manager that let me use the credit to book tickets from San Diego to South America.

I won't by trip cancellation insurance going forward. They don't pay out. Evacuation insurance makes sense.

 

[travelover]

So your travel insurance paid out the claim as secondary coverage?

Did your Medicare F policy also apply the bill to your deductible that year?

To be honest, I don't recall if primary or secondary coverage was even mentioned. I'd purchased the coverage for cancellation as I figured my MIL would die as soon as we booked the trip. She fooled us and lived three more years.

I did not submit the bill to my Medicare supplemental insurance since I'd either have to pay the $2500 deductible or be denied since the other, travel, insurance had paid it.

 

[explanade]

I won't by trip cancellation insurance going forward. They don't pay out. Evacuation insurance makes sense.

Yeah trip cancellation insurance seems to require setting a coverage amount, the supposed total cost of the trip.

That makes the premiums for travel insurance hundreds of dollars for a 2-3 week trip.

But if you set the trip cost to zero, then you can look for things like travel health insurance, some very limited coverage of lost baggage or trip interruption and maybe some evacuation coverage for like $50.

Again that doesn't make it any more likely claims would be paid.

 

[explanade]

To be honest, I don't recall if primary or secondary coverage was even mentioned. I'd purchased the coverage for cancellation as I figured my MIL would die as soon as we booked the trip. She fooled up and lived three more years.

I did not submit the bill to my Medicare supplemental insurance since I'd either have to pay the $2500 deductible or be denied since the other, travel, insurance had paid it.

And they didn't ask you to claim against your health insurance first?

Often there's some kind of language about claiming first against primary coverage, if it is indeed secondary coverage.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference in premiums between primary and secondary travel health insurance.

 

[MrsHaloFIRE]

We used allianz once. I wrote a review on here

 

[travelover]

And they didn't ask you to claim against your health insurance first?..........

No, they just asked for proof of the charges.

 

[Dash man]

I won't by trip cancellation insurance going forward. They don't pay out. Evacuation insurance makes sense.

We use Travel Insured International through USAA and have been reimbursed for us canceling the cruise because we had cancel for any reason coverage when a non traveling family member died. They also cover up to $1M for medical evacuation. I wouldn’t travel without this coverage.

 

[explanade]

CFAR insurance is expensive but it covers like 70-80% of the trip costs and has to be booked early, like within a week of booking the ticket on the common carrier -- airline ticket, cruise ticket.

 

[sengsational]

+1. The lack of the hassle of dealing with an insurance company is worth a lot to me, as well.

That's kind of where I've been. When you're buying, they're blowing about a bunch of crap I don't care about, and only hinting around, not being concrete, about the stuff that would be of benefit. The fine print is mostly hidden or provided after you buy. And then you have to sift through to see if it even qualifies. Then there is how much run-around is going to be required to actually get paid.

I like insurance that's for a solid purpose, with no other clutter, but that's not what I see when I look.

I had a trip cancelled by country pandemic shutdown. Only AirBnB gave me my money back willingly. But NO insurance required to get money back from to the tour operator and three different airlines (big to tiny). I wrote the CC company and challenged each on the basis of not getting the promised service. BOOM 100% of my money back, no insurance required.

 

[Luvtoride]

We have travel insurance for most of our trips through Marriott Vacation Club that covers any timeshare trip we book for a single flat annual premium which is very reasonable. We used it one time when we had to cancel a trip due to Covid and we got back almost $6,000 in the value of our timeshare points we used to book the Christmas week trip. The company was Travelex and they were very good to deal with.

We have another trip planned renting a large villa for our family in the Caribbean over President’s week next year. We purchased the travel insurance as the vendor has significant cancellation penalties if we need to cancel the trip. This insurance is through AON and cost a bit more (based on the value of the villa rental) but I think its well worth it for the cancellation risk, let alone the other coverages for delayed or interrupted trip or evacuation from a foreign country for medical reasons.