I booked our flight a week ago. I wanted to include train travel and one expensive tour, but can’t book those for several months.
Can I purchase my insurance anytime before we leave? For some reason I thought you had to book it within 2 weeks of purchasing airline tickets.
In my experience usually you have to buy within a short period after the first purchase for the trip,. You might try using an insurance search site like https://www.squaremouth.com/ and search for terms relating to timing of purchase.
You must purchase within a week or so to be covered by pre-existing conditions, but otherwise you can delay. My agent says 14 days from making your first deposit, either date on the check or credit card transaction receipt. Also, in my experience, you insure a certain dollar amount, so you can estimate the cost of these items and insure up to that amount.
If you want to cover your flights and also cover any pre-existing medical conditions, you will want to take out insurance within the specified period (14 days is typical). But, if you will then have other costs that you want to cover (that are otherwise not refundable and/or not able to cancel from the place you purchase them, you simply call (or go on-line) to your trip insurance company and add coverage for them as you make those purchases......you are "adding to the policy."
Oh, and I should have added:
Many trip insurance policies require that you refund the ENTIRE amount of any non-refundables for which may later seek reimbursement under a covered claim.
For instance, if you have non-refundable hotel reservations, and your paid amount is $910.36......you cannot just insure for $900.....your claim will require proof what you paid, and if you do not insure for the entire non-refundable amount, you could have your claim denied.
That said, you could choose, for example, if you paid $51 for city tour, but you only insured for $50....well, just do not submit for reimbursement for that part of your expenses, and just submit for (say) airline, hotel, etc.
Check the wording carefully re: airline tickets, as some airlines might issue a credit toward other flights. But, who knows if you will be able to or want to fly with that airline again within the period of time for which the credit is good. In that case, the trip insurance company often requires your signing something that say you are forgoing that credit from the airlines (which is reasonable,of course).
It is super B O R I N G to read every word of trip insurance policies (or several policies if you are doing comparisons before buying), but is is oh-so important to understand the language. Many get caught by the "gotchas."
Also advisable to check the insurance company's "will not insure for" list -- providers they may deem as financially questionable -- (in which case you may not want to book with those providers just knowing they are "on the list)." Also check carriers' "Strike Lists" to see what might be excluded, too. Knowledge is power when you are buying trip insurance.
I havent bought reimbursment insurance for travel in many, many years. So this is interesting.
The last time I did buy it, it asked for how much coverage I wanted. I just plugged in a number. I figured they would pay to that number as long as I had proof. But now I am understanding from this that I need an itemized account of total trip cost? I cant just insure 4 nights out of 5, I gotta insure all 5 nights. So, insure enough to cover 100% of the hotel, then the rest of the stuff if there is anything left over? I am glad I never had to use the insurance because I doubt I ever insured 100% of everything.
I've purchased trip insurance through Squaremouth.com where I only insured parts of the trip, partly to keep the cost of the insurance down. I've been able to purchase this insurance a couple of months before the trip and well after we paid for the trip reservations. My understanding is that the longer you wait to buy insurance after booking the trip the more it will cost. When we had to cancel the trip due to an unexpected medical issue, I was able to get reimbursed by the insurer for the parts that I submitted which were just the airfare and the cost of the VRBO rental that was noncancellable. The statement I got said they only reimbursed me up to the insured amount and it wasn't an issue that the actual cost of the VRBO rental was more than my maximum insured amount. I also didn't submit anything for some misc expenses that were also non-refundable but not that much money. I guess what I'm saying is read any policy very carefully and insure the amount you can't afford to lose if you have to cancel the trip.
Yes, Maggie is absolutely correct! :) So incredibly boring to go over every detail, but also super important. If you go to Allianz Travel Insurance website, they have a bunch of Insurance 101 articles that are really helpful This is taken from one of their articles about whether your Pre-existing Condition will be covered:
For a pre-existing medical condition to be covered, you must insure your full nonrefundable trip costs.
You just booked the trip of a lifetime, a two-week European river cruise with your sister. You hold out on buying your plane ticket, however, because you're hoping airfares to Paris will drop. A few weeks later, you grab that cheap ticket — whew! — but you forget to update your plan by adding the airfare cost to your coverage. Then, a week before departure, your sister (who has long suffered from hypertension) has a major change in her medication and her doctor won’t let her travel. Will travel insurance cover your trip cancellation?
Your travel companion's condition would have been considered a covered reason for trip cancellation if you had insured your full trip costs. Because you didn't, your travel insurance plan would not cover cancellations caused by pre-existing medical conditions. If you had to cancel for another covered reason — because the covered cruise operator went out of business, for instance — your travel insurance would cover the trip cancellation.
Maggie, thanks for the clear posts! For our last trip, I modified our policy twice (to the penny).
For all you youngsters out there that think you don't need insurance, my son-in-law broke his ankle (on an icy Duluth sidewalk, Mardee) requiring surgery about a week before his family was headed to a resort in Mexico several years ago. They were refunded all of their money.
Lulu, I would recommend buying it now to cover for pre-existing conditions (even if you think you don't have any).
Thank you, I will purchase today! My hotels are cancellable, so i typically don’t insure those.
One more question. I’ll be paying for 5 of us, an expensive dinner cruise. Does everyone in the group have their portion on their own insurance, or do I insure the entire amount?
Just a note, if you travel on more than once a year, it might be worthwhile to look into an annual plan. I buy an annual plan and it cuts down on this how much do I have to insure each trip for?
It has coverage limits that are fine with me. I really am only insuring for medical. I tried to book with airlines that will give me a credit if I have to cancel the flight so I can use it in the future. I book refundable hotels for the most part. (I did just book an apartment in Paris, but I do leave in 15 days so unless something really drastic happens, I’m going, but if something drastic does happen, my insurance will cover it. )
Lulu, that will be an excellent question for the various trip insurance companies you might consider.
I "think" (not positive) the answer will depend on if all 5 people are considered (the term I just made up) a "traveling unit." Will you be purchasing travel insurance for them as a group? Or will some of them be purchasing their own travel insurance and their own airline tickets, etc.? And, it might depend on why one or more of them cannot take part in the dinner cruise....is it a covered reason? Let us know what you find out.
Often (we are most familiar with TravelGuard and GeoBlue), trip insurance companies will allow claims for an insured if that person's travel companion has an insurable issue. Not sure if that is the case if they are insured with a different company or different policy ....I just do not know. But, the "devil is in the details," and none of us on the forum is truly qualified to answer that without knowing every detail of your group's travel....AND the particular insurance company you will be insuring thru....and ditto for your others in the party of 5.
You might just give TravelGuard a call just to see how that company would answer the question, based on the particulars of your group of 5.
Oh, and I looked on their web site: There is a "strike list" (for risks of strikes that they will not cover claims if due to that event) and an "alert list" (which lists the companies for which they will no longer provide coverage..typically for $ instability reasons) if you try to insure AFTER the date on which they appear on the "alert list"....ditto for strikes. What is interesting is that the strike list goes back a few years, so it might be worth confirming (if you plan to fly with one of the providers or into that area) is the exclusion is still in place. Seems they used to list when the strike exclusion no longer applied....but it seems to be left for perpetuity now (maybe...or maybe they still see risk with those providers...do not know).
I will say that we have had two claims with TravelGuard over the years, and they were absolutely excellent, not only with reimbursements, but helping us to fly home (and cover all expenses down to the taxi from the airport to our home upon return). But, that said, our claims were "buttoned up," and I had documentation (including a letter I politely requested and received from a ship captain (when the brand's cruise director could provide nothing)...when a cruise was halted mid-way in process)....TravelGuard jumped into action and got us on the next flight out of Halifax, where other passengers endured a 10-12 hour Hellish bus trip (we were told with only one stop) back to Portland. That cruise line ultimately went bankrupt, and I actually called TravelGuard to warn them to put it on their alert list (but it took them a while to get it there....do not know why the delay...maybe they had to be careful to confirm...do not know). From that point forward, we decided to ONLY stick with well-established brands.
Another claim, the head of customer service at the time, told me that they held up our claim form and documentation as the gold standard (for their customer service team). We probably shocked them with the organization and detail. I am sure they receive a lot of sloppy ones with minimal records, which results in complaints,no doubt.
Understanding a policy and being a good customer is not a bad thing. A lot of front-end time, but it can save a lot of heart ache and frustration later.
End of my yammering.............. Have a fun trip, and I hope all goes smoothly and without a hitch.
Whenever I read these posts I am so glad to have never bought insurance.
Well, Toby, when you get the hundred thousand dollar repatriation bill I’m not sure you’ll be glad you didn’t buy insurance.
That’s what I bought for. I can insure the rest of this myself, but I’ve actually had to have somebody use the insurance to get home from Europe. They required a business class seat and a caregiver on the plane. I think that one was only about $25,000 without the caregiver they would not have been allowed to fly and had it been worse they could’ve had to have a private jet.
Please be sure to read the proposed insurance policy carefully. Because the dinner cruise is (??) a third-party product, it may be like a theater ticket or museum admission, from the insuror's point of view. Be careful that there is not a secondary limit on coverage for "local tickets". Also, it is not clear that you are buying 5 full policies. You can't insure friends' dinner cruises who are not already named on the full policy.
