Insurance

A question about what insurance does and doesn't cover.

If your trip is interrupted due to a covered event (death of a party member) do you get paid for the unused portion of the cruise?

In other words, if you are on Day 6 of an 11 Day cruise, do you get the unused trip portion back?

Ed

It will do depend on the policy.

It 100% depends on the specific coverages and exclusions of YOUR policy.

To give any kind of blanket answer is just wrong. There are so many varieties and types of "insurance", the only totally true statement about them is:

There is no standard anything regarding travel insurance. READ THE FINE PRINT before you buy.

The other almost 100% true statement is: Cruiseline sold/provided insurance probably provides the least amount of coverage at far from the least cost. It's a convenient purchase, usually made by those who just assume it's the "insurance" they need.

I agree.

All insurance policies are not the same.

Even when you purchase it from a company often many provide more then one plan.

There is a saying. The devil is in the details.

The key is to read the details of each policy to figure out what works best for you and what is best for you might not be the best for me and can also vary by trip.

A good source I use to begin the review is http://www.insuremytrip.com

Keith

You need to check the Ts&Cs before you pay the premium.

A question about what insurance does and doesn't cover.

 

 

 

If your trip is interrupted due to a covered event (death of a party member) do you get paid for the unused portion of the cruise?

 

 

 

In other words, if you are on Day 6 of an 11 Day cruise, do you get the unused trip portion back?

 

 

 

Ed

Google and a telephone are your friends.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

I agree.

 

A good source I use to begin the review is www.insuremytrip.com

 

Keith

Just a FYI, we just purchased a Travel Guard policy through insuremyttrip.com. About 125.00 cheaper for the same policy.

insuremytrip is a good website to compare various plans and what their cancellation policies are.

insuremytrip is a good website to compare various plans and what their cancellation policies are.

Great for comparison. But do know that some of their versions of a policy with the same name as the actual insurer's versions may have limitations. Read the fine print.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Many people give bad reviews to AIG Travel guard but we have been using it for some time and had one claim.

We called them and followed all of the instructions implicitly and got a check within a couple of weeks.

Be careful of what you buy. The policies may seem reasonably priced but most of the cheaper policies are secondary and require that you file claims with your credit card company and homeowners insurance before they will pay. This includes the insurance that the cruise line company offers.

Just a FYI, we just purchased a Travel Guard policy through insuremyttrip.com. About 125.00 cheaper for the same policy.

did you leave off something? $125 cheaper for the same policy from where?

You have to buy what you want. My own anecdotal data points:

If I'm going out of the country on vacation, I'll buy the best coverage I can for everything primary. That way, I can just deal with that company. Needed it once in a big way when I was seriously injured 4 days into a 14 day Italy trip. I never had to lay out a Euro - they took over right away and handled the hospital bill, the taxi from Siena to Florence, reimbursed me for the rest of the trip that I had paid for. They offered to re-do my flights, but I had my now-ex do that and change my overnight hotel at CDG (with help from his French manager).

Just this past week, I had a cruise scheduled, leaving this past Monday, flying in on Sunday. My dog (it's just me and him) became seriously ill and could not be boarded at a kennel. I kept hoping he would get better and I could go on my trip. I decided Thursday to cancel everything. Since this was just a Coastal Cruise, I paid the $99 for the "cancel for any reason up until you board" insurance for the cruise; my US-based medical insurance would be good. When I contacted the cruise line, they saw the insurance and immediately refunded everything, including what I prepaid for onboard (minus the 10%, which I accepted when I bought the insurance). I called my airline and told them what happened - it was mostly to cancel to free up the seats for someone else - and they offered to give my money back in form of a credit to use within a year. It was an unexpected gesture.

What insurance you buy, if at all, is dependent on your personal level of risk. Some people say they "self-insure", meaning they don't take out insurance and just accept the they may lose everything, but are OK absorbing that financial hit. If you don't want/can't self insure, look at all those offerings on your cruise line or the omnibus insurance sites like insuremytip.com to find what you want. And, yes, be sure to read all the fine print.

From that website, I've chosen from Travel Guard, Travel Insured, and Allianz. The Travel Insured is the one that saved my butt in Italy.

Trip interruption coverage works as your question suggests (it's cancellation if it happens before the start date, and interruption if it happens after your trip has started).

If you're considering needing to cover the death or illness of a family member, pay very close attention to the pre-existing conditions section of any policy you buy. If grandma is already sick in the hospital you need to make sure that further complications won't be excluded from coverage. Many policies will cover a pre-existing condition if you buy them within a week or two of initial payment for your vacation, and there are a few that will provide coverage if you buy the policy at the time of final payment.

As many have said, you have to read the policy, including the definitions. Every word matters, and sometimes the underwriter's denial of coverage will be based on a clause that doesn't seem important at first reading. Example: when my wife got sick on a cruise a couple of years ago the insurance paid to fly both of us home but they wouldn't pay my expense to travel back to New York to retrieve our car at the pier because when I got home with my wife they declared my trip over and the policy ended when the trip ended.

I purchased my travel insurance within two hours of making the initial payment on my cruise and receiving the PDF of the paperwork via e-mail. My biggest concern is emergency medical evacuation and emergency medical treatment outside the continental United States. Everything else (trip interruption, lost luggage, and cancellation) is just secondary. A emergency medical evacuation can go into the six figures. I can't afford that.

I have no idea what my wife's evacuation cost (I never saw that bill) but her health insurance picked up the bulk of the medical expenses (should have been 80% but they ended up paying 100% of the hospitalization after losing the paperwork for a couple of months). But even with Medicare (famous for lack of non-US coverage) you can buy standard Medigap policies that cover emergency and urgent medical expenses internationally.