Going to buy insurance for Oct 2016 cruise what about airfare coverage?

Hi all - I am going to buy cruise insurance in the next couple of days for a cruise sailing in Oct 2016 that I purchased yesterday. I am buying now in order to get the pre-exisiting condition waiver. My question is no flights exist yet for this cruise. How do I purchase insurance to include air and not lose the pre existing condition waiver?

Buy the insurance now to cover the known costs, then when you buy air, call the insurance company and add the cost of your air when it is known.

It will probably increase the cost of your insurance plan, so plan on paying a little more immediately.

and Do Not Forget to call and add the air. Many/most/all plans require you to cover all costs associated with a trip. Forgetting to add air could cause problems at the end of the day if any claims are submitted

You can always buy the insurance with the estimated airfare price included now. Some policies allow you to add coverage as pieces of the trip are purchased, but all of the majors allow you to adjust downward as the prices are finalized. Remember that you are purchasing in $500 incremental levels of coverage, so it does not have to be an exact price.

Also realize that in many cases you are really only insuring the airline change fees. I learned that last May when we had to cancel a cruise and flights last minute. The airline allowed us to cancel and use that money within a year as long as we paid the change fee for each ticket. That meant, as far as the insurance company was concerned that our loss was just the change fee, not the entire fare. It was a reasonable deal but I wish I had thought of it when I bought my policy, I would have saved some money on the premiums/

Some airlines - Southwest in particular - do not charge change or cancellation fees. If you fly Southwest then you do not need to insure your airfare. You will receive a credit from Southwest which you will need to use within a year.

I was making some cruise change on the phone. She had been with RC for 9 years, she ask me about the cruise insurance. I ask her if it covered choice air as well and she said yes, but I got no limits or conditions of fare recovery. I question her as much as my limit non insurance lawyer ability let me but she stuck by her statement.

Only problem with RC insurance is that it offers only $25k of evacuation cost. Fortunately I have a yearly plan that covers that issue.

You can just increase the amount if the insurance ..

I was making some cruise change on the phone. She had been with RC for 9 years, she ask me about the cruise insurance. I ask her if it covered choice air as well and she said yes, but I got no limits or conditions of fare recovery. I question her as much as my limit non insurance lawyer ability let me but she stuck by her statement.

Only problem with RC insurance is that it offers only $25k of evacuation cost. Fortunately I have a yearly plan that covers that issue.

You should make SURE that you have everything IN WRITING.

Whatever "someone told you on the phone" is not necessarily going to be helpful if you actually need to file a claim.

And what you wrote is especially alarming if the rep refused to give you "limits or conditions of fare recovery". These are exactly the areas that often cause claim difficulties, or worse... claim denials.

GeezerCouple

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I know this is an old thread, but I had a similar question.

I am about to buy CSA Luxe for our upcoming October 2015 cruise. Pre-existing can be purchased within 24 hours of FINAL payment with Luxe.

This is an overseas trip. Airfare is expensive, and the additional cost to insure is high. However, I understand that all pre-paid/non-refundable, expenses (cruise, air, hotel, excursions) need to be included when buying insurance if we want to make any claim at all. True?

So, I know that the major airlines will provided a voucher for flying if we need to cancel the flight, and we pay the change fees. My question is...do we insure the change fees, only, or the entire fare amount?

Another issue. I believe that most major airlines say that when using a voucher, an International flight has to be taken one year FROM THE TIME THE TICKET WAS PURCHASED. Not a year from the time of the original flights departure date. Is this correct? If so, the voucher could possibly be worthless. In that case, would trip insurance reimburse the entire airfare amount?

What to do? So far, the trip insurance for a pre-cruise trip to London before and an 11 night cruise is costing us almost $800 (cruise in a Suite and our airfare.) This is before we add our non-refundable hotel cost and a couple of pre-paid private excursions.

If the policy requires you to insure the full cost of the trip (not all policies do; you really just need to read yours), this always means the full non-refundable cost. A voucher is not the same as a refund, so you MUST include the full cost of the ticket to receive coverage.

I understand that all non-refundable charges must be included, but an airline voucher is, in a sense, a refund from the airline. Therefore, the insurance may not pay back the entire cost of the flights. They may only pay for the change fees. See Mr. Clicks experience in post #4 on this page. If we had to cancel, we would love to get the entire flight cost back, but not sure the insurance would pay it.

We prepaid our hotel in London in GBP ...1,252.80. I assume in order to insure this, I need to convert the charge to USD. However, today's conversion may not be the same as when we paid for this back in February. :eek: I will need to go back to my VISA statement and find the correct charge.

Anyone have experience with converting numbers for insurance coverage? I also have two London excursions that are prepaid. We have taken trips outside the U.S. before, but never included the pre-paid charges in the insurance before. I still don't understand how the insurance company can know what you have pre-paid, though. Some things are not worth insuring...like certain non-refundable excursion deposits. :rolleyes: iI's easy to let something like that slip through and forget about. However, as I understand it, if the insurance company finds out about them, they can deny a claim if the amounts were not insured.

If you tell the insurance company you are unsure you can use the voucher (which can be a real problem if it has a limited validity date) they'll provide you with the cash. You may have to sign a document where you promise not to use the voucher.

OK, thanks. We will insure it all!

I think our cost is going to be over $1000, now. Never have we had it be so high. :( DH is 62 and I am 57. He just had a heart procedure, so we want to make sure that we dot the i's and cross all the t's. Now waiting on him to go through the Visa bills.

I added the total cost for our trip. Comes to almost $12,850. For the two of us, the total insurance cost will be $980.

So, I was playing around with the figures and found that if I buy the policies separate, that I would save $80. It's not a whole lot, but it is something. Now, in order to do this, I just split the total cost down the middle.

Or, I added up cost and submitted separately again. Only this time, I added the total hotel cost under my husbands name and no hotel cost under mine. That way saves $123.

Has anyone bought separate policies like this?

The second question concerns the Visa bill again. We were charged conversion fees for the hotel and excursions. Do I include those fee's in the trip total?

Neveremind...my husband told me to just buy it and stop overthinking this thing. :rolleyes: :o :cool: