Insurance company - out of business

[weacat]

We received a call from our TA this morning that the company we had out travel insurance with went out of business on Monday. Yup - our cruise is Sunday.

 

Can we still get insurance at this late date from another company? Has anyone else had this experience or have the same problem as us?

[trock]

We received a call from our TA this morning that the company we had out travel insurance with went out of business on Monday. Yup - our cruise is Sunday.

 

Can we still get insurance at this late date from another company? Has anyone else had this experience or have the same problem as us?

 

Are they out of business? or were they bought out? What does your ta say?

 

You need to file a claim with the state insurance department of the state they are in.. I had this happen with home owners..

Good Luck

[jdbmga]

We received a call from our TA this morning that the company we had out travel insurance with went out of business on Monday. Yup - our cruise is Sunday.

 

Can we still get insurance at this late date from another company? Has anyone else had this experience or have the same problem as us?

 

 

I would call insuremytrip and explain your situation and ask them if you can still get insurance.

 

What insurance company went out of business?

[Le Cruiser]

You can also purchase trip insurance through Carnival, you know. We do this every cruise.

[deepnite10]

call your homeowner s insurance..i got my travel insurance thur AAA

[Ken076]

Usually another company picks up their policies; you'll need totrack this down. ken

[weacat]

The insurance compant is Prime Travel out of Colorado. We can't buy insurance from Carnival anymore. Their cutoff is 7 days prior.

 

I'm researching with the State of Colorado Division of Insurance - hopefully we are still covered.

[lizardhowson]

We received a call from our TA this morning that the company we had out travel insurance with went out of business on Monday. Yup - our cruise is Sunday.

 

Can we still get insurance at this late date from another company? Has anyone else had this experience or have the same problem as us?

 

If you put your payment to them on a credit card, call your credit card provider ASAP and request it back.

[Ship Addict]

What?? You didn't have insurance for your insurance?? :p

 

That stinks. Hope you can get it all worked out. Have a great cruise regardless and I hope you don't even have to use your trip insurance!

[jessemon]

We received a call from our TA this morning that the company we had out travel insurance with went out of business on Monday. Yup - our cruise is Sunday.

 

Can we still get insurance at this late date from another company? Has anyone else had this experience or have the same problem as us?

To answer your question...yes you can.....

Try insuremytrip.com. look up their web site then the 800 number. Will make it faster to call them....They are great. Need to call them today for my cruise a week from Saturday.....

[wagboss]

can you buy insurance? we sail on 21 mar. I haven't bought insurance (still haven't got flight reservations). We live in Indiana and I am concerned about getting snowed or iced in.

thanks

patty

[newcruiser08820]

We received a call from our TA this morning that the company we had out travel insurance with went out of business on Monday. Yup - our cruise is Sunday.

 

Can we still get insurance at this late date from another company? Has anyone else had this experience or have the same problem as us?

I think you can get insurance with Travel Guard 24 hours before trip.

[HeidiHo]

can you buy insurance? we sail on 21 mar. I haven't bought insurance (still haven't got flight reservations). We live in Indiana and I am concerned about getting snowed or iced in.

thanks

patty

 

You can buy insurance for your cruise now and then add the insurance for your flights after you get them. I always do this so that I don't lose out on the pre existing conditions clause that most insurance have. You may not be covered for pre existing conditions tho anyway because most insurances require you to purchase your insurance within 14-21 days after making your deposit. I assume you booked your cruise a while ago.

[Hurry&Wait]

The insurance compant is Prime Travel out of Colorado. We can't buy insurance from Carnival anymore. Their cutoff is 7 days prior.

 

I'm researching with the State of Colorado Division of Insurance - hopefully we are still covered.

 

 

While this does not answer your question per se, this link explains that

Prime Travel may be a scam and is not an insurance company:eek:

 

While this does not answer your question per se, you might want to check out this link:

 

http://www.elliott.org/blog/who_is_prime_travel_services/

 

If your travel agent recommended this company, your T/A is on the hook for the problem. I would let them know they need to place coverage, at their expense, with another company. As a T/A they had the duty to do the research and find a company which could back up the claims.

 

I hope this helps in one way. I also hope the other posters have given you viable options. Please have a good cruise and think long and hard if you really need the coverage this late in the game

[Ken076]

weacat - Try CSA Freestyle Insurance. They actually have an 20/20 Option whereby you can buy a policy within 20 days of sailing and pay 20% less (this may eliminate their waiver of pre-existing conditions) !!!!!!!! ken

[wagboss]

You can buy insurance for your cruise now and then add the insurance for your flights after you get them. I always do this so that I don't lose out on the pre existing conditions clause that most insurance have. You may not be covered for pre existing conditions tho anyway because most insurances require you to purchase your insurance within 14-21 days after making your deposit. I assume you booked your cruise a while ago.

 

thanks Heidi:)

[weacat]

If your travel agent recommended this company, your T/A is on the hook for the problem. I would let them know they need to place coverage, at their expense, with another company. As a T/A they had the duty to do the research and find a company which could back up the claims.

 

I hope this helps in one way. I also hope the other posters have given you viable options. Please have a good cruise and think long and hard if you really need the coverage this late in the game

 

 

Thanks for the link to the blog. My TA definitely pushed this insurance to us - a group of 80 people. They are not refunding a dime to us at all. I agree with you fully that the TA is responsible for the research of a legal insurance company. When I called the State of Colarado - they told me that this company never had a license to sell insurance in that state. The TA could have found this out easily.

 

This TA is going to be out of a lot of business because of this. The word has gotten around southern florida about this problem with the insurance and their lack of investigation of this insurance company.

 

We're getting insurance through Access America now - without the pre-existing clause. We decided to spend the extra $70 because we don't like to travel without medical evac coverage.

[DLLem]

The following is a re-post of what I added to another thread:

 

There's a difference between buying legitimate travel insurance and whatever these guys were peddling. A legitimate insurer will be backed by an underwriter rated A or better by A.M. Best and will be registered with your state's Department of Insurance.

 

These guys were selling something closer to your AAA towing service. For the tow/roadside service AAA is not offering insurance. They just collect fees from millions of members and reimburse the towing companies out of that. But it's not insurance. If they ever run out of money you have no recourse to the Dept of Insurance to force them to pay your tow bill.

 

Prime was operating the same way without an underwriter that would guarantee payment of every presented valid claim. Your claim would only be paid if enough other travelers bought a "membership" and cash was flowing in faster than it was flowing out.

 

So when the economy hits a tough patch and fewer people are traveling the new money stops coming in but all of the claims for the existing clients still have to be paid. Oops! Bankruptcy.

 

If you're being offered something that says you're a "member" be very careful. This usually means you're not getting true insurance with the safety of a registered underwriter and oversight by your state's Dept of Insurance.

 

Now a new addition:

 

In almost all states the TA has to be licensed by their state's Department of Insurance to sell travel insurance to their clients. The states look at travel insurance just like any other insurance product and want to make sure that only licensed insurance agents are selling the stuff.

 

One spot where companies like Prime make their niche is with those TAs who cannot or will not get that license. Perhaps they can't pass the background check or maybe they're just too lazy to slog through the whole licensing procedure. But these unlicensed TA's still want to offer something to their clients so they can make a commission so they turn to a company like Prime. Prime, not being a real insurer, doesn't require any licensing hoops to be jumped through. Any legit travel insurer has a whole licensing and compliance department that does nothing but make sure that any TA offering their products meets every requirement of the state in which they reside.

 

One other reason a TA might use a company like Prime could be higher commissions. I have no idea what commission they paid but without the added cost of having an underwriter to back any claims, without the lawyers needed to deal with the 50 state Departments of Insurance, and without the costs of continually keeping track of the licensing status of every TA selling their stuff there is a good chance they were paying a higher than average commission. And there are TAs out there who would sell their own Mothers this stuff instead of a real policy if they could get an extra 5%. And of course there are TAs who just don't have a clue.

[Heirloom]

 

We're getting insurance through Access America now - without the pre-existing clause. We decided to spend the extra $70 because we don't like to travel without medical evac coverage.

 

We think you picked a great, long-standing insurance company as a replacement. We buy it each time. Love the complete coverage, and KNOW that if God forbid we need it, it will cover every base. Keeps our mind on fun ............and off worry !!

[Silverscreencruiser]

A licensed insurance company is required at all time to maintain reserves sufficient to pay whatever it is expected to have to pay out in claims, plus a healthy safety factor. That means that if the insurer can be expected (according to actuaries) to have to pay our $1M in claims for travel insurance policies, it has to have $1M plus a safety factor on deposit. That safety factor means that even if claims are heavier than anticipated, policy owners are protected.

 

This bunch wasn't an insurance company and apparently hoped to be able to pay claims out of cash on hand. You may or may not ever be able to get your money back from them, but you should have recourse against your travel agent if they sold you the insurance as part of the cruise transaction. If they don't offer you a refund of what you paid, contact your state's insurance department.

 

The moral of this is to verify that anything you purchase that should be insurance is actually written by a licensed insurance policy. The documents you receive should list the name of the insurance company on them. If not, or if it claims to be from some company selling "travel services," watch out.

[DLLem]

if it claims to be from some company selling "travel services," watch out.

 

That may or may not be a good indicator as almost every legitimate travel insurance company also packs into the policy some "non-insurance" services. For example, Travel Guard offers clients some concierge-type services that are not insurance -- help with golf reservations, restaurant reservations, etc. Most will also offer 24-hour assistance services such as checking flight delays for you, weather forecasts, and the like. So the fact that they say they're offering "travel services" is by itself not an indicator of a problem. It's the lack of a legitimate underwriter registered to do business in your state of residence that is the big red flag.

 

And even checking on that might not be enough. One company similar to Prime, if you called them up and asked who their underwriter was would tell you So-Snd-So. And they were telling the truth. But what they didn't tell you and what hardly anyone would have thought to ask was that only the medical portion of the policy had an independent underwriter. They didn't tell you that the trip cancellation and trip interruption benefits of the plan were NOT underwritten or registered with any state Dept. of Insurance.

 

So even if you did your due diligence and asked who the underwriter was or took a look at the plan information but didn't pin down what coverages of the plan were underwritten if you had a cancellation claim you were probably still out of luck when they went out of business.

 

These guys are very good at what they do. And what they do is to try to hide from you the true nature of the product they are selling.

[mjl1960]

I would be checking out how much the TA house is worth, because if anything happens, I would own it.

[Hei1980]

What a relief our TA came thru for us. Yes, Prime was the company they had insured us with but today we received our new policy with AccessAmerica! Way to go BC!

[cruisecastle]

We received a call from our TA this morning that the company we had out travel insurance with went out of business on Monday. Yup - our cruise is Sunday.

 

Can we still get insurance at this late date from another company? Has anyone else had this experience or have the same problem as us?

 

You don't need trip insurance. It's basically pushed on people because it's huge profit center for TA's and travel companies. I only bought it when I went to africa. No need for it on a cruise.

[Thirsty Cruiser]

You don't need trip insurance. It's basically pushed on people because it's huge profit center for TA's and travel companies. I only bought it when I went to africa. No need for it on a cruise.

Tell my MIL that after she got the entire cruise cost returned to her when she had emergency surgery. ;)

 

Depending on your situation, it can be a very wise purchase. It is all about how much risk you can tolerate.