Grumpy's Gal
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2004
might have a trip to Europe this summer. I've never bought trip insurance. I'd like to hear your experiences.( and recommendations) thanks!!!
TravelSafe coverage/cost looks pretty good. Have you needed to file a claim with them yet? Thanks.I agree with checking out insure my trip. Be sure you call and speak with a rep personally so you understand your policy. You need to buy the policy as soon as you book your trip. Update it if you add costs. Stay away from TravelGuard; they used to be okay, but I have had to file two small claims with them for covered issues and they were nightmarish to deal with. I now use TravelSafe.
Another vote here!Another vote for insure my trip.
FYI Coast Guard would medi-vac you from free is you are on an Alaskan Cruise.I get trip insurance when I travel overseas and to areas with less access to medical care. I want the medical and evac coverage. I also get it when I have to fork out lots of $$ ahead of time. My job can cancel my leave and even recall me in the middle of leave. I bought it for my up coming cruise because of the cost of the cruise and to cover is something serious happens in and I have to be flown to an Anchorage or Seattle for medical. I be use Square Mouth and have been happy, but luckily never have had to use it.
FYI Coast Guard would medi-vac you from free is you are on an Alaskan Cruise.
True. Very few other medi-vac options in Alaska, but possible.While that is correct, it's not complete information. There is no guarantee the USCG will be the first responder. If for some reason they are busy, further away, delayed, or another (private) medi-vac can reach your location sooner, it will be the private company who gets the transfer. By that point in an emergency, you as a patient don't get the option to say "No thanks. I'll wait until a free ride comes..."
Due to my wife's health we buy trip insurance now. We have used one of the companies on insure my trip dot com, Roam Right a few times, though there are others to choose from. We have had to use it once as we needed to cancel an Alaskan trip/cruise a couple years back about a month before our trip. It was easy to file the claim and had a check very quickly after filing. Luckily we were able to do the Alaskan Cruise last summer. Because she has a pre-existing condition we have to make sure to buy the insurance with in a small time frame, up to 3 weeks depending on the company, after making the original deposit.
Make sure to get enough insurance and to insure the non-refundable portions of your trip. There is no need to pay to insure things you can cancel without penalty or get your money back from.
This is something I have first hand experience with. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and had a stroke 5 weeks before a family cruise in 2012. No trip insurance. I called the travel agent just to see if I had any recourse. HAL and Alaska airlines had no issue at all with a full refund. My travel agent's only comment was that no reputable cruise line is going to refuse to refund money in case of a catastrophic illness. I don't know if that is the norm, or if it was because our Travel Agent books a lot of cruises and flights with HAL and Alaska Airlines, or because we were all Mariner members, but in my experience, refunds under those circumstances are not a problem.
Why not just rely on the free travel insurance that you get from using credit cards?