Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

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Tom Nic
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Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by Tom Nic »

I thought I would go to the well of awesome experience that we have on our board!

What do you recommend for purchasing travel insurance? Any particular things to make sure you have? Stay away from? Any good / bad experiences you can share? Companies that were awesome?

Thanks in advance!!
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Scubie Doo
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Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by Scubie Doo »

Tom, I’m interested in this too. Everything I’ve seen has said that collecting on a claim is a nightmare if you don’t have original receipts. I went through this when my truck was broken in to. Add in deductible and the “protection” is minimal. Hopefully someone will share.

I do have the H2O insurance from DAN and they fulfilled a claim very quickly without any fuss. It’s not travel insurance, but helps with the expensive camera gear.


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Scubak
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Re: Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by Scubak »

What type of travel insurance are you wanting?
It covers alot of items. Flights, injuries, luggage, sickness, unable to dive, lost cameras, lost masks...
What do you want? Also, alot of these aforementioned items can/could/should already be covered under your typical homeowners ins. of DAN.
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Tom Nic
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Re: Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by Tom Nic »

Scubak wrote:What type of travel insurance are you wanting?
It covers alot of items. Flights, injuries, luggage, sickness, unable to dive, lost cameras, lost masks...
What do you want? Also, alot of these aforementioned items can/could/should already be covered under your typical homeowners ins. of DAN.
Kirsten
General travel. The first things you mentioned should be a starting point, dive equipment etc can be a separate item if desired like Scoobie mentioned above
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Penopolypants
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Re: Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by Penopolypants »

My homeowner's/auto insurance (USAA) also offers travel insurance, so I use them. I've never needed it, but they've been excellent when I've needed it for my vehicle.

I recall that Bob bought a plane ticket through Travelocity for Cheng when she was in Nepal, bought insurance, and her flight was disrupted because of the earthquake there. That wasn't a reason for them to pay out. So...yeah.

Insurance is not actually in the business of paying for claims, so be prepared to document and fight, unfortunately. Except for USAA, they're great! :)

But the flight business, a bit of advice from the wife of a man who travels extensively for work - sites like Travelocity, Expedia, etc., are great if you are looking for the best flight price from multiple airlines, but these days the price is usually the same if you buy your ticket directly from the airline, and you have SIGNIFICANTLY less hassle if something goes wrong. Also, if you can at all avoid it, keep your flight legs on the same airline. Again, it's WAY easier if you have an issue, as Airline Wedon'tcare has no reason to coordinate with Airline Wealsodon'tcare. Mr. Pants has seen this proven true time and again.
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Tom Nic
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Re: Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by Tom Nic »

Penopolypants wrote:My homeowner's/auto insurance (USAA) also offers travel insurance, so I use them. I've never needed it, but they've been excellent when I've needed it for my vehicle.

I recall that Bob bought a plane ticket through Travelocity for Cheng when she was in Nepal, bought insurance, and her flight was disrupted because of the earthquake there. That wasn't a reason for them to pay out. So...yeah.

Insurance is not actually in the business of paying for claims, so be prepared to document and fight, unfortunately. Except for USAA, they're great! :)

But the flight business, a bit of advice from the wife of a man who travels extensively for work - sites like Travelocity, Expedia, etc., are great if you are looking for the best flight price from multiple airlines, but these days the price is usually the same if you buy your ticket directly from the airline, and you have SIGNIFICANTLY less hassle if something goes wrong. Also, if you can at all avoid it, keep your flight legs on the same airline. Again, it's WAY easier if you have an issue, as Airline Wedon'tcare has no reason to coordinate with Airline Wealsodon'tcare. Mr. Pants has seen this proven true time and again.
Thank you! Great advice....
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PapaZ
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Re: Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by PapaZ »

We have used the trip insurance offered by D.A.N..
the company D.A.N. uses is CSA Travel Protection.
We were delayed by a major tropical storm coming out of Dominica last spring and had to spend extra days and re-ticket our airline flights.
Last November, we had our time in Mexico interrupted due to death in the immediate family.
Both cases, the trip insurance through D.A.N. reimbursed us for a significant portion of our losses such as airline re-ticketing fees, loss of days at resorts that were not refundable, etc..
I concur that you need to have your receipts and be patient as it does take time for the insurance company to process the claim.
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YellowEye
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Re: Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by YellowEye »

Personally, I skip the insurance. Claims are a hassle, and the companies are in the business of making money. In the long run, you'll come out ahead without insurance on such small scale items that you could likely afford to lose out on in the big picture.

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Re: Travel Insurance Recommmends, Please!

Post by Tangfish »

I’m kinda with YellowEye here. Self insuring will save you money over the long term which you can simply use to pay for the unfortunate times when things go wrong... unless you’re just really unlucky.

But I have occasionally used insurance successfully that comes with credit cards for example (lost luggage, delayed flights), also the DAN Guardian and Preferred plans do have non diving related medical coverage, so long as whatever issue occurs is more than X amount of miles from home. I’ve never had a reason to put it to the test (knock wood) but it’s good to know it’s there.

In general I think it’s financially wise to pay for high deductible catastrophic coverage and just eat the small and moderate losses. The latter are priced extremely well by insurance companies and the house always wins. Putting a high ceiling on things usually is not overly expensive because occurrences that reach those levels are rare.

Just my 2psi!
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