Lookback Period question: If my companion or I are stable and can travel when I buy the insurance more than 181 days before the trip will I have coverage for pre-existing conditions? If I have a condition that requires a doctor visit today and I buy the insurance the next day but more than 181 days before the trip am I covered for pre-existing conditions? Hank

Hi Hank,

The Lookback period is not the number of days before you leave on your trip. It’s the number of days before you buy a policy.

So, if you or your traveling companion (and any non-traveling immediate family members) have any medical condition in the Lookback Period and are medically stable by the travel insurance plan’s rules, you must get the trip cancellation travel insurance plan by its deadline.

You also need to abide by the specific company’s rules to get its own Pre-Existing Medical Conditions. Go here to learn more on Pre-Existing Medical Conditions:
http://www.tripinsurancestore.com/3/pre-existing.shtml

Here’s more on medically stable:
http://www.tripinsurancestore.com/3/medically-stable.shtml

I hope this makes sense.

I understand that emergency evacuation covers the person who is sick. But, what about the other people that are traveling with them? Can we cut our trip short and is this a covered expense with travel insurance? Marianne

Hi Marianne,

Here’s how travel insurance covers you for the situation you describe: one person is evacuated via their emergency transportation and the others still have to cut their trip short.

First, if there’s room on the emergency evacuation plane then it might be possible for one of the family members to ride along with the person. There’s no guarantee for this because it depends on the situation and how serious the medical condition is. If it’s a choice between taking another doctor or medical professional along versus taking a family member, the evacuation company is clearly going to take the medical professional along.

However, the other three of you will have a trip interruption. All our travel insurance plans will reimburse you up to 150% of your unused prepaid nonrefundable trip cost when you interrupt your trip for a covered reason.

As to trip cancellation coverage - if one breaks a leg or arm or has some other unforseen medical condition occur before leaving on their trip, even a bad virus, they probably would not need to be hospitalized but at same time would not feel up to their trip. Will your trip cancellation travel insurance cover them for reimbursement of trip ticket cost? Or do you have to be hospitalized to have coverage? Betty

Hi Betty,

All our trip cancellation travel insurance plans require that you go to a doctor and have her or him advise, in writing, that you are unable to travel. You do not have to be hospitalized.

My answer assumes that the particular medical condition is unexpected. If the medical condition was known or expected, then we’re talking about a pre-existing medical condition.

And, yes, any of our trip cancellation travel insurance plans will reimburse you if you insured the airfare’s cost.

Note: I am not covering pre-existing medical conditions in this blog post, but you can click on this link to learn more about Pre-Existing Medical Conditions:
http://www.tripinsurancestore.com/3/pre-existing.shtml

My air tickets are “nonrefundable” but can be reissued or changed for a “change fee.” I know that all trip insurance policies will only refund the “change fee” and not the cost of the tickets. Why then do I have to insure the “full cost” of the trip? Dion

Hi Dion,

Unfortunately, you’ve been given the wrong information. I can’t say how all travel insurance companies work with “nonrefundable” tickets, just the ones we offer. All our plans will refund you the full out-of-pocket cost you paid for your tickets if you cancel or interrupt your trip for a covered reason.

Therefore if you want to be able to be reimbursed for the money you paid for your ticket or are concerned about pre-existing conditions, you need to insure the actual out of pocket prepaid cost of your trip.

There will be two adults on this trip…what if one of them cancels but the other one goes…how is that handled? Don

Don, that’s a great question. And it’s a simple answer, too:

As long as the one who cancels can prove they had a non-refundable financial loss on their share of the trip costs, that person can make a claim for their loss.

My answer assumes the reason they cancel their trip is a covered reason and that they follow all the rules for cancelling their trip according to their Travel Insurance policy.

You can go here to see what’s covered.

We’re going to Budapest for 4 days then to Istanbul. Can you give me the names and contact information for hospitals and doctors that you deal with in those cities.

There’s no list of doctors and medical facilities we deal with worldwide. The doctor must be a “Legally Qualified Physician” and it’s best if she or he isn’t a relative of yours. Your Travel Insurance plan will cover any Legally Qualified Medical Facility as long as you seek the initial treatment while you’re on your trip.

Plus, if you need help while on your trip, call your travel insurance plan’s 24 hour Emergency Assistance Phone Number.

Can I cancel and re-book My trip to reset the pre-existing conditions deadline?

We don’t get this question a lot, but nearly every time we do it’s because a traveler has been advised by their travel agent that they should cancel and re-book their trip so travel insurance will cover their pre-existing conditions. In other words, the clock is reset so the person can buy travel insurance within the pre-existing conditions’ waiver deadline.

Insurance companies are not stupid. All the travel insurance plans I know of address this somewhere in their terms and conditions. They usually have some kind of a phrase that’s along the lines of “this booking must be the first and only booking for the same travel destination and dates”. The travel insurance companies have already anticipated that this advice is out there and they’ve covered it within their policy wording.

I am trying to plan a trip for this summer but it is possible that work commitments may force me to rearrange my travel, but not cancel it. I’m considering buying a “cancel for any reason” plan. My question is what coverage I would then have for the rearranged trip? Would I need to buy new insurance for that? Would the insurance cover airline’s change fees or my having to pay the difference if the new airfare was higher? Thank you for your help. Michelle

Hi Michelle,
One drawback with the “cancel for any reason” plans is just that - trip cancellation. In other words, there’s no option to use it for travel delay or postponing a trip.

While the policy wordings seem to leave this open as a possibility, you can “read between the lines” and see this is the case because the policy wordings all say the trip cancellation needs to occur at least 48 hours or 2 days before your departure date.

Therefore, you’d be left with making a claim on your trip plus be needing to arrange a new trip to go where you want to go. Go here to learn more about Cancel For Any Reason Plans.

My sister and I put a deposit on a cruise last Feb 2007, to depart in September 2008. We purchased the insurance at that time with the travel agent, for the cruise portion of the vacation. We are now purchasing our air fare and hotel for a pre cruise stay. Can we now get additional insurance through you for just the air and hotel portion, and keep the cruise portion with the other carrier? The final payment for the cruise is due June 18. Thanks, Linda

Yes Linda, you can insure any part of your trip cost with one of our plans. And you can get the plan anytime, even if you’re past your final payment.

The only part of this scenario you should keep in mind is if you end up having a medical claim. It’s likely the cruise line’s plan has Secondary medical coverage. Secondary’s not better or worse than Primary. It just refers to the order in which a claim is paid.

Therefore, if you end up getting another travel insurance plan, you must take care not to submit the same medical claim to both companies separately. I’ve seen people do this because they assumed that’s what they are supposed to do. The problem with submitting the same medical claim to both companies separately is that it has the appearance of committing medical claim fraud. It’s also known as “double dipping”.

In none of the cases I’m referring to, was “double dipping” ever the customer’s intention. However, in those cases it became known to both companies’ claim departments and it created a lot of unnecessary paperwork to get those claims paid.

PS - It’s not just “double dipping” on medical claims you have to watch out for. You have take care not to submit the same claim to both companies separately on any of the coverages where the policies overlap.

Summer and hurricane season are quickly approaching. And even after hurricane season is over, then there’s winter. If next winter is anything like the winter of 2007-2008, you’re going to hope your travel insurance covers you in case of bad weather.

No matter what kind of bad weather you want your travel insurance to cover, you have to purchase your travel insurance plan before the bad weather is forecast. Don’t call us if you’re going to Cancun and you just saw on the nightly news that a hurricane is approaching. It’s too late to buy travel insurance at that time because travel insurance covers unexpected events.

Bad weather can affect your trip in a couple of different ways:

1: it can prevent you from leaving on your trip altogether
2: it can happen en route causing your flight either to be delayed or diverted to a different city
3: it can affect your destination - the place you’re going might be rendered uninhabitable by a prior storm
4: it can happen to you while you’re on your trip forcing a mandatory evacuation by the authorities
5: or, there are various other ways that bad weather can affect your trip

Here’s how the travel insurance plans we offer work when it comes to bad weather:

1: If the common carrier airline you’re flying on has a cessation of services for at least 24 hours due to bad weather, that’s a covered reason to cancel your trip.
2: if bad weather along the way or from your departure city causes you to be delayed for at least 5 hours (or 6 - 12 hours for other plans), then you’ll have a travel delay. Click here to learn more about travel delay coverage.
3: you might be safe and fine at home, but maybe a bad storm renders your lodging uninhabitable, this can be covered travel insurance.
4: you are already on your trip and, if due to an approaching storm the authorities call for a mandatory evacuation of where you are, this can also be covered by travel insurance.

Some of the above scenarios will be a trip cancellation, a missed connection / travel delay or even a trip interruption. The circumstances will determine what kind claim you’ll have. To learn more about bad weather travel insurance coverage, click here to go to our detailed Bad Weather description page.

We are renting a mid-sized car. Would your Collision Damage Waiver cover driving on gravel and dirt roads?

You’re covered for normal use of the car. Not all roads are paved everywhere, so if in the course of your trip you take gravel and dirt roads, it’s covered by our Collision Damage Waiver.

On the other hand, if you say, “Let’s see what this baby will do!” and drive off road and / or cause damage to the car, then you may have a difficult claim.

No matter what happens, it’s your responsibility to explain what happened to any authorities, the car rental agency & the insurance company.

Does Travel Insurance cover the flight cancellations by American, Southwest, United, Delta, Alaska & Midwest Airlines? Thanks, Kate

You may not like this answer Kate, but generally the answer is “No” because it’s the airline’s responsibilty to get you to your destination (your ticket is a contract with the airline).

For example, American Airlines has offered to make amends to travelers with refunds, vouchers and compensation for overnight stays. I suspect the other airlines will do something similar.

On the other hand, if you had travel insurance prior to these recent flight cancellations and you have been affected by the recent airline cancellations you may be covered. Due to the recent mass airline cancellation each travel insurance company is handling claims differently. We cannot pre-determine a claim, so we are strongly advising our clients to contact their respective insurance companies’ claim department to discuss and to determine if you have a payable claim.

So far, only American Airlines has a page that tell you what to do in filing a claim with them: Here’s the American Airlines page

PS - Go here to see what else travel insurance doesn’t cover

Here’s another tip to make submitting your travel insurance claim form easier. If you look at a travel insurance claim form (or any insurance claim form), you’ll see there’s never enough room to fill in the doctor’s information. Nor is there room to put the prescription information.

Judith B. of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida wrote: “I photocopied the doctor’s business cards instead of trying to write them all on the form. And I did the same with the prescriptions.” Thank you, Judith for a great tip!

Since TripInsuranceStore.com is open 7 days a week including holidays, somebody has to be available to answer the phones. So I worked on Easter. In case you’re wondering if I spent time with my family, yes I did. I don’t sit by the phone the whole time. I use voicemail if I’m unavailable and of course I call everyone back.

Yesterday I had 2 calls from unrelated people who had their wallets stolen. One was in Rome and the other was in Paris. That got me thinking about Pickpocketing.

I found this wording at How Stuff Works: “Pickpocketing is one of the oldest and most widespread crimes in the world. The appeal is its relative safety: A skilled pickpocket can make off with just as much money as an armed robber, without much danger of confrontation or risk of being identified in a line-up. By the time the victim realizes what’s happened, the pickpocket is long gone. And since no weapons are involved, pickpockets who do get caught face minimal jail time.”

And another blog I follow had an article called “How To Avoid A Common Trick“.

I hope what I wrote today protects you and your loved ones.

I want a Travel Insurance Policy that will guarantee my admittance to a hospital and pay my bill directly, and have air evacuation back to USA if ever needed. Bill

Bill, the short answer to your question is “Sorry, but you can’t get a travel insurance policy that will do all that.”

Travel Insurance plans are reimbursement policies. That means you pay for your medical treatment & prescriptions up front and are reimbursed after filing your claim. Sometimes the insurance company will pay the medical claim directly, but it’s on a case-by-case basis.

Some travel insurance plans will cover air evacuation back home if needed. The key is “Medically Necessary”. Many plans will guarantee your admittance to a medical facility, too.

Another choice is MedjetAssist. MedjetAssist is not an insurance plan, so it doesn’t pay medical costs (just the transport). Travel insurance pays medical costs. You can see all the MedjetAssist details here.

What exactly would be the “initial deposit date” if I am taking a 7-week trip thru Europe individually, not on a package tour? To get some cheap hotel rates, I have to make reservations that are not refundable. I may not make these hotel reservations all on the same day. Is the “initial date” the date I make the FIRST reservation? And would trip cancellation insurance cover all of the separate non-refundable hotel reservations? Quinn

Quinn, your Initial Trip Deposit Date is the date the first payment of any kind that was applied to your trip. The reservation date only counts if you paid any money to secure the reservation. Go here to learn more about the “initial deposit date”.

The reservations themselves aren’t covered. But if you prepay money for a non-refundable hotel stay, you can insure the amount of money you paid up front.

Here’s an important tip: If you just call a hotel and hold a room with a credit card number, this doesn’t count as your “initial deposit date”. That’s because the hotel typically won’t charge your card unless you don’t show up or until at your checkout. The reason this is important is that if you have no “initial deposit date” you can’t get a pre-existing medical conditions waiver.

Do you match price for the same coverage offered at a better price elsewhere? I purchased a policy from you last night. Tonight I stumbled on another website and put in the same trip and it gave me a quote for about $45 less - for the same plan. Madeline

Hi Madeline, All travel insurance plans are the same cost for the same plan no matter where you buy it from. The only things that could change the price are your ages, per person trip cost & if the trip’s over 30 or 31 days in length.

Some of my competitor’s websites give you the option of using your total trip cost. They then divide it by the number of travelers. I think this is sloppy. And, if you wanted to cover a pre-existing condition, it would disqualify you because you’d end up under-insuring your trip cost (thus breaking most plans’ rules).

Here’s how Madeline’s situation turned out:

In Madeline’s case, the trip cost was $1980 each for 2 people and $805 each for 2 people. And this is how it ought to be insured (we’d round the trip cost up, too). On those other sites, you’d end up insuring up to $1500 each on all 4 people.

You might say, “isn’t the claim is 100% of total trip cost?”. The answer’s no, because when you file a trip cancellation or interruption claim the insurance co. will want proof of the per person trip cost. And then they’ll pay a maximum of up to the person’s insured amount. If you have one total price on one invoice, you can divide it by the number of travelers. But if you have a cruise where the 1st 2 people in a cabin pay more that the 3rd & 4th, you have to insure the trip on a per person basis.

Back to Madeline’s trip: unknown to her, that site divided $5570 (1980+1980+805+805) by 4 and covered them at $1392.50 each which is wrong. And at claim time, she would’ve lost up to $960. OUCH!

Christopher Elliott recently wrote a helpful article called “5 Travel Traps Lurking in the Fine Print”. There are some seemingly common-sense situations that could cause you a loss on a trip you’d think would, of course, be covered by the travel supplier. Not surprisingly, the companies aren’t always on your side.

One of these traps, “Your airline isn’t responsible for your checked luggage” can be covered by travel insurance. There are limits to the value of specific items that can be covered, so a good backup plan for covering your luggage is to have your valuables specially scheduled on your Homeowner’s Insurance policy.

Christopher’s last paragraphs give you some good tips:

“Beyond studying the fine print, there’s only one way to not become a victim of these clever traps. Fight them. When a travel company invokes one of its ridiculous rules, let them know you don’t think these provisions are right, and that if they disagree, you’re not afraid to ask a court for a second opinion.

Experts say some contract language is on less-than-solid legal ground and could be challenged. Now that’s something you won’t find in the fine print.”

Go here to read Christopher’s entire article.

When you file a medical claim on your travel insurance it’s important to have the correct paperwork. I suggest you review the bills & documentation the medical facility gives you when you get them. Don’t just put them in your bags and look at them when you return home.

Our family and 2 other families went on Royal Caribbean’s The Mariner of the Seas in Dec. 2006. While on this cruise my son got sick with a severe sore throat. I took him to the medical facility because our friends’ daughter got strep throat a day earlier. Thankfully my son didn’t have that.

I got the bills & documentation from the medical facility the next day. They hadn’t filled in the diagnosis (that’s important) plus they said they gave him 2 medications (they didn’t). Had I waited until I got home & used those forms to file the claim, it would’ve been turned down. Plus, I doubt I would have been able to even track down and get the doctor on The Mariner of the Seas to correct the bills after what would have been a month since being treated.

It’s easy to assume that all Travel Insurance Policies work the same way, but this is a big mistake.

First, as you may or may not know, we only offer Travel Insurance policies from a handful of companies. I wrote more on this in an earlier post here. So, immediately you can see that I don’t believe the idea that all policies are the same.

Next, I believe the key to understanding any travel insurance policy is to know what’s not covered. We spend a lot of time explaining to potential clients what isn’t coverd by travel insurance. The problem is that most travel insurance sellers focus on what’s covered and in turn fail to adequately explain those “pesky” exclusions. Add to that the fact many travelers don’t ever read their policy and you have a potentially bad claim experience.

So, take the time to actually read your travel insurance policy. You can read or download any of them from us before you buy the policy. Plus you have 10 days after you buy a plan to return it for your money back.

Does a “Cancel For Any Reason” Travel Insurance Plan Cover Me If I Want To Return Home Early? Thanks, Roy

No, The “Cancel For Any Reason” is just that - cancelling a trip. It’s not “Interrupt For Any Reason”.

That said, I can see why Roy asks this question. There’s a lot of discussion out there about “Cancel For Any Reason” plans. And I’m sure we’ll have a few more companies come up with their own plans in the near future.

And, as seems to be a common occurrence, there’s confusion over what is covered. Plus the terms “Cancellation” & “Interruption” are used interchangeably. Remember, insurance is a legal contract, so if the terms “Cancellation” & “Interruption” are used, they do not mean the same thing.

“Trip Cancellation” means before you leave on your trip. “Trip Interruption” means while you are on your trip.

Go here to learn more about “Cancel For Any Reason” plans.

We’d like to reserve a trip to China with a Chinese Tour agency. They are asking us for full payment in advance but we’re a little bit unsure about the reliability of the company. Does your travel insurance cover us if the company won’t accomplish what we agreed? Thanks a lot, Mattia R.

No, travel insurance plans don’t cover this risk. One common exclusion with all travel insurance plans is “Failure of any tour operator, Common Carrier, person or agency to provide the bargained-for travel arrangements”.

Different policies say this in their own ways, but the essence is that you aren’t covered if you don’t get what you expect to get from the travel supplier.

Go here to find out about other Exclusions.

PS - this is different from Financial Default.

When you buy travel insurance, you want to be sure the travel insurance pays the claims. Here are some things you can do to help your travel insurance claim be processed quickly and correctly:

Tip #1: If you get sick or injured prior to or on your trip, it’s important you go to a doctor. If you don’t go to a doctor, the insurance company won’t believe you were sick or injured. Here’s how the policies typically read:

“For Trip Cancellation benefits, an actual examination by a licensed Physician must take place before the cancellation is made. For Trip Interruption benefits, this examination must take place during Your Trip.”

Tip #2: A lot of information is required when making a claim, even a small one. Keep a log of people spoken to. Don’t forget to keep receipts issued for services including items purchased if you have a travel or baggage delays.

Tip #3: If you ever need to file a claim, write a cover letter with a synopsis of your claim to send with the claim form.

Tip #4: Keep copies of everything you submit with your claim forms. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t keep a copy. And, those are usually the ones whose paperwork seems to get lost in the mail!

In addition, travel insurance plans give you assistance services including the use of a multi-lingual 24-Hour Emergency Hotline, which you can call collect from anywhere in the world.

Here’s an important tip when calling the 24-Hour Emergency Assistance Hotline: Before you call them, get a phone number where you can receive a call. That way, if you are either unexpectedly cut off or you are incurring charges to make the call, they can call you on their own dime (at their own expense).

Go here to find the 24 hour phone numbers & Travel Insurance Claim Contact Information for the 6 Travel Insurance companies we trust.