Travel Insurance Lesson for 2020

travelinsured.com

Our original reservation for our March 2020 Egypt and Jordan trip was made in April 2018. It is hard to believe the trip was arranged so long ago. Why so early? These hosted trips often fill up in advance due to limited space and early booking can provide pricing discounts.

As we are no longer youngsters, we have been purchasing "Cancel for Any Reason (CFAR)" trip insurance for our trips. CFAR insurance, with coverage for any existing medical conditions, must be purchased within 15-30 days of making your initial travel deposit.  The number of days is determined by the travel insurer. This meant that we needed to purchase our CFAR coverage in late April 2018.

This coverage costs buyers about 10 percent of total non-refundable trip costs. That said, under a CFAR claim, our insurance only returns a maximum of 75 percent of total non-refundable trip costs. For example, a $15,000 trip could have an insurance cost around $1,500, with only $11,250 actually reimbursable. We seek this coverage as we still have aging parents and, should an emergency arise, we would terminate our travel plans.

When we cancelled our Egypt and Jordan trip earlier this week, we incurred expenses too low to submit an insurance claim ($350 to reinstate frequent flier miles). However, we learned that our travel insurance could be moved to a future trip date. This would permit us not to lose this expensive coverage for essentially an unused insurance plan. However, we soon learned the insurer had an unwritten policy that limited the new travel timeframe to 30 months after original purchase. This meant that the policy could only be extended to around October 2020. Our travel schedule for fall 2020 was already set and we had no plans for additional travel between now and October 2020 - especially with the unsettled world travel situation due to COVID-19 infections.

What to do? Initial phone conversations with our insurer first-level customer service representatives reached a stalemate. Finally, a case was opened with a management representative of our trip insurer. An exception was granted to extend our use of the travel insurance to 2022. Perhaps current COVID-19 trip cancellations had caused our travel insurer to reconsider its 30 month policy. Regardless, we were pleased with the outcome and hope to confirm the exception when we contact the insurer with our early 2022 travel plans.

If you purchase CFAR insurance for your travel, you might ask your insurer about the possibility of transferring the policy to a new travel date should you cancel your original trip. You might also inquire about any restrictions regarding the date transfer.