Learning a Lot About Travel Insurance.
For years, I never bought travel insurance. But as I’ve gotten old and creaky, it makes sense to insure against getting sick or hurt far from home. That could certainly cost a small fortune.
And so, earlier this year—anticipating several trips to the mainland and one to Italy—I bought an annual policy from Travel Guard, an A.I.G. company. Today I called them to start the process of filing a small claim.
Two weeks ago, I was en route to London aboard a Eurostar train when some people who apparently work for the ferries that crisscross the English Channel initiated what the French refer to as a manifestation — a demonstration. Specifically, the demonstrators set fire to a stack of wooden railroad ties at the mouth of the tunnel which runs beneath the channel and connects France and England.
French authorities closed the tunnel and announced it would be out of service indefinitely. Eurostar officials were much more up beat and told us—as we were being returned to Paris—that they expected to be operating normally in the morning.
As soon as the train came to a stop at Gare du Nord, I scrambled out onto the street and managed to snag the last room in a small hotel very close to the railway station. At that point, however, I had officially become a no-show at the London hotel where I had booked a room for that same night.
The circumstances seem quite simple to me: through no fault of my own, I had incurred the unforeseen expense of a hotel room in Paris and also had to pay 269 pounds (more than $400) for a very nice room in London, which I never saw. And so this morning I called Travel Guard to initiate a claim to recoup the money I was charged by the London hotel.
It was a rather brief call. Apparently, what I call a demonstration, Travel Guard calls a disturbance … and disturbances are not specifically listed in the policy as a circumstance covered by the policy. On that basis, my claim was denied.
At least I now know the difference between a demonstration and a disturbance. It’s about 430 dollars.
I have always subscribed to the maxim: “If you cannot afford the travel insurance, you cannot afford to travel.” However one never knows how good insurance is until one has to claim. Fortunately although I have been travelling overseas since 1974, my first claim was in 2013 when in my excitement to photograph a steam rack railway train, I dropped my Swiss Rail Pass half way through a week of Swiss Travel. I reported it to Swiss rail and kept my tickets and receipts until I returned home. I sent in my claim to OneTravel and when the phone rang, I expected a lot of questions and was floored to be told they were depositing to my bank the equivalent in NZ dollars of the 250 Euros I had spent.
Our national news is about a young man who had a motor bike accident in Bangkok. He had no insurance and is in a coma. Of course his brother and father have flown over and there are campaigns here to raise money for that, his treatment and eventual flight home. While I feel for him and his family I do consider his travel without insurance to have been very foolhardy.
I agree. An old pro in the insurance business back in Hartford advised that the very first insurance policy to buy should NOT be for the event most likely to occur, but for the catastrophic event, no matter how remote the chances might be, that would completely wipe you out. I now buy travel insurance for the off chance that I should be injured in an accident or get seriously ill while traveling and would have to be hospitalized and/or evacuated all the way back to Hawaii. Without insurance, that would certainly qualify as a catastrophic event! I’m pursuing this simply because the insurance company seems to be trying to wiggle out of a very small claim on a made-up technicality. We shall see.