Does anyone have a recommendation on travel insurance?

Try looking at www.insuremytrip.com for info on lots of insurance plans.

I have used TravelGuard 1+ times. I had 3 claims with one of $4700. I submitted receipts and short explaination and received a check in 9-10 business days. It is a bit more than some other firms for the Premium plan but it covers pre-existing conditions if you take it out within 15 days of your first deposit on the trip.Also I suggest you take out $250,000 medical (making TravelGuard primary) and $1 million emergency evacuation. It is based on age, cost and length of trip. A 28 day trip to Asia for 2 adults in their early 60's was $700 on a $21,000 trip.

If you want cheap and good.

We did:

Flying Doctors
MedJet (I think it's the proper name)
STA (statravel.com) This was highly recommended to us and saved a bundle.

Good luck.

Insurance is legalized gambling. Buy insurance for loses that you can not afford to have happen. E.g., perhaps for medical treatment. If you can afford to lose a $200 suitcase or miss a day in camp then why insure it? Insurance is a gamble with the odds are that you will lose. The odds of your winning are set by the insurance company. Set so that they win overall. That said, I buy medical insurance because I want a medical provider (if necessary) to know that they will be payed and to proceed with treatment. And so that I would not have to incur a $100,000 medical charge that would put a big crimp in my budget. I do not insure trip expenses. If I loose something, I just say tough luck. Such a loss would not affect my lifestyle. YMMV.

regards - tom

Be sure to check the dates if you are using Travel Guard-mine were for someone else's trip, and TG were not very helpful changing to the correct dates. Lets all hope we never need to use it. It is the first time I have purchased insurance after travelling many places. The advice I was given and ultimately purchasing the insurance was in case I became injured or needed airlifted out to quality medical services. For this trip, it made sense. Mine was also around $800.

I recently had a claim denied that I feel is legit with CSA travel. I found them through insure my trip. Basically my baggage was delayed and arrived via Johannesburg a day after I left Zambia for Botswana. The hotel arranged for a driver to bring my bag from zambia to botswana, I paid $200 and got a receipt, but the insurance denied it eventhough their one paragraph on reimbursement states, "benefits will be paid up to the maximum benefit amount for actual expenditure for necessary personal effects.

So apparently the $200 to retrieve my personal effects wasn't necessary or actual. I'm going to file a claim with the CA Dept. Of Insurance, but stay awaay from CSA..this is ridiculous.

Probably if you had spent $200 to replace (buy new, not retrieve) your personal effects they would have paid. Don't you just love insurance fine print? That's why I'd much rather simply not deal with them, any insurance company. Insure something only if its loss would severely impact your life style. Losing $200 would not cause you any amount of pain, so don't insure it. Yeah, yeah, I know it was included in the package deal. Did you really need the package? Reread my above reply, or not. I'm just nagging, just trying to help for next time.

regards - tom

One way or another his bag was missing/delayed and had to get to him. He paid. The insurer refused to reimburse.

Note: If you have a homeowners or apartment rental insurance policy, your lost clothing should be included even if out of country. So you put the lost stuff in as a claim on this policy.

I agree that insurance is not a good investment (but for when you need for serious stuff), but the Comprehensive policies cover cancel/interrupt, flight/baggage delay, baggage loss, medical, evacuation. No way, seems to me to unbundle the baggage delay/loss from those packages. The only plan you can buy separately would be medical/evacuation.

So the trade-off is whether you want to cover for possible cancel/interruption and the rest of the comprehensive pkg. or just medical/evacuation only?

I personally did the medical/evacuation one recent trip and sure enough that was the one time when I may have been in a position to have to cancel my trip (I didn't though). I now only go with a comprehensive plan regardless the cost.

I have used access america through american express. When we needed to charter a plane during a trucker strike in Costa Rica(dont ask), the reimbursed us within a few weeks. Great experience. Now I live abroad, and we actually buy it for the whole year.

heasereb,
Would the airline not arrange delivery of your delayed bag? I believe the baggage coverage that comes with most comprehensive travel policies specifically cover the contents, not the transportation of the baggage to you. When they say "actual expenditure for necessary personal effects", I believe they mean any replacement articles you had to buy. Let us know if the CA dept of insurance views it any differently.

Try www.quotewright.com. They've got the best comparison and the most comprehensive reviews.

My recommendation is to buy your travel insurance as soon as you make your first trip payment.
If you do this, you will have the most options for insuring your trip.

There are some travel insurance comparison sites you can try. I find that www.insuremytrip.com has the largest selection of plans. They also have great customer service reps that can help you find the best policy for your trip.

One thing to be sure to check is the fine print regarding when the insurance is invalid.

Last year I bought insurance (from a large Canadian insurer) for our trip to SE Asia (including Bangkok). When the NY Eve bombings occurred the Canadian Government issued a travel warning - that invalidated our travel insurance (even though we had purchased it months before)........we did go but it was a bit unnerving.

Considering the fact that there are "travel warning" (vs "do not travel under any circumstance&quot for most places around the world, then none of our trip insurance policies would be valid.

There have been bombings in Madrid, Paris, London, Israel, Egypt, etc. etc. - are all policies to any of these then invalid?

My inquirying mind wants to know!

sandi - for our insurer it was based on the Canadian Government's official warnings.