we are off to the USA in December, NYC, Orlando, Colorado skiing, Vegas and LA. We are a family of 2 adults and 2 children. We wondered if our Visa Gold travel insurance would be sufficient. Does anyone have any first hand experience with claims etc? Thanks for your help. Cheers Kate

You need to call Visa benefits in NZ.

Especially important if you are skiing, be sure you have adequate medical coverage. There is no public accident coverage in the US.

I have used the visa gold card insurance for trips to Australia, but when we did our visit to the US a year or so ago I took travel insurance with Southern Cross. The main reason being if something happened to my mother (who is over 80) who was back in NZ the Visa Gold card wouldn't have paid for us to come back as she was over 80, whereas the Southern Cross one did.

You need to read all the fine-print of he Gold card policy to see if it covers everything you need.

Have a great time.

I had cause to claim on Visa Gold only recently and they paid up very quickly and I was very pleased with them.
The only thing I am not too sure about is that it is underwritten by AIG Australia and it is the parent company of that that has been in trouble financially in the USA - least I think so. So if you want to be absolutely sure then contacting your ANZ would be a good idea. Also if you do choose to use some other company make sure you know who is underwriting that policy as well.
If ANZ will back the policy then you have no problems I would think.

We too took out travel insurance for the USA after making a rough comparison with Visa Gold. Insurance for the US is expensive, but this is because medical costs there are truly ruinous. We also wanted to be covered in the event that some family crisis back home caused us to cut short the trip.

Will you be renting a car? That's another area in which I decided not to take a punt, and paid for the CDW (collision damage waiver) option. Visa offered some coverage, but from memory it was cost-effective only for small damage costs.

This may not be relevant, but on the US forum I read of instances of (some) American rental companies billing customers for pre-existing minor damages. The only protection against this practice is to inspect the vehicle carefully and have an employee note any minor dents and scratches on the rental agreement, backed up by a photo if necessary. I don't think that the major rental companies (Hertz, Avis, Budget) were implicated in this though.

If you Google "web travel insurance" or similar you should find a site that allows you to take out insurance from a range of companies at discounted rates. The (Australian) site I used had a handy comparison table, which can also be used for comparing the various policies with what Visa Gold offers.

Just remember that you have to pay a certain amount with your Visa Gold to get the insurance. I am assuming that you have the Visa Gold that does not attract FF points when you talk about the insurance.

thanks for all the feedback. we will be renting cars in the US, in Orlando and Denver. The insurance seems to be an equivalent price to the vehicle. I find it all quite confusing looking at the insurances, ie LDW, CDW etc. Any tips on what insurance you need when renting a car in the US?

First check with your credit card company to see what coverage if any they will provide. If you're buying travel insurance, you might check into the cost of auto coverage that way. Buying from the rental company is usually the most expensive option. Some states include some basic liability coverage in the rates, so read the fine print.

After that, you've now discovered that you need to shop by the total price including insurance.

The insurance from Gold Credit Cards issued in Australia and New Zealand generally will only cover your excess if you hire a car. That's not great news when US/Canada car companies charge you up to US$30 a day just for insurance. To get around that, you can buy insurance from a UK company that covers you for CDW on US/Canada car hire. They offer it for an annual fee. The company I found is - www.insurance4carhire.com. Soon there will probably be lots of companies offering the service, but so far it's the only one I have found. Since it is an annual policy you need to be hiring a car for more than 7 days a year to make it worthwhile.

Rob Gower
Marketing Manager
http://www.minibushiresydney.com.au