In an ideal world, you’d never have to make a travel insurance claim. Unfortunately I’ve had to make a few claims during my travels. From when I was stabbed, right through to when I accidentally smashed my laptop screen. There’s a few things you can do to avoid problems with your travel insurance and then to protect yourself when things do go wrong. Here are my top tips for ensuring your trip goes smoothly when it’s not going smoothly:
1) Get Legal Advice from a Compensation Lawyer
I had an issue with my travel insurance company refusing me fly me home. Basically what happened was there was a devastating earthquake in my home town which cut off power and phones to the city. A family member was fatally injured during the quake and I couldn’t easily commit to my family. My insurance company was not prepared to cover my costs home because they didn’t feel that the specific family member was “close enough” to justify covering the costs of me coming home. Thankfully, I consulted a lawyer and they looked over my clause – they found a clause where I was eligible to fly home at their expense if there was any unforeseen circumstance that required me to be home, which was a huge relief after such a tragedy.
2) Check Your Policy
I’ve heard far too many people who have taken out travel insurance, and then go and participate in activities that aren’t covered. You need to ensure that you get travel insurance that is appropriate for your needs. For example, if you’re going to participate in sports such as skiing, rock climbing, bungy jumping etc you need to ensure that your policy covers these things. If something was to go wrong and your policy didn’t provide coverage, then that’s a really expensive and potentially serious mistake.
3) Make Sure You Get it:
There’s nothing worse than hearing a story about someone who’s on holiday and an accident has happened. The story only gets much worse when you read that the person didn’t have travel insurance and are forced to foot a really huge bill – something like that could cripple you and your family financially. Or even worse – you may be unable to pay so treatment would stop. Getting travel insurance ensures that you are protected if anything goes wrong and if the worst was to happen, your family wouldn’t be left with a crippling bill.
