Our Gold Elite VISA does actually have trip cancellation and we put our entire trip on there so we are covered. The problem is that no one sells cancellation on its own. I have been researching this for a week now - I also discovered that Canadian and US insurance laws are different. In Canada you must (I haven't actually read the Insurance Act, but all travel agents tell you that it has to be purchased at time of booking) purchase insurance right away, whereas in the US you do not. Read through a bunch of policies and found some great Internet sites, and I discovered that even though most of us buy travel insurance and expect to be covered, there are still a million exceptions. Plus, if you are driving to your destination like we are (and many of you do), you have to have proof of the day of departure so that your trip interruption insurance can begin - proof would be gas, toll or hotel receipts. The policy does not say this, but I called and asked and this is what the claims adjuster told me.
All very interesting - but the most interesting is that you can't buy trip cancellation insurance on its own - it seems to always be bundled with trip interruption (which actually can be purchased on its own!) We are going to have to take a chance because if we purchase cancellation/interruption from TA this would be redundant as we already have interruption insurance on VISA - not to mention that it would cost almost $200.00 for something that we don't really need - cancellation would be good, but if something were to happen such as a death, we wouldn't be too concerned about losing money since we wouldn't be interested in going on a trip anyway. If anyone has any more info, or knows how to purchase cancellation insurance on its own, please let me know. Hopefully all will be fine!
Tiger
