Travel insurance and placeholder

[Ravenne]

For those of you who get travel insurance, what do you do about that with a placeholder? I know some companies consider the placeholder as the initial deposit, others consider the actual date you apply the placeholder as the initial deposit. The biggest coverages that affect the timing are pre-existing condition waiver and cancel any time. Of course, it would be nice to not have to pay extra for those, but that would mean getting the policy before even knowing what the travel dates and costs are, and locking away the money in a non refundable policy. So what do you do? Do you wait until you use the placeholder, or get the policy right away?

 

[Alicatt]

I was looking insurance myself and though this doesn't answer your question, I thought I'd mention that the pre-exsisting condition clause usually has a look back period, for example 60 days. The 60 days are 60 days from the day you purchase the policy (although I would double check with the insurer, the one I was looking at was John Hancock) and as long as you've had no changes to your health, you're good. So I am just going to make sure that I wait to buy the policy 61 days or more after any illness, surgery or prescription change. For my family, that's not a major concern but I know it may be for others. I hope this helps a bit.

 

[pamkass]

We just changed our placeholder to a cruise. I just called disney cruise line and switched it over to the cruise, and the person on the phone, asked if we want the trip insurance, which we added. If you are not using Disney direct, just tell them you want trip insurance.

 

[flybone89]

Hi Ravene, I researched this pretty good when I was moving our placeholder on the opening day for summer 2017 cruises and can share what I found out. There was a very good website about travel insurance that listed most of the companies that offer travel insurance and summarized their policies - sorry I don't remember the link :-(. But what I found out was that it varies by company. Most companies seemed to count the clock when you book the placeholder - or it varies by policy within the same company - but some don't start the clock until you bock an actual date.

So I called directly the insurance company we use - Travel Insured International - and for our policy which is via an affiliation from our primary insurance company USAA (so policy could vary if you are not affiliated with USAA) - does not start the clock until you book an actual date. So even though we booked a placeholder in Jan we were able to still get a policy with full pre-existing coverage in May after we moved the placeholder.

And another thing I learned which may be helpful is only buy the insurance amount for what you have already booked. We were told by the agent not to add estimated airfare until we actually purchase the tickets. Then we can add the airfare to the policy. And as long as we add it within the window for the airfare, that too would be covered for pre-existing conditions.

The bottom line is to call the insurance company you are looking at and ask them directly to find out about their placeholder policy.

Kevin