Travel Insurance Woes – Don’t Let These 6 Pitfalls Happen to You

Traveling is an experience that delights the senses and relaxes the mind. It’s easy to drift away when you’re traveling, going into a world where there’s nothing but light and peace.

Oh, wait…reality steps back in again. A flight gets cancelled. You get sick. Other little issues creep into what’s supposed to be the perfect holiday, transforming it into something that’s downright awful.

This summer holiday season, don’t get caught up. Make sure that you’re looking carefully into what travel cover you get. And if you’re going to get travel insurance, you have six basic pitfalls to avoid. They’re listed below for your convenience.

1. Alcohol

If your holiday is going to include drinking, there’s a strong chance that your travel insurance might not cover you after all. There are alcohol exclusions written into a lot of the top travel insurance providers’ policies, but they’re all very vague. The Financial Ombudsman Service is starting to fight back after receiving tons of complaints from consumers. The official stance is that insurers must have CCTV footage or witness evidence if they cannot get hospital blood tests.

2. Double Check Those Departures

Did you know there’s a difference between your outbound journey and you’re inbound one? Customers usually don’t draw a difference between the two but many insurance providers do. Some won’t even cover inbound journeys for any reason, and others give you rules on how long you have to get to the airport and what reasons, if any, would be allowed for you to have a successful claim.

3. Think Twice Before You Get on That Horse!

Horse riding is a fun activity, but it does have risks. Some policies will only cover a horse riding related claim if the activity has been supervised by a professional group, while others require that you just wear a riding helmet. If you can’t provide proof you had the helmet on when you got injured, you might not get our claim paid out.

4. Watch Those Excesses!

Do you know how much you will have to pay towards the claim you file? If you’re not careful, you may have to pay an excess for every section of the policy that your claim applies to! Yikes! There are ways to lower the excess, you know…

5. Claim Your EHIC!

The EHIC is free, and it stands for European Health Insurance Card. You can get free or very discounted medical care in all state-run medical clinics as well as in all state-run hospitals. This is across the EU and it also includes Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Iceland. Most insurers will waive the excess or reduce it heavily if you can show proof you not only had the EHIC, but you used it appropriately.

6. Check the Valuables Limits!

Expensive items should honestly stay at home. If they’re going to go with you, check your home or renter’s insurance policy to see if they’re going to be covered while you’re on holiday. Most travel insurance has very low limits for valuables, which means that you might not get coverage for everything that you bring on the trip.

As a friendly reminder…water and electronics don’t mix very well, and waterproof isn’t always waterproof. 🙂

We aren’t listing these tips to scare you out of taking your dream holiday. Most people don’t even have to use their travel coverage. It was just purchase as a precaution. But it’s never a bad idea to look out for your own interests, right? Absolutely. We hope that you enjoy your holiday to the fullest. But before you actually confirm all of those bookings, do yourself a favor and hunt for a good travel insurance policy. Take the limited time that you have and really read what’s covered, what’s not covered, and the reasons they would have for rejecting the claim. It’s boring reading, we’ll admit, but it can save you from buying a policy that never protected you in the first place.