VIC
574 posts
Hey guys,
Im heading for a windsurfing trip/work over in Egypt for about 8 months and then travelling around eastern europe.
My question to windsurfers/kitesurfers/sailors and milkmaids is...
What is the best travel insurance and why?
Ive been looking at 2:
Cover More & World Nomads.
I would love to go with Covermore but it is very $$$ and they have a strange policy about places you travel.
For example, if i visit an African country for more than 20% of my trip i have to pay $1600 but if i visit any African country for less than 20% of my trip it only costs $700
So the issue with Cover More is the price!
Whilst with world nomads, no matter where i go, it only costs about $600 but reading some of the reviews on world nomads, the view you are getting is that it is cheap and nasty.
So does anyone have any opinions on who they recommend?
Cheers Steve
WA
361 posts
the reality is unfortunately, that unless you hire a lawyer to read the policy for you, its very hard to cover all bases. And where you household and car policies are long term and hence at some stage you will experience a claim, Travel Ins is the opposite, most people take it out, don't claim and it lapses-everyone happy.
When you come to claim, you find that if you were bowled by a car crossing the road, you don't get paid out cos you weren't facing west wearing green jocks and holding your mouth right at the time, or you didn't get "prior approval" to incur the expense.
Inevitably they simply deny the claim initially anyway and this might get rid of a fair number of claims anyway.
I reckon the ones most likely to behave somewhat honestly are those that operate in our sphere-HBF, and other mainstream insurance companies. Rather than those you have never heard of.
QLD
6525 posts
I travel quite a lot, mostly to cheap and dodgy places, and I never use travel insurance. Too many exemption clauses, too little covered, too expensive. I've probably got $15000 'banked' from saved travel insurance - at least. Could be double that.
Basically the only thing it is good for is if you get some rare, life-threatening, fast acting disease which can't be treated locally & you need to be airlifted out or flown home to Oz with doctors/nurses attending all the way. You could rack up several hundred thousand dollars of bills this way & they would cover some of it (but they would still try to weasel out of paying.)
I did look at taking it last trip because I had my kite gear and my wife had her engagement/wedding rings etc. We looked very carefully at the 2 best policies we could find. After analysing the fine print the coverage was ridiculous, ie:
checked bags - not covered
bags in car boot - not covered
bags in hotel, you out - not covered
bags out of sight for any reason - not covered
etc etc etc
