EA Radio Episode # 8 - Travel Insurance Saved Us From A Nightmare (with Laura)

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Travel Insurance Saved Us From A Nightmare (with Laura) (Show Transcript)

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[Applause] [Music] hey there everybody this is Scott from extraordinary adventures and you're listening to the eighth episode of EA radio we're joined again today by my wife Laura hello so today we're going to talk about travel insurance we're not gonna get into the dry details of it all and if you want more information definitely give me a call I'll tell you as much as you need to know we can always turn you over to a insurance agent who can tell you a lot more than I can but what we wanted to do is wanted to tell you stories - stories specifically that happened to us so that you could realize when we say that you should get it travel insurance it's because we've been there done that and been burned by not having it and been saved by having it so the first thing I just want to do quickly is to tell you some of the things that you could be covered for so the first one is trip cancellation / trip interruption one of our stories is going to talk about trip cancellation and trip interruption so I'm not gonna get too much into that as well as cancel for any reason or interrupt for any reason those are two different things one is for covered reasons and one is for non covered reasons and again we'll explain that when we get to the story but some of the other things you might not consider is when you miss a connection from from an airplane if you if you have to fly to New York and then fly from New York to London or whatever that if you miss that connection you're gonna get coverage what else we got what's the next one here ah itinerary change yeah we have to change yeah or even if there's a delay in travel you will actually get paid by the insurance company for having a travel delay reimbursement of miles or Rewards points so that's good if you're a person who likes to use miles you can get reimbursed if there's a problem also if you if they've lost your luggage you'll get reimbursed for that as well another great one and then Laura talked about this a little bit as well in in the story portion is that there's covered for pre-existing medical conditions as well so if you have something and you're concerned we can we can make you're covered for that another option or another reason why you would want travel insurance is let's say you were on a cruise ship and you had a heart attack and well yeah but I mean it happens they'll actually cover your medical evacuation so that you get and cover your your coverage or health insurance basically right well I mean consider forget about it I guess a cruise is good too I was gonna say because you know cruise whatever you're in the Bahamas yeah but you could actually be in the middle of the ocean and that helicopters got to get you back if you're in some American type place the US Virgin Islands over Puerto Rico or something this is gonna take you to an American hospital right there but that's not medical evacuation necessarily what if you're in there literally in the middle of the ocean and you need a helicopter to pick you up in the middle of the Caribbean Sea right that's covered which is awesome because that would cost you a ton of money what else we got sadly if you were to die they will actually pay a person that you've designated they'll actually pay out some insurance which is sad but for your loved ones I guess and then finally also rental car stuff rent the car damaged or in the car liability things like that but again we're going to talk about that more when we get into the story so you can see there is a lot that's covered and some of the plans that we sell you can get concierge services you can get identity theft recovery assistance you can get business concierge services so there's also some additional add-ons and the one thing I will say is that very often if you buy insurance through a cruise line or if you buy it through some supplier airline whatever they almost always give you an inferior product and what is the biggest reason that it's inferior first they usually charge you more than what we can get you for an insurance plan the inferior part is primary versus secondary when you go on a trip and something happens to you and you need to talk to your insurance company to pay for it your secondary if your coverage is secondary I should say they are not gonna pay until every other primary method of care of coverage has paid out including your own pocket why they will wait to see what the bills all are and then they'll give you back reimbursement but if you have primary coverage you call them up they say this is you say this is what happened they cut the check vacant on the phone they figure it all out so you want primary coverage if you if you can't and of course with our policies here I don't get you a policy that doesn't have primary which is why I always convince my clients it doesn't really take much convincing after they hear about primary versus secondary to not buy it through the line or to not buy it through the airline or whatever primary is the way to go another reason why you would want to buy independent insurance is because it will cover from door to door whereas if you buy a cruise insurance from like a cruise line it will just cover you for the cruise but if you've had to fly to the cruise port and you missed your flight or they lost your luggage you're not covered so if you buy independent insurance not only would you be covered for the cruise but you would also be covered from door to door so if they lost your luggage or whatever you would be covered and that's everything because as we all know airlines have notoriously delayed notoriously flights are canceled because of weather a lot of people are coming from Minneapolis New York wherever they're coming from and there's storms and snowstorms and whatnot if you miss your entire cruise by just a few hours if you come in you know that it sails away at 4 o'clock and you come in at 8 o'clock by 4 hours you missed a cruise the cruise doesn't care the cruise thinks that you didn't show up it's on you but you're traveling you're your third-party independent travel provider will realize okay who was the flight and then they're gonna reimburse you for everything don't anyway anything else do you want to talk about the last thing I do want to mention is that not all policies are created equal and some plans do include certain things versus they're things to please talk to your travel professional before purchasing ensure your insurance profession correct yeah your insurance agent is the one you really really want to talk to you even even if you call us we're gonna give you our suggestions recommendations whatever but when you need to find specific travel insurance information then you need to speak to the insurance agent but she's right a lot of plants not all plans are created equal however I will also say not quite contrary to that if you get a reputable on Leonce chub any of these major companies traveling shirin international you get any of these major players 90% of the plan is about the same for all of them they're all underwritten solidly so you're not gonna happen to worry about them going belly-up but it's some of the charges around the margins not charges coverages around the margins that some policies are better than others and we have our preference but we'll worry about that one that when the time comes for you to get your own travel insurance for your trip so that is what basic travel insurance is now I'm going to kind of turn it over Laura its Laura's memory for things sometimes is better than mine we're gonna tell you two stories the first one happened in England in 2016 September when something unexpected happened it did so Scott was driving a car and for those of you don't know the people in England drive well what we would say is on the wrong side of the road if you talk to them they say would they drive on the right side of the road um but anyway we were driving and a lorry hit us head-on Laurie is there word for a delivery truck and it was actually carrying beer uh and it hit us head-on and our car was completely and thoroughly totaled luckily we were ok but our car was totaled and my car she means rental car right not right there was a rental car and we did get rental car insurance yes we had declined the rental car insurance because we knew that we had travel insurance so we said remember it and our travel insurance covers car correct or other providers that don't cover car correct but ours did so um the I don't know the the the ambulance people came and they checked us out and they said you're okay to go but then the the rental car company would not give us another car to continue on to our destination for two reasons reason one they didn't have another automatic car we weren't driving stick at the time so they didn't have another one because in England that's just a rarity everyone drive stick and then second they said they didn't trust us anymore because we're Americans and it was our fault even though it wasn't our fault they did say it was our fault and they blamed us so we had to continue on by train and it was very frustrating but in the end [Music] insurance paid out to be honest I was really nervous because I got the bill from the rental company and they were saying yes you totaled the car and it's gonna be about ten thousand dollars and I was really upset about that and very nervous cuz I didn't really want to spend ten thousand dollars to pay for a car that was total and in addition we also had to pay money out of pocket to go continue on and buy the train train train tickets to get to our final destination but luckily we submitted all of the paperwork through our travel insurance and they paid the ten thousand dollars which we didn't have to pay out and then get reimbursed they paid it correct we did however have to go through our primary car insurance here in the United States first and get a denial letter okay because our United States car company won't pay for international cars so it was a really quick and easy painless letter for me to get but once I submitted that and then I submitted all the documents from the rental car company to the travel insurance they did payout and so we didn't have to first pay out no I guess we did lay out the hundreds of dollars for the Train and some of the other costs because they didn't get us a check for that immediately well right cuz they did reimburse us for all of that to the all of the train tickets and everything so so there's an example of our personal story why you want to get travel insurance you just never know car accidents whether heart attacks twist an ankle and you like you can't walk anymore you're on some adventure trip you you got a sprain and now you're done you just never know so for you know a $5,000 trip to spend 200 bucks you know and those are just rough numbers it's such a small percentage of your overall cost why be why put yourself at risk why why for that small amount yeah just baffles my mind why people don't buy travel insurance which now to the flipside we didn't buy travel insurance last year for our Harmon in the Seas cruise and our dog Albert was deathly ill yeah kidney disease or something yeah and we thought we were gonna lose them and luckily we didn't but um there was absolutely no way that we could have gone on our cruise cuz had me gone on her cruise II definitely would have passed away because we literally had to sit and hand feed him because he was not eating it is really like every day for a week and writing tests done and all that literally happens in the last week before we go so had we purchased trip insurance we would have been able there are different plans but one of the plans that we always recommend offers cancel for any reason so how do we purchase that policy we would have been able to cancel for any reason because technically sick dog is not normally a family medical emergency it's not your daughter it's not your sister it's not your father it's it's your dog and they don't consider your dog your family even though we do right so but there is an option for canceled for any reason policy and had we purchased that policy we would have been able to cancel and get a portion of our money back for the policy that we would have used it would have been 75% of the money some of them are 80 percent that's a lot of money to get back for spending a couple hundred bucks we were unhappy let's let's just put it that way and so we between the two lessons between England and the cruise will never travel without insurance again but on top of that I also wanted to touch on the pre-existing condition laura has a heart condition it is non-threatening lon you know non-life-threatening whatever condition blah blah blah but she does have one and having one could mean not necessarily trip cancellation it could just mean trip interruption maybe she has to go to the hospital maybe she has to just take the day off and rest who knows that would be a covered reason because the policy covers pre-existing conditions like that all you have to do is at the time that you buy the policy you have to be healthy the doctor dr. Cesana can say you're good to go you could travel on that day and then six months later when you go if you have a flare-up no you're you're covered that is it that is a covered reason and whether you have to cancel or interrupt your trip you're gonna get a hundred percent of your money back because that's a covered reason versus the cancer for any reason now but think about cancel for any reason it's crazy you could just decide yeah I don't want to go isn't because your dog is sick can't suffer literally cancer for any reason and you get 75% of the money back but you know so what else what else did you want to tell him how much about it I just wanted to tell you our pitfalls and why we feel that tribal insurance is really super important so that's it we're gonna keep this one short there's plenty of information out there on the web about travel insurance both sides there will be people who will have a contrary opinion to this if this is our opinion this is what we believe based on personal experience as well as based on seeing what happens with our clients and how they've had to use travel insurance remember one of my clients got stuck coming back on a cruise it was a fog in Port and they all just sat out there they wouldn't let him in now that doesn't cost them anything on the cruise side but they miss their flight and so now they have to charge that to their insurance fortunately they were able to do so because they were covered so I mean just stories are left and right I just don't see the value in taking the risk of not getting insurance so anyway that's the show for today I hope you enjoyed today's episode if so just let me know email me at scott at my extraordinary adventures tell me your first name where you from and I'll give you a shout-out on the air alrighty there until next time this is Scott from extraordinary adventures thanking Laura for joining us oh my pleasure I'm thanking you for tuning in reminding you to share this show on Facebook and Twitter and please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our YouTube channel we strive to offer valuable information that everyone could benefit from so please spread the word okay we'll catch you next time on the next episode of the a radio stay tuned hi everybody [Music] 

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