Travel Insurance - Pay for it, or get it free with credit card?

[Renato1 (Renato)]

We seem to have a few seasoned travellers here.

I posted a thread about travel insurance over at Australian Frequent Flyers, where it morphed into whether complimentary (complementary?) credit card travel insurance is as good as the purchased one which costs a lot more than the small surcharge when paying for tickets to get the free one.

If you Google this, you will find many results stating that the "free" Credit card travel insurance is Travel Insurance Lite. Others suggest good luck actually trying to get money out of the free policies. But from what posters at the AFF forum are demonstrating, leaving aside the issue of pre-existing medical conditions, the purchased policies and the free ones from better credit cards seem to be pretty much equivalent, and they've had no problem claiming on them.

What are your thoughts?
Cheers,
Renato

[UniPol]

My wife and I are currently travelling around Italy and we took out travel insurance with our medical provider, namely Medibank Private as in the past. My wife who is far more intelligent than me makes all the travel plans and she looks into these arrangements very carefully so I trust that this was the best option for us. I know my wife looked into the "free" option with our bank which is Citibank however it looked a bit too good to be true from memory.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

I have used the credit card travel insurance without any issues. You need to check the Ts & Cs carefully - you may find that the insurance only covers those parts of the trip which were actually bought on the card. If everything is being charged to one credit card account, you should be OK, but if you are booking some flights with Frequent Flyer points for example, that flight leg may not be covered.

If in any doubt, single-trip travel insurance is pretty cheap, and buys a lot of peace-of-mind.

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by UniPol

My wife and I are currently travelling around Italy and we took out travel insurance with our medical provider, namely Medibank Private as in the past. My wife who is far more intelligent than me makes all the travel plans and she looks into these arrangements very carefully so I trust that this was the best option for us. I know my wife looked into the "free" option with our bank which is Citibank however it looked a bit too good to be true from memory.

Yes - the too-good-to-be-true factor does come into play. How can it be that if I pay say a $150 surcharge on buying tickets from Flight Centre, depending on the card, I can get effectively the same travel insurance as paying anywhere for $900 to over a $1000 buying it direct?

I'd already paid for mine before this discussion came up at the other forum, but took comfort that it really didn't cost me anything as I suspend my private health insurance while overseas (since I don't suffer any consequence from the medicare surcharge).

Where are you in Italy?
Regards,
Renato

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

I have used the credit card travel insurance without any issues. You need to check the Ts & Cs carefully - you may find that the insurance only covers those parts of the trip which were actually bought on the card. If everything is being charged to one credit card account, you should be OK, but if you are booking some flights with Frequent Flyer points for example, that flight leg may not be covered.

If in any doubt, single-trip travel insurance is pretty cheap, and buys a lot of peace-of-mind.

Yes, the responders at the other forum make it very clear that the T &Cs vary very widely among the cards - ANZ platinum only requiring a $250 spend while travelling, CBA a $500 spend and Westpac requires 100% spend.

Without input from experienced people, it can look like a potential minefield.
Cheers,
Renato

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Hi,

I think the whole area is a minefield. Flight Centre pushed a policy to us on top of all other bookings for hotels and flights. I found this quote was twice the cost of an equivalent policy on the open market. I thought it should be the other way around. The FC consultant got quite cheesed off about it, but not with me I think.

The killer was that my wife has diabetes, and that caused things to get very restrictive. In the end it narrowed down to just one offering, and price faded as a main consideration. So, any of you that do have a pre-existing condition (some of which get listed as a "contact us for a chat" type thing), do read that fine print carefully. I think many people don't look.

Cheers

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by GeoffW1

Hi,

I think the whole area is a minefield. Flight Centre pushed a policy to us on top of all other bookings for hotels and flights. I found this quote was twice the cost of an equivalent policy on the open market. I thought it should be the other way around. The FC consultant got quite cheesed off about it, but not with me I think.

The killer was that my wife has diabetes, and that caused things to get very restrictive. In the end it narrowed down to just one offering, and price faded as a main consideration. So, any of you that do have a pre-existing condition (some of which get listed as a "contact us for a chat" type thing), do read that fine print carefully. I think many people don't look.

Cheers

Hi Geoff,
You aren't wrong about prices being all over the place for the purchased Travel Insurance. The first time I went looking for it I tried my health fund - Defence Health - and got the quote. Then I went looking for it cheaper somewhere else. I tried Qantas and ANZ and someone else, and they were 70% to 100% dearer for what looked to me to be pretty much the same thing as Defence Health (which was through AIG then, but is even cheaper now through Allianz).

The pre-existing conditions at Defence Health/ Allianz is all pretty much built into the quote, after you answer the questions on-line. My diabetes added about $50 to the non diabetes quote.
Cheers,
Renato