To wonder why people don't buy travel insurance?

[EveningHare]

If you can afford a holiday then you should not look at travel insurance as an optional extra

It's vital that you have it, anything could happen and if you don't have lots of money in the bank, how would you pay for it? Go fund me?

We had the same treatment in the US. DH was lying in emergency after our flight was met with police, fire and ambulance for him and we were hounded repeatedly by the lady in registrations to call our insurer. I didn’t even know how to call out from their stupid phone!

Mainly because people are stupid. They don't take the time to work out what travel insurance covers them for, and have no idea how the medical system works in the country they are travelling to. They assume that if they get their stuff stolen or hurt themselves, the local embassy will send in a suited, booted, well spoken Brit to sort it all out.

It's the same as everything - some people won't take responsibility for themselves and expect someone else to do it all for them.

I could never travel without it. I'm terrified of risk!

If I recall rightly a while back the money saving expert website used to say that if you're travelling then to use the EHIC card which I suspect led some people to believe that they're covered. I also think that the simplest reason is that people don't think it could possibly happen to them.

I've seen people criticised on mumsnet for not having travel insurance when holidaying in the UK. I would never take out travel insurance for a UK holiday. If any of was ill we'd be seen on the NHS. If for some reason we missed flights/trains or had hotel bookings cancelled I'd just have to suck up the cost. Belongings that damaged or stolen would be covered on our home insurance.

Agreed. DSD got chickenpox on our first family holiday and I have never been so relieved to have travel insurance. She & DP had to stay an extra 4 days as she couldn’t get a fit to fly note and the insurance sorted everything including four nights extra stay in the apartment, new return flights, and as they were to a different airport they paid the taxi home for them too. I do not know what we’d have done without them tbh as there was no way at all we’d have been able to sort that ourselves, let alone pay for it all. I’d never go away without it.

Our regional tv news regularly have people on who have relatives stuck abroad without insurance, indirectly appealing for money, tough !

I know someone who set up a just giving page for a 70 year old Mother's funeral, did it not occur to the Mother that she was getting older and needed to get something in place

I’ve bought insurance for my upcoming trip, but I have to be honest I found it all confusing. All the insurers are offering you the world with various different costs. I thought maybe the expensive ones were covering something that the other ones weren’t so I read through policy after policy and aside from the known and obvious differences like excess they were all pretty much offering to cover the same things.

I checked reviews and most companies had bad reviews, I assume because most people only give a review when they want to complain.

Oh a TAAT

And if you pulled your judgey pants from your arse you would have read that the OP in that thread wasn't going abroad.

Because they're dicks?

It is also not a victimless crime. Remember that poster a few weeks back who selfishly took her son with severe D&V on holiday to Dubai because she forgot to get insurance and didn't want to cancel? So here was a highly contagious child on an airplane for 8 hours because she didn't want to cancel her expensive trip because she wouldn't get refunded through insurance. You don't know how many other holidays you ruin (or worse) because you can't afford to do the right thing.

If an insurer unfairly declines your claim and you’ve already gone through their complaints procedure, you can escalate the issue to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

There is certainly a lot of misunderstanding about EHIC. Many people think it means free state medical care - it doesn't, it means treatment as if you were a national of the country concerned so if French/Greek/Italian people pay, so do you. EHIC won't cover getting you home or any other costs like extra accommodation. Every country's medical system is different and for things like skiing, mountain rescue might be charged for (and be very expensive). EHIC covers state care only which isn't much use when you're on a Greek island or in a remote Spanish village which only has a private clinic.

Yes it's very useful to have EHIC, but it is in no way a substitute for comprehensive travel insurance.

And it goes without saying that EHIC is valid in EEA countries only - not worldwide!

Because insurance is a racket, and people are perfectly free not to engage with it when no harm will accrue to third parties. Good for them

And that view is why you see those tedious FundMe pages for those idiots who have decided they don't need insurance, then something happens and they expect the general public to fork out to help them.

Surely there's enough stories on here to change that daft view.

I know someone who had to be flown home, god knows what would've happened without insurance.

Do you really not understand it or are you just trying to give everyone an early morning lesson in good holiday practise?

I don’t now, but I have travelled without it, sure. We had a terrible terrible 7/8 years and couldn’t afford any thing. When we finally got spare money to go away we treated ourselves to a holiday. The idea that if you don’t get it you can’t afford a holiday is bizarre- sometimes you can only just afford the holiday!

“Today 07:44 ZoeWashburne

It is also not a victimless crime. Remember that poster a few weeks back who selfishly took her son with severe D&V on holiday to Dubai because she forgot to get insurance and didn't want to cancel? So here was a highly contagious child on an airplane for 8 hours because she didn't want to cancel her expensive trip because she wouldn't get refunded through insurance. You don't know how many other holidays you ruin (or worse) because you can't afford to do the right thing.”

That’s an exaggeration it was hardly severe and you have no idea whether it was contagious. He’d Just been sick once or twice

Accountant222

After death expenses, now there is a real racket! Funerals are so expensive and many people can’t afford them.

I’ve told my family to refuse my body if I die. I don’t give a crap what happens to it, they ain’t getting into financial debt for a funeral and I’m not contributing to it while I’m alive.

The only reason I have any sort of insurance beyond that which is compulsory - and, believe me, I've got lots and lots - is because I don't want to tempt fate. I know that the very day any form of insurance accidentally lapses is the day my house will burn down, my car will explode injuring people who will then proceed to sue me and I'll end up for months in a mixed public ward in hospital.

I'm a firm believer in, I suppose for want of a better word, hubris. Even now, just writing this, I can feel Nemesis organising the Furies to pay me a visit. (I think that's the correct reference - if not, I'll suffer the consequences of my hubris for trying to be smart).

Because they're idiots

I don’t know why personal, I always buy it and it keeps me going in 2 for 1 cinema tickets throughout the year too

My DM was diagnosed with cancer after having an emergency appendectomy when she fell ill.

The bill was over $100,000.

Getting insurance is a complete no brainer.

When I worked at Tesco a member of staff in another store had gone on a lads holiday to magaluf and didn’t take out travel insurance, he had an accident and as a store we raised £30,000 to pay for his care and being him home.
Idiot for not taking out insurance but he thought having that blue EU card meant he got free treatment. We did raise him the money though

I do get travel insurance, but for what it's worth, it's not always "a few quid". I've got a pre existing condition that is well managed, highly highly unlikely to come up, but it means any travel insurance for me at all starts at £100-£200 ish for a long weekend. And that's for policies that don't even cover my pre existing condition. It's a total pain. Insurance is absolutely a racket.

I know of a family who had to pay 30,000 EUR to medivac someone home because they didn't think they needed travel insurance. This was from Cyprus.

They moaned because the British Embassy wouldn't pay for it - they were tax payers you know!
They also wanted the Embassy to pay their UK household bills while they were stuck there.

Folks have very little understanding of what a foreign Embassy or Consulate can do for them and think that there is an endless pot of UK taxpayers money that can be used to pay for their mistakes.

Partly calling it Travel Insurance rather than ‘medical insurance ‘makes it sound less important, I think.

When I was young and child free I used to hop on planes with a rucksack and Insurance never occurred to me. It just didn’t! Now I take out insurance as soon as we book.

OP if this is about this morning’s ‘shall we travel?’ thread, the OP is not travelling abroad. It is a domestic flight.

I’ve had to use it twice - once for a trip abroad, once for a trip in this country. Costs were around £12 for the trip abroad and £7 for this country.

Well worth it.