To be angry at ds1 re travel insurance

[alrightluv]

FFS I know I'm not just need to vent.

Ds1 in in his mid 20s. Good job very intelligent. He's been travelling abroad a few times and is there now.

Just been chatting to him and ds2 on WhatsApp. Talking about meerkat code for cinema. I said he should have got his travel insurance through them. He said he doesn't have it! I couldn't fucking believe it.

I've sent a load of scary shit to him. Told him to get it NOW. I'm so angry.

I laid it on the line if anything happens to him it's mad amounts to get back here.

Rant over.

It's also often poor cover.

They are two different things

Has anyone ever told him about travel insurance?
When I booked my first package holiday abroad we did it in a travel agent shop with an advisor. They added insurance as part of the package but also explained it.
I can't remember having it when I went interailing tbh....I can't even remember how we booked that!

These days where people book direct I don't think it's as clear - if you aren't already aware.

I do get annoyed at the number of begging news stories for people that didn't bother.

My elderly dm is visiting in France. She reluctantly took out travel insurance after I insisted.
It’s not just young people who think everything will be okay.

its a good ilea, but is it awkward to ask him about GP visits in the last 12 months because you have to declare them all (irrespective of seriousness)?

I often think there must be loads of people that don’t think about this. I need to call my insurer and tell them I had a mole looked at a few months ago which was benign - but I still have to declare the consultation happened.

I agree. We have free travel insurance through our bank - we don't pay anything for the account - but when you look into the detail of the policy, it isn't the best cover, so I tend to pay for separate policies anyway. Better safe than sorry!

I worked in the insurance industry and for a while had a bit of involvement with travel insurance. The fsa regulate insurance and have a pretty much a pro customer approach. Yes you should declare visits to the doctors, but if you slip up and forget and it has no bearing on the thing you are claiming for they will find in the customers favour. So in your case, you've seen the doctor about a mole and break a leg, it will be fine.
in most cases a few visits to the doctors will no affect price. However if you are going regularly then clearly your health is not the and needs investigation to fix a price.

one of our customers 25 years plus ago broke a leg skiing. Didn't contact us, arranged a medical flight with a nurse it cost £30,000. We declined the claim after getting her to see our doctor. There was no reason why she couldn't have got a commercial flight where we bought an extra seat.

@grievingandhurt, I'm so sorry about your brother. I had not considered the importance of sharing the insurance details with loved ones but I will do this going forward. Thank you for the advice.

If he booked his own flight and used Ryanair, Jrt2 etc he would have needed to actively refuse it several times as they offer it during the booking and check in process.

Because it will be the OPs problem of anything goes wrong.

Stay in your room 😆

What an overreaction.

Some employers offer travel insurance at discounted rates. Mine does: annual cover for DH and me for around £60. Existing conditions covered so long as we aren't travelling against medical advice.

I think of medical costs in two parts:

• the initial emergency, ambulance, xrays, scans, emergency surgery. This can cost thousands. A GHIC card may cover quite a lot of this depending on the country of travel.
• recovery costs - extended hotel stays, personal care in hospital, additional repatriation costs. More thousands. Travel insurance is essential for this.

I'm not sure of this but I have been told that travel insurance payouts will assume that GHIC cards are in use. So make sure you have both.

I send our insurance details to family members before we travel. The same people written as emergency contacts in the back of my passport.
I keep the insurance info in the back of my passport too.

I remember hearing of similar back in the 90s I think my mother used to always go on about ‘Stephanie’ and tell me about the dangers of travel it ended up being like the travel agent scene in the Truman show 😂

There are options when already travelling, they are just few are far between. Get him to take out a policy with Heymondo- there's a box to tick for already travelling and possibly a waiting period of a few days so also depends when he's due back. Other already travelling options are Safetywing, I think Worldnomads and Bigcattravelinsurance.

@grievingandhurt I'm so sorry this happened to you
. We had a similar experience (relative died in an accident overseas) but thankfully someone knew my relative's email password so we were able to access the insurance details.

I would always get insurance and share the details now. The people on this thread who wouldn't need to read your post and seriously think about the fact that it's not just themselves they're potentially causing problems for - do you really want your grieving relatives to be forking out thousands of pounds and worrying about how they're going to pay for things?

THANK YOU for this thread Op.
ds is going off to Marbella with his friends later on today, your thread made me text to ask if he had insurance sorted. Nope! I had paid for annual insurance for him last year but it, ya know, expired but he assumed it was still active.
He also sent a reminder to all his friends so five 20yr olds can now go and enjoy themselves (mostly) responsibly !

The other thing to check is that the insurance is going to be valid if it's needed. Not declaring medical conditions is a common one which doesn't just affect the particular condition but gives an insurance company the ammunition to declare the policy void (that would include all the anxiety/ADHD/currently waiting assessment for anything that there's documentary evidence of).

For our young adults who might decide paragliding/abseiling and the like might be great they often need additional coverage - I made a hasty phone call once to add adventure sports to DC's policy when I found out they were doing an activity in half an hour which wouldn't be covered by existing policy.

@Bjorkdidit

I did check with Jet2 before deciding to hope fire and all was good. Is normally sort as soon as I've booked but this occasion I couldn't get DD insured anyway so made call to wait a few weeks

There's also rules about wearing helmets if hiring out mopeds etc.
Scuba diving - but only to certain depths and depending on qualification

They need to read the exclusions carefully.

It was a joke 🙄

@stormonaspringmorn that's good it's helped. Makes you wonder how many young and not so young don't bother?

And rules about extreme sports. I have just come back from a holiday where you could hire quad bikes. On the local Facebook page there are loads of warnings that you aren't covered by insurance if you hire one.

I know someone who had a quad bike accident on holiday. It left her quadriplegic and nothing was covered by travel insurance. It ruined her parents financially.

Also, as a PP mentioned, riding motorbikes or scooters won’t be covered if you don’t have a motorbike licence in your home country. Loads of people get caught out by this in places like Bali where the hire people won’t check whether you have a licence.

Does health insurance cover things like repatriating a body though?

That's what weighs heavily on my mind in situations like this. I used to work at a travel company and a passenger died while on a tour, without insurance the cost of getting the body home was just shy of £5k I think.