Travel Insurance
It was a difficult process trying to figure out travel insurance. On top of trying to decipher the legal-speak of the contracts it turns out that Steve and I have different ideas of what we think travel insurance should be for. I felt like I wanted the cheapest possible plan because in the end it’s money that could be spent doing something fun somewhere. I basically just wanted it to cover any medical expenses we might incur in case we get sick or break something. Steve, on the other hand, is more on the side of making sure that everything is taken care of–replacement of our stuff if it’s stolen, medical evacuation, etc, etc… It was just a difference in opinion. I’m going into this trip assuming that at some point I will get sick and might have to go to the hospital (or will at least spend a few miserable days getting acquainted with a less-than-sparkling squat toilet) and that something (or everything) will be lost, stolen, or irreparably broken. And I’m okay with that. Stuff happens. It sucks; you deal with it; you move on. We can always buy more stuff (I know what I’ve got and how much it cost me). But on the other hand, you can rack up a lot of medical debt in a really short period of time.We eventually talked out all of our opinions/preferences and settled on World Nomads travel insurance (which is recommended by the site that hosts my blog–bootsnall). We chose this plan for several reasons:
- It’s pretty cheap.
- You can make claims through the internet while you travel. With some other travel insurance companies we looked at (specifically STA) you couldn’t file a claim until you were back in the States. Which is bad for us since once we head off to China in September we will most likely not be back in the states for 9 months. Which would mean we’d have to shell out the money and then try to get it back 9 months later. That doesn’t sound fun.
- They have good coverage for medical evacuation, basic medical, trip cancellation, sports coverage, lost baggage, and replacing stolen items.
- They sell their insurance by the month with the option to continue the service minus 10% of the listed price. This means we can buy x months worth of insurance for the amount of time we’re sure we’re going to be gone, and then add on coverage as we decide to travel longer.
- We were able to purchase the family plan which means we’re both under the same plan, giving us less numbers/paperwork to keep up with. The family plan is simply for any adults who are traveling together–you don’t have to be related/married. You still pay the same amount as individual plans (and you each still get the same coverage as the individual plans), but without all the extra hassle.
There are also some things I’m already not particularly fond of about World Nomads:
- We’re going to S. America for 3 months, then returning home for a week before flying to China. Since we are returning home, we have to buy two sets of plans–a 3 month plan for S. America and then another plan for China onwards. This is just sort of annoying since we’re only going to be home for 5 days and the more months you buy insurance for the cheaper the individual month price ends up being. But this isn’t a huge deal. We’ll just get two plans.
- We read some reviews online about World Nomads where people said that they got bad advice/information from customer service people–saying they were covered for something when they weren’t, etc… I completely understand that when it comes to an insurance contract what’s written in the contract is what goes. So in order to clear up a few things, I had some questions for World Nomads. The guy who responded to my emails (when I called the customer service number they were pretty much useless–one lady said she only dealt with claims and another one didn’t seem to understand my question) didn’t really answer my questions. I had a concern about the policy saying that “if your plan has sports coverage, than…” and I couldn’t figure out where it said whether or not my plan had sports coverage. His answer referred to numbers on my policy that should match up to numbers on my plan. But those numbers were nowhere to be found. There were other numbers on both, but they didn’t exactly match, so I pointed this out and his response was that this other form said that I had sports coverage. In the end I got the answer to my question and found where my sports coverage was listed, but it took some digging on my part and a close eye for details. He was also very slow in responding to my emails which was a problem since we had 10 days to back out of the policy and get a full refund.
- You have to have original receipts for all of your electronics stuff in order for it to be covered. I’ve kept all of my receipts for basically everything I’ve bought for the trip, so this isn’t a big deal for me, but Steve got his camera as a present a few years ago, so he doesn’t have the receipt anymore. So, if that’s stolen, oh well. But this goes back to my feelings that if we take something with us we should be okay with losing it. Hopefully we won’t, but it’s good to be prepared.
On a side note, World Nomads has free podcasts for helping learn helpful phrases in other languages. I haven’t listened to them yet, but I thought they were neat. I believe they’re free to anyone, so check them out and see how they are. I think that the one for Mandarin (or Cantonese…I can’t remember now) would be helpful because they’re tonal languages, so hearing how to pronounce them is really important.
Tags: Pre-Trip Planning, World Nomads Travel Insurance
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