Florida Medical & Travel Insurance Info B4 You Go!

Leigh-Anne_60

FH_Brit wrote: »

Example - A previous family were here and Grandmother/Grandfather took daughter/son-in-law & 2 grand children plus son/daughter-in law and 1 grand child, they hired 2 people carriers and were involved in a 3 vehicle accident (another car and the 2 people carriers). 4 needed hospital treatment and the insurers found a pre-exist in the son-in-law (that grandfather did not know and therefore did not declare on the policy proposal) and voided the whole policy and none were covered for their treatment.

That is appalling - and as not connected with the incident, highly dubious(unless the PEMC caused the accident)..... Which insurer was this?

FH_Brit

Leigh-Anne - To be "Devils Advocate" from their point if you hide or flat out lie about PEMC they (understandably) have doubts about what other "facts" you put in your proposal, and although unfair/appallind/dubious it seems the proposer also agreed to reveal EVERYTHING when the proposer took the policy they agreed to declare and by not declaring, means that the proposer/insured have breached their contract (Policy).

However my view is this - insurance companies do not make any money from you buying their policies, but they do make their money from not paying out on claims!!!

dacouch

Good advice FH Brit, it never ceases to amaze me how many people buy Travel Insurance based on price alone. It can be a complex policy with an amazing amount of small print and the quality of Insurers varies dramatically when it comes to a claim as we both know.

I'm a broker so deal with lots of different Insurers, I'll put it this way, I buy my travel Insurance from Fortis, I would not buy it from Axa. (Axa do most of the travel agent's schemes)

Keep up the good work FH.

Stillsmiling

This has reminded me of our trip to Florida 2 years ago. I ended up with pneumonia and was hospitalised the day before we were due to fly home. 4 days in hospital and the bill as astronimical! I had travel insurance through a company policy at the time and they were helpful but didn't always follow through with the accounts department at the hospital and it took quite a few phone calls! I was still receiving bills 4 months later and after forwarding the second stroppy letter chasing payment of one bill of about $100 to the insurance company, I phoned them and told them to get it sorted and that if I received another request I would be extremely cross! It got paid then!

Biggest hassle we had was sending the medical report saying I was fit to fly to Virgin - not even the local Virgin office owned a fax machine we could use to fax it (which we had to do)!!! They said "use the one in the hotel" which isn't so good when you're staying in a villa! Alternatively I had "well email then - surely you have a computer?" Well yes I did but sticking the report into the diskdrive didn't achieve anything and I don't take my scanner on holiday with me!! LOL I was starting to despair that I would ever get to fly home again!

FH_Brit

dacouch - Thank you - I truly beleive (for an everyday policy) Fortis offers one of the best available. Even if there is a problem then they (or their agents) are fast to resolve and in most cases all I actually do to help my customers is to send the bill to Fortis and forget it! AXA tend to be the ones who forget it when the bill arrives in their office! And it is great to hear it from a broker when sometimes travel agents "pretend" to be a broker. Travel agents should, in my view, stick to what they do best, that is selling travel tickets and hotel bookings and leaver the specialist insurance to people who know.

Travel agents & insurance is like Tesco's and Heinz beans, Twesco sell the cns but have no idea of the recipie, as travel agents sell insurance (often to get a commision only) without knowing, or caring about any restrictions and guess what? It's the poor traveller who thinks they dealt with someone who knows, that pays the ultimate price!

Stillsmiling - Fit to Travel Certificates - well normally (unless you meet a "jobsworth" are valid upon check-in, if you don't have it when you get to the airport then they just won't board you. I contacted a friend "in the know" at Virgin and he confirmed that you never had to provide it in advance (although it is advised and better if you do) as their policy would be they would not allow you to fly without it and as you would have to change your booking until you obtained/produced the FTT cert, then they would charge you for a change of booking (about £200 at the moment I beleive).

Stillsmiling

I've just looked at travel insurance with AMEX, are they any good? I can't see anything about any underwriters or anybody other than American Express themselves.

Any comments /advice?

FH_Brit

If you are talking about "Free" travel insurance with your card be careful that you have sufficient cover with "free" policies, you may want to take extra cover with a good company.

Somewhere there is an underwriter (could possibly be that Amex have their own in house underwriters)

These credit card insurances are usually not very quick at paying if you should need to claim but it really depends where you are going and on the insurers and their assistance company.

Stillsmiling

No this isn't free insurance, this is a travel insurance policy from American Express.

I tried to find who the assistance company were but couldn't find anything.

themaccas

This is really interesting, we have an bank account that gives free annual worldwide travel insurance (Halifax) it was one of the main reasons we took the account. I have looked at the policy and it seems very good and I am happy with the cover overall but do these type of policies pay out ok? We are off to Boston USA later this year and were relying on this policy to cover us.

EDIT: Just found out the policy is administered by FirstAssist Insurance Services Limited and
underwritten by Great Lakes Reinsurance (UK) PLC.

Stillsmiling

Stillsmiling wrote: »

No this isn't free insurance, this is a travel insurance policy from American Express.

I tried to find who the assistance company were but couldn't find anything.

Found it!!

The Underwriter is Forsakringsaktiebolaget Viator (part of the American Express group of companies), and ACE European Group Ltd who will provide the insurance benefits

described in this booklet.