Travel Insurance
We had a wonderful trip with Tauck BUT
Don’t take the travel Insurance…in my opinion they are awful
Too much paperwork and too many loopholes
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We had a wonderful trip with Tauck BUT
Don’t take the travel Insurance…in my opinion they are awful
Too much paperwork and too many loopholes
Comments
Sorry that something happened to mar your tour but you haven't provided enough information to be useful. When was the tour? What happened that you needed to file a claim? How long did it take? How did that compare to other travel insurance claim processing?
All travel insurance claims are labor intensive. It’s do-able and just takes patience. It’s important to have everything you need such as all your documents and receipts online or available. The insurance companies do not make it easy probably on purpose bur don’t give up. If you have a legitimate claim, you’ll get reimbursed.
We are longtime Tauck travelers and were on the 1st southbound Holland and Belgium river cruise this season. On the 3rd day of the cruise, Good Friday, both of us tested positive for COVID 19. Yener, the cruise director, and Cathy, of Tauck Guest Relations, could not have been more helpful and supportive. We were able to stay in our cabin until Monday, when a taxi took us from Antwerp to a hotel at Brussels Airport. After returning home, I started to work on the insurance claim. Yes, it was time-consuming and a bit of a pain to gather, scan and upload all those pieces of paper, but quite doable--as has already been said. In less than a month, we received checks from Tauck (no paperwork required), reimbursing us for a large percentage of the tour cost. Two weeks later, Aon sent us reimbursement for the expenses we had incurred because of the trip interruption. Our huge disappointment was made a bit more bearable thanks to the wonderful treatment we received from Tauck and Aon.
I have had to use the Tauck/AON insurance. They covered everything. BA probably would have covered some of it, but when I asked if I needed to file a claim with BA, the said, “No, we’ve got it.”. I think if you ‘shop’ insurance for something similar to the Tauck/AON product, you will find the alternative is much more expensive.
Regarding AON insurance. I mailed my claim in to AON due to a death in my family on day 1 of being on a tour, and it has already been resolved in less than two months! I was delightfully surprised and they covered every out of pocket expense.
We did this trip in April 2022. The London part of the trip was the most successful, however once to arrived at the boat in Paris things started to spiral. The food on the boat was at best average and understaffed. 60% of the boat came down with Covid and quarantined. The excursions outside the boat in France were good, but even the tour directors were getting sick. We scheduled and stayed extra day post cruise in Paris, tested positive the day before our flight, and had to quarantine 13 extra days in Paris at the International Legrand by the Opera house. Nice enough accommodations and happy we told the desk to extend our stay. Room service gets old and expensive..we tired of it after 5 days. Aon only covered a small portion of our expenses post cruise(took us 9 months for reimbursement), and it was definitely a learning experience. We are looking at annual travel insurance going forward.
If you add on cancel for any reason as Tauck does, it doubles the cost of the insurance. Tauck’s insurance is in fact really reasonable once you start looking around. For our independent tours, or tours with other companies, it is a standard 9% of the cost of the tour and flights, so of you have business class tickets, that’s a lot of money. We are finding this out. One tour, we just insured the trip, not the flights as we figured if we got vouchers for our flights we could reschedule and use them within a year.
It is really hard to wrap your head around travel insurance coverage until you've gone through filing a claim once. We bought it 9 times without needing it, then back to back had to file 2 claims. There is indeed a lot of fine print. And the insurance companies never seem to be able to tell you up front if they will cover or not, if you present them with different scenarios. Anything medical definitely needs documentation, so get as much as you can. When we got Covid on a trip, we made telephone appointments with our doctors back home, and AON accepted that as a doctor visit, along with our official Covid tests done at a local testing center. One caution "getting everything back" is not exactly true. We had to return on day 3 of a trip due to an impending death in the family. Once you start your trip, you are going to get back the "unused portion of your trip" and you won't usually get back what you spent to get there, even if you only stayed for one day. Also be careful of any non-Tauck activities you book for yourself because if the Tauck AON is your only insurance, those may not be covered since they are unrelated to the Tauck trip. It is worth it to ask lots of questions before you purchase, but I do agree that the Tauck insurance is reasonably priced especially given the "cancel for any reason" feature. We have also used Allianz and Travelguard and the filing of claims is basically the same. Sometimes it is even the same parent company that sells insurance under different names.
Wan, you explained traveling insurance as clear as can possibly be. I also took a trip this year and was at my destination for a day, then had to turn around on day 1 and return because my dad passed away. I feel that I was reimbursed by Tauck as much as I expected to be.