I love the anticipation of travel, from choosing a destination to researching accommodations and activities. Planning a trip is almost as exciting as the journey itself, and it’s the result of months of effort and anticipation. However, sometimes unexpected events force us to cancel our plans, even the ones with the amazing hotel upgrade and the elusive business class award flight. If you’re in this situation, I hope you have travel insurance or your plans are refundable.
When we have trips with substantial out-of-pocket expenses, I always buy travel insurance. If we’re traveling outside the US, I’ll need to get medical coverage regardless, and it’s not significantly more expensive to purchase comprehensive coverage for travel expenses and medical needs.
I’ve never had to make a claim for one of our trips. However, I did have to reschedule a Virgin Voyages cruise that we booked several months ago. I redeposited the miles I used to book our flights to Europe, and the cruise line allowed us to apply our payment to a future sailing. I had forgotten that I had purchased travel insurance from InsureMyTrip until I received an email a few days before our previously planned departure date.
I had never considered it before, but is it possible to get a refund for the travel coverage if the trip never happened? What about when you need to reschedule a trip? I went to their website to find out.
Changing Travel Insurance
InsureMyTrip has a page specifically for changing your travel insurance policy. It provides information on modifying trip dates, destinations, or costs, like adding a day or two to your trip.
Whatever the case, once you have purchased a policy it’s a simple matter to make changes to the details. Total trip cost, destination, or the dates of travel can be adjusted once you have purchased coverage, usually right up until the day before you depart on your trip (although we strongly recommend you don’t wait until then!).
Our situation was different as we were traveling a year later and leaving from the UK instead of Spain. I filled out the online form and submitted copies of our cruise cancellation and the new itinerary, including the price.
Since InsureMyTrip isn’t an insurance company, they forwarded the information to AIG TravelGuard. Two days later, I received a reply.
Thank you for your request. We have processed the desired policy adjustment, resulting in a decrease in total premium. Under the terms of your travel protection plan, all premium refund requests must be submitted within 15 days of the effective date of the plan; your modification request was made after that. However, as a customer service courtesy, we are pleased to offer you a travel protection plan credit voucher.
I wasn’t looking for a refund, but I’m glad they offered a credit for the difference in the price of the two insurance policies. I’m sure they’d ask for the additional amount if the new coverage was more expensive.
The whole process was much easier than I expected. The most difficult part was obtaining the paperwork showing that we canceled our cruise and rebooked for a later date.
I previously thought that travel insurance only covered the trip you originally booked. However, it makes sense that you can make changes to the trip as long as it hasn’t started yet.
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