Will travel-insurance reimburse for accomodations purchased with "points"?

Sorry to ask yet another insurance question but, I've looked thru a bunch of threads and have yet to find this one...

I'm looking into purchasing travel insurance for our upcoming cruise vacation. In order to get estimates online thru InsureMyTrip.com, I have to be able to enter what my trip is going to cost (from the time I leave my front door until I return!) We're purchasing many of our pre- and post-cruise items (i.e. rental cars, hotels, and flights to/from our home airport to Atlanta) with our accumulated travel points. In fact, about 25% of our total vacation cost will be paid with points.

I'm sure the premiums quoted will depend largely on the "trip cost" that I enter. So, if insurance companies will NOT reimburse the value of lost points, then there is no point in including the items purchased via points in my vacation valuation. If insurance does reimburse for lost points, do they value them at the amount we would have had to pay in $$ for the same service if we hadn't had the points to use? Or do they use some other valuation?

I'm sure someone out there has experience!

I suggest you call insuremytrip.com or tripinsurancestore.com and have a rep help you come up with the insurable amount for your trip. Then help you find a policy that treats your points and/or cost to redeposit points for your potential needs.

Once you find “the policy”, be sure to read the policy itself to verify that it will cover Your needs.

I suggest you call insuremytrip.com or tripinsurancestore.com and have a rep help you come up with the insurable amount for your trip. Then help you find a policy that treats your points and/or cost to redeposit points for your potential needs.

 

Once you find “the policy”, be sure to read the policy itself to verify that it will cover Your needs.

Ths... call to be sure, rather than relying upon internet strangers.

Our policies would only reimburse for "dollar costs lost".

That would include, when points are involved, a certain amount (maximum) for the re-banking fee to put the points back in the account.

Ditto for "change fees" with cash-paid airline tix.

So we only need to include those re-deposit or change fees, etc.

But check the specific policy that YOU are considering.

GC

Thanks both! I thought maybe there might be a "standard" answer since the question came up as I was trying to fill in an internet form to get quotes. But I should know by now that there is pretty much NOTHING standard about insurance... except maybe that when you try to collect on it, most of the time the company will come up with some explanation as to why your claim is NOT covered. ;p

I made the call and now I'm trying to read thru the certificate of three different companies to TRY and understand what is and is not covered. And ending up with dozens of additional questions to ask. :confused:

Will REALLY need this vacation by the time I'm done.

You pose an interesting question. I don't think I've read that insurance policies only reimburse for payments in cash. They may claim that, but I would suggest that it's not in the contract. Your airline points have a value....in fact in many cases you can actually buy airline points. When we were on a Celebrity ship that broke down, celebrity offered to reimburse passengers for the airfare to/from the cruise. We had paid our air tickets with points. Celebrity bought us back the points.

Hopefully, you will post what you found....but irrespective of what the insurance company tells you, if it's not specifically covered in their policy, then my non lawyer gut tells me that you would win a legal claim if they refused to reimburse either your points or the cost of the ticket purchased with the points (and they would probably settle out of court because the last thing the insurance companies want is legal precedence on something like this)..

Since you can usually re-bank your airline points for a fee, what you need to insure is the amount of that fee. Likewise, if your airfare is rebookable for some fee, travel insurance will try to only reimburse that change fee, and then cover the residual value when/if you're unable to use the rebooked ticket.

Depending on the points, you may be able to cancel and redeposit them at no cost for hotels. My Hilton points are that way. If I reserve a room at a Hilton property using my Hilton Honors points, I can cancel it until 24 hours before check in and get them back, a least for now.

Sorry to ask yet another insurance question but, I've looked thru a bunch of threads and have yet to find this one...

I'm looking into purchasing travel insurance for our upcoming cruise vacation. In order to get estimates online thru InsureMyTrip.com, I have to be able to enter what my trip is going to cost (from the time I leave my front door until I return!) We're purchasing many of our pre- and post-cruise items (i.e. rental cars, hotels, and flights to/from our home airport to Atlanta) with our accumulated travel points. In fact, about 25% of our total vacation cost will be paid with points.

 

I'm sure the premiums quoted will depend largely on the "trip cost" that I enter. So, if insurance companies will NOT reimburse the value of lost points, then there is no point in including the items purchased via points in my vacation valuation. If insurance does reimburse for lost points, do they value them at the amount we would have had to pay in $$ for the same service if we hadn't had the points to use? Or do they use some other valuation?

 

I'm sure someone out there has experience![/quote

I am in the same boat. I have ff points for flights, pre-cruise hotel and post. Have cruise care with Celebrity but wondered about the other stuff.

Hi Ginger. I wound up contacting the company that underwrites the cruise insurance policy I was interested in. In my case it turned out that the insurance I was buying did not reimburse the dollar value of the rooms/flights purchased with points because they did not consider that an-out-pocket expense. However, if I had to cancel a flight or room purchased with points and the airline or hotel charged a cancellation fee or change fee to put the points back into my account, then that amount would be covered.... but ONLY IF I had included the dollar value of the flight or room in my total trip calculation. The insurance program I was looking at based its premiums, in part, on the dollar value of the entire trip and raised premiums at every $1000 break point. If I chose NOT to include those items, I was still covered for OTHER unexpected out of pocket costs that might occur if, for example, I had to end my trip early. In other words, if I get sick and have to fly home early so have to make a new flight plan, the policy will cover the cost of a new flight, but would not cover the cost of getting my frequent flyer miles reimbursed to me for the flight I wound up having to cancel.

Once I calculated what it would cost me if I had to pay cancellation and/or change fees to get my points back - versus - the additional premium due to the dollar value of my points flights and points hotel rooms bumping my total trip value up by a couple of thousand dollars, I opted NOT to "insure" my points.

Every insurance company is different tho. You should contact the company issuing your actual contract and ASK them exactly how their contract works. Be sure to present possible scenarios so you know that you and the agent are talking about the same thing. Insurance is complicated!

Hi Ginger. I wound up contacting the company that underwrites the cruise insurance policy I was interested in. In my case it turned out that the insurance I was buying did not reimburse the dollar value of the rooms/flights purchased with points because they did not consider that an-out-pocket expense. However, if I had to cancel a flight or room purchased with points and the airline or hotel charged a cancellation fee or change fee to put the points back into my account, then that amount would be covered.... but ONLY IF I had included the dollar value of the flight or room in my total trip calculation. The insurance program I was looking at based its premiums, in part, on the dollar value of the entire trip and raised premiums at every $1000 break point. If I chose NOT to include those items, I was still covered for OTHER unexpected out of pocket costs that might occur if, for example, I had to end my trip early. In other words, if I get sick and have to fly home early so have to make a new flight plan, the policy will cover the cost of a new flight, but would not cover the cost of getting my frequent flyer miles reimbursed to me for the flight I wound up having to cancel.

Once I calculated what it would cost me if I had to pay cancellation and/or change fees to get my points back - versus - the additional premium due to the dollar value of my points flights and points hotel rooms bumping my total trip value up by a couple of thousand dollars, I opted NOT to "insure" my points.

Every insurance company is different tho. You should contact the company issuing your actual contract and ASK them exactly how their contract works. Be sure to present possible scenarios so you know that you and the agent are talking about the same thing. Insurance is complicated!

It's a little difficult to follow just what you were told, but please make sure about the "... the policy will cover the cost of a new flight, [but not the points costs]".

For all of our travel insurance, IF we had "costs" due to medical, or returning home, etc.", there would be a limit based on the total coverage insured.

So IF we had to cancel the trip part way in, and we wanted to recover the costs of the unused vacation days (esp. if fully prepaid such as with a cruise) AND the airfare home, it would likely exceed the insured costs of cruise plus "fee to re-bank the points". And because the air tix were not purchased with cash, we wouldn't be able to up the coverage to include "more".

For us, this is one "problem" with the wonderful use of points for premium long-haul air travel, but we'll risk it. If it was a real emergency, then that cost would be capped at 2x one-way Business class tix, even if our points had been used for 2F tix. And *maybe* we'd have some luck with very last minute awards in J (Business), but less likely for F unless it was off-season (maybe...).

It's tricky with awards use for what would have been expensive air tickets, with insurance.

GC

In my observation and experience, if you insure for a $5000 trip cost and have to drop out halfway through, your airfare home is a reimburseable trip interruption expense even though you drove to the ship.

Trip interruption expenses are subject to whatever the interruption limit is (often, it's something like 150% of the insured trip cost).

Typically, "trip cancellation" coverage is effective until you actually leave for the trip (or the day of departure, something like that) and "trip interruption" applies after you've left. There's an additional set of expenses incurred in getting you home once you've left in addition to the cost of unused travel booked.