Comparison? TravelEx Net Premier, TraveLite, CSA, TravelGuard

[Bruin Steve]

My TA always prices my cruise with insurance...

...and we're a little paranoid about this since, even though we are in good health, we once had to fly home mid-cruise from Helsinki duue to my Father-in-law passing away...Luckily, we had insurance and ended up salvaging a decent portion of the cost....

So, nowadays, I typically buy the insurance...as quoted by my TA...

 

Now, we just booked a China trip (Viking River Cruises) for June 2014...and, since it's rather pricey, so is the insurance quote from my TA...$984 for the two of us...What the TA always gets us is TravelEx Net Premier...

 

So, I decided to look at Insurance websites to see what we could do competitively...

 

First one I went to was TravelEx themselves. Their website quotes 5 different policies--none of them is "Net Premier"--ranging from $590 up to $1,114...For $590, "TraveLite" appears, from the minimum info on the website chart, to offer very similar coverages to the "Net Premier"...

 

So, I called TravelEx to ask for an explanation of the differences. Nobody at TravelEx seemed to be able to tell me...A couple of them tried to tell me that the Net Premier is NOT one of their products (It IS--apparently they sell it only through TAs and their regular sales staff is completely in the dark...Someone finally knew all about the product--but didn't know anything about TraveLite!)...

 

I then visiited the websites for CSA and Travel Guard...

 

CSA offers two products "Custom" and "Luxe"...For us, Custom would be $568, Luxe $866...Custom, apparently, doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, Luxe does...and the "limits" on all of the coverages APPEAR to be somewhat higher than everyone else...

 

Travel Guard has two plans as well...Gold--at $671 and Platinum--at $1059...From their website, it is extremely difficult to see much difference at all between the two plans...

 

So, now I am very confused...

 

Stick with what we've been getting through the TA?

Drop to the cheaper TravelEx plan on our own and save nearly $400?

Go over to the expensive CSA plan, still save about $120 and get apparently higher coverages?

Go with the lower priced plan on Travel Guard?

 

Has anyone ever done a comparison of these different plans and/or different companies? Have an opinion? Thanks...

[cruiseco]

My TA always prices my cruise with insurance...

...and we're a little paranoid about this since, even though we are in good health, we once had to fly home mid-cruise from Helsinki duue to my Father-in-law passing away...Luckily, we had insurance and ended up salvaging a decent portion of the cost....

So, nowadays, I typically buy the insurance...as quoted by my TA...

 

Now, we just booked a China trip (Viking River Cruises) for June 2014...and, since it's rather pricey, so is the insurance quote from my TA...$984 for the two of us...What the TA always gets us is TravelEx Net Premier...

 

So, I decided to look at Insurance websites to see what we could do competitively...

 

First one I went to was TravelEx themselves. Their website quotes 5 different policies--none of them is "Net Premier"--ranging from $590 up to $1,114...For $590, "TraveLite" appears, from the minimum info on the website chart, to offer very similar coverages to the "Net Premier"...

 

So, I called TravelEx to ask for an explanation of the differences. Nobody at TravelEx seemed to be able to tell me...A couple of them tried to tell me that the Net Premier is NOT one of their products (It IS--apparently they sell it only through TAs and their regular sales staff is completely in the dark...Someone finally knew all about the product--but didn't know anything about TraveLite!)...

 

I then visiited the websites for CSA and Travel Guard...

 

CSA offers two products "Custom" and "Luxe"...For us, Custom would be $568, Luxe $866...Custom, apparently, doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, Luxe does...and the "limits" on all of the coverages APPEAR to be somewhat higher than everyone else...

 

Travel Guard has two plans as well...Gold--at $671 and Platinum--at $1059...From their website, it is extremely difficult to see much difference at all between the two plans...

 

So, now I am very confused...

 

Stick with what we've been getting through the TA?

Drop to the cheaper TravelEx plan on our own and save nearly $400?

Go over to the expensive CSA plan, still save about $120 and get apparently higher coverages?

Go with the lower priced plan on Travel Guard?

 

Has anyone ever done a comparison of these different plans and/or different companies? Have an opinion? Thanks...

 

The TravelNet plan from Travelex is different from the other Travelex plans primarily in its pricing. It's their only plan that does not vary the premiums by the travelers' ages so if yo're in the upper age range it can be a good deal compared to their other plans but if you're under about 70 their other plans often price out better, as you have seen. It's also their only plan that lets the travel agency set it's commission so a greedy TA might have set the commission at the maximum making the cost even higher. With their other plans the commission is set by Travelex.

 

The TravelNet plan is not available directly from Travelex -- you won't find it on their web site and if you call Travelex directly they won't know what you're talking about. It's marketed only through select agencies. The reason is the pricing method explained above. They don't want the travel agent selling one plan over another strictly on price. So if they have the TravelNet plan that's the only one they can offer.

 

CSA offers two products "Custom" and "Luxe"...For us, Custom would be $568, Luxe $866...Custom, apparently, doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, Luxe does...and the "limits" on all of the coverages APPEAR to be somewhat higher than everyone else...

 

CSA also offers more plans that what you'll find on their own web site for the same reasons. A huge cost saver for those that need coverage for pre-existing conditions is to find an agency that offers the Freestyle series of plans. The savings comes from the fact that with the Freestyle plans you don't have to move up to the much more costly "Luxe" version to get the pre-ex coverage -- it's available also with the regular version. With the Custom and Custom Luxe plans that are available on their web site or if you call them, the pre-ex coverage is only available with the "Luxe" version.

 

Also, be very careful when comparing coverages. For example, with a Travelex plan the medical coverage shown is per person. With CSA it's per policy. That can make a big difference if both of you are ill or injured. You can get around this by each being on a separate policy instead of on the same one. It won't affect the coverage but you will pay the $6/policy admin fee twice instead of once.

 

The CSA Freestlye plans can be found at:

 

http://www.tripinsurancestore.com and

 

https://www.travelinsurancecenter.com/

[Scrapnana]

Have you called Travel Guard? They were able to tailor a policy to include those items (like medical) that were most important to me.

[Keith1010]

We use insuremytrip.com which we found does a nice comparison between policies.

 

Keith