Cancellation, no insurance, no refund, WHAT?

[cruizinisthebest]

Thank you everyone for your comments.

 

And to those who are thinking this is a sob story about not having insurance - go back and read the original post.

My question was whether they should cancel or be a no show.

 

My cousin still hasn't decided what to do. He has 2 days to cancel and get 25% of his money back. We'll see what happens.

 

I clicked on your name to see your latest response, because I don't see the relevance in all the insurance debate posts. That was not your point or question. I didn't see any sob story about it.

 

I sure hope they cancelled by now and got something back. 25% and the port fees beats a blank.

[DANCING GRANDMOMMY]

50+ cruises - never bought insurance and never needed it:D

OP

Please come back and update

I have always bought insurance and thankfully never had to use it. But love the security of knowing it is there. I have a very large family and a family emergency can arise at anytime with any of them.

[Crusin5252]

I have never taken trip insurance for a cruise (sometimes for air) and never will. My medical insurance through my company has always reimbursed me for out of the pocket medical issues when I have been at sea.

 

Our medical insurance (Anthem) covers out of country, but to get the 80/20 covered coverage you have to use one of their preferred providers that are listed on the Anthem worldwide website. If you can not get to one of them, you will pay 40% of the cost for using out-of-network providers. Actually you pay 100% of the cost and them turn in the bills for reimbursement when you get back. If you need a Medi-vac, you are responsible for the cost unless you are in an area covered by the USCC. Anthem said they would not cover a medical evacuation from a cruise ship. Like any other insurance, we take it hoping we won't need to use it but it gives me peace of mind to know we will not be responsible for a bill that could be over $50,000.

[texast518]

At our ages (75 and 77) we always take out the full trip insurance. If we were 37 and 35, maybe not..........

 

Just saying.

 

Dan

 

Being 75, I totally agree. Emer air- vac is all that is important to us.

[Earthworm Jim]

I don't get any type of insurance with the idea of getting ahead or being behind- I do it to protect myself against a potential loss.

 

Huh? Either way you're at risk of a loss. There's no avoiding it. If you paid for insurance on a given cruise, and didn't end up using it, that was a loss. So you have to weigh those losses again the larger but less frequent losses you'd take by not having insurance, and make your decision based on that.

 

In the end though, unless you are one of the few people with medical coverage that provides overseas care and evacuation, the potential risk of that kind of a huge loss is likely to outweigh the many small losses of insurance not used.

[kgb46]

Self insurance is indeed an option. I can't self-insure because I don't have $20k-50k just sitting around that could be used for a medevac.

I don't have that kind of cash laying around either so I always buy insurance. I got a policy that was a little over $100 for 7 day cruise and includes up to $500,000 in emergency evac and medical, cancel for any reason and even included coverage in case Carnival should have to switch any of our ports of call. If that happens then they cut me a $1250 dollar check. Very thankful right now as well because I had a few doubts I would be able to do this trip a couple of weeks ago. I am 38 days out from sailing but had to have surgery to remove 15 inches of colon, and left ovary and they went ahead and took the appendix (found out today in pathology report that it was inflamed) but went to get staples out and doctor said "have a great cruise". Still a bit sore an might cancel one of my shore excursions that requires climbing but I will be ready to relax.:D

[DebJ14]

At our ages (75 and 77) we always take out the full trip insurance. If we were 37 and 35, maybe not..........

 

Just saying.

 

Dan

 

We took out trip insurance when we were in our mid 30's. It wasn't something happening to us that was the problem, it was our kids who were in elementary school. We had to cancel cruises twice because the rug rats were sick.

 

We would all fly to Florida where my parents lived, and my parents would meet us at the airport and take us to the ship and then take the kids to their house for the week. Unfortunately, we had 2 instances where the kids were too sick to fly with bad ear infections. Their ENT filled out the insurance forms for us and we were fully reimbursed. We always buy 3rd party insurance and insure the cost of the flight, so we got 100% of the money paid to the cruise line and airline in both cases.

[DebJ14]

And, once again, it is not the port charges that are refunded. The port charges are part of the cruise fare. What is refunded, whether you call and cancel or be a no show, are the government fees and taxes that are tacked on to the cruise fare. They are usually around $90.00 - $100 on a 7 night cruise. But, they can be close to $200 on a Panama Canal sailing with many ports. They will also refund any prepaid gratuities, gifts, except for the bottled water, which is not refundable.

[wmwmarmstrong]

We have relatives who had to cancel on very, very short notice because of a medical situation that came up. Surprise, surprise, Carnival decided to be really nice and gave them a credit of about 2/3 of the cruise fare to use on a future cruise within a year... which they did. It never hurts to call them and ask nicely. Sometimes they will be nice back.

 

I also had to cancel once for a medical emergency. My doctor wanted to do surgery but when I explained we had a cruise coming up and no way I was giving up the money, he called Carnival.

He told them the situation and how dangerous it could be if something happened on the cruise and they credited us the full amount.

This happened years ago but I would still give it a try.