When do you purchase trip cancelation / interruption insurance?

[CDNPolar]

We always debate when to actually purchase cancellation and interruption insurance.

 

Currently our thought is this:

 

As an example:  If full payment of cruise due September 1st, but the first cancelation penalty by the cruise line if you cancel is not until November 1st, why would you buy insurance for cancel/interruption before November 1st?

 

Can anyone comment on this?

 

(We don't purchase medical insurance for travelling because we have coverage.)

[d9704011]

2 minutes ago, CDNPolar said:

We always debate when to actually purchase cancellation and interruption insurance.

 

Currently our thought is this:

 

As an example:  If full payment of cruise due September 1st, but the first cancelation penalty by the cruise line if you cancel is not until November 1st, why would you buy insurance for cancel/interruption before November 1st?

 

Can anyone comment on this?

 

(We don't purchase medical insurance for travelling because we have coverage.)

I find it strange that full payment would be required prior to any cancellation penalty phase kicks in but, for the sake of argument, let's go with it.

 

I wouldn't fork over thousands of dollars without some sort of insurance no matter what the cruise line may say on the matter.  That seems too risky to me.

[canadianbear]

We’ve only had it that cancellation penalty is a month before final payment.  

[GeezerCouple]

18 minutes ago, CDNPolar said:

We always debate when to actually purchase cancellation and interruption insurance.

 

Currently our thought is this:

 

As an example:  If full payment of cruise due September 1st, but the first cancelation penalty by the cruise line if you cancel is not until November 1st, why would you buy insurance for cancel/interruption before November 1st?

 

Can anyone comment on this?

 

(We don't purchase medical insurance for travelling because we have coverage.)

 

 

We always get travel insurance that works such that we start the coverage by insuring the first deposit, and then up the coverage as costs are added.

 

But we start it within 20 days (it might be 10 days in some states) of the very first deposit (refundable or not!) so that IF we have a claim such as needing to cancel for medical reasons, there will not be any exclusions for pre-existing conditions.

Thus far almost all of our claims (including some big ones) have been for medical reasons, but the costs were rarely for medical costs.  That happened on our very first major trip, back in  2013... or it should have been.  Less than 2 weeks before we planned to leave home, DH had a medical emergency, and the only travel we did for several weeks was back and forth to endless medical visits.

IF we had a policy that excluded pre-existing conditions... we'll never know, but I'm betting that the insurer would have tried to link it to another condition, and it may well have been.  Or not.  But we never needed to deal with that, or whether the insurance would pay or not.

 

Sure, we had already paid, so "we could afford it".  But I can't tell you how often during those "trips" we mumbled a version of, "Thank goodness we have travel insurance so we won't have to pay for this trip AGAIN!"

If we hadn't had the coverage, I'm sure we'd have been so ticked off that we wouldn't have gone on an expensive trip again.  FORTUNATELY, we did have it, and we did go on quite a few expensive trips again, and we have been having the time of our lives! 😀

 

GC

[CDNPolar]

On 8/3/2022 at 4:13 PM, d9704011 said:

I find it strange that full payment would be required prior to any cancellation penalty phase kicks in but, for the sake of argument, let's go with it.

 

I wouldn't fork over thousands of dollars without some sort of insurance no matter what the cruise line may say on the matter.  That seems too risky to me.

Both Viking and Uniworld cruise lines have full payment at 6 months out - longer for some depending on whether it is your first booking, but the first penalty is at 119 days from the sailing.

 

Basically you are paying in full but can cancel and receive full refund over the first 60 days before a penalty kicks in.

[CDNPolar]

23 hours ago, canadianbear said:

We’ve only had it that cancellation penalty is a month before final payment.  

Let me ask you this - how can there be a penalty a month before you pay?  Unless you are paying in instalments or you lose your deposit?

[CDNPolar]

To answer my own question, we had discussions with insurance brokers and insurance companies and their advice is that until there is a penalty, don't buy the insurance.

 

So, moving forward, we will make our full payment six months before sailing, but we won't buy the insurance until 2 months later when the first penalty kicks in.

 

 

[Babr]

7 minutes ago, CDNPolar said:

Let me ask you this - how can there be a penalty a month before you pay?  Unless you are paying in instalments or you lose your deposit?

Unless their policy has changed because of COVID, Windstar required something like a 15% deposit at booking with the penalty period starting about 30 days prior to final payment so there was a window in which your deposit amount was at risk.

 

Buying your insurance when you make full payment will work unless you want time-sensitive coverage like CFAR or financial default. You can still get a pre-existing conditions waiver at final payment with a few policies.

[CDNPolar]

4 minutes ago, Babr said:

Unless their policy has changed because of COVID, Windstar required something like a 15% deposit at booking with the penalty period starting about 30 days prior to final payment so there was a window in which your deposit amount was at risk.

 

Buying your insurance when you make full payment will work unless you want time-sensitive coverage like CFAR or financial default. You can still get a pre-existing conditions waiver at final payment with a few policies.

Gotcha - thanks.  

 

All of us likely have different experiences with different lines so we are not comparing apples to apples.

 

 

[canadianbear]

15 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

Let me ask you this - how can there be a penalty a month before you pay?  Unless you are paying in instalments or you lose your deposit?

We don’t do instalments.  It was for a long cruise and our PCC pointed out penalty starts one month prior to final payment.