When should I purchase travel insurance?

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SoylentGreen

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I will shortly book an expensive business class flight plus a number of hotel rooms for travel to the far East.

Should I purchase my travel insurance before I do this or should it be O.K. to purchase my travel insurance shortly before my flight?

If I purchase shortly before my flight and if there was a problem, could the insurance company state that I only purchased the insurance when I knew there was a problem in order to get a refund?
 
Book the insurance as soon as you have flights/rooms booked. The insurance will be a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of business class flights.
 
emeralds said:
Book the insurance as soon as you have flights/rooms booked. The insurance will be a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of business class flights.
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It's just that I won't be travelling for a few months and didn't want to pay for sitting at home......I will also be travelling later in the year.
Just wondering if the insurance companies have any regulations regarding time of purchase V time of travel.
 
I've seen cases where people gave paid for their insurance in advance, but with policy only starting on day of travel. Then something happens say a week before they are due to travel, and the insurance company rightly refuses to pay.

Get an annual policy if you are traveling again - it's a marginal extra cost for you.
 
A common fallacy this. You need to have travel insurance in place from the time of booking if you wish to rely on it in the future. So buy the travel insurance first, THEN your flights and hotels. You are not paying for the insurance while sitting at home with it doing nothing; the insurance is protecting you during the time between booking and your departure in the event of a sudden cancellation and also then during your trip for loss of baggage etc.

As someone else said, get annual travel insurance, renew it annually and never have to worry.
 
Thanks. That's what I thought.

I have Health Insurance with Laya. I messaged them about their travel insurance. I was told that there was a discount because I had Laya Health Insurance. When I checked Laya online I see that there is a discount if I purchase travel insurance online, I am also asked if I have health insurance but not necessarily Laya health insurance on their application form.

It appears that anyone can get this discount provided they have health insurance (with anybody) and provided they purchase online.

Can anyone confirm if Laya Healtcare offer a special discount on their travel insurance to their Laya Healthcare customers.
 
I'm with Irish Life Health and travel insurance is included in my policy. Was with Glo-Health last year and that included it also.
 
noproblem said:
I'm with Irish Life Health and travel insurance is included in my policy. Was with Glo-Health last year and that included it also.
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I rang Laya and they said that if my Health policy has overseas cover I can purchase their Travel insurance policy. I wasn't aware that some health insurance policies did not have overseas cover. This is worth checking out to see if your existing health insurance policy has this cover included.

noproblem. That's interesting to see that the above two companies throw in travel insurance as a freebie on top of the overseas health cover.
 
Cancellation insurance is only valid for something that hasnt happened yet.
As soon as you have paid out for a holiday, you can get cancellation insurance, Its not doing nothing, you are covered if something happens.

If you break your leg 3 weeks before your holiday, you cant ring up and buy cancellation insurance and expect them to cover your cancellation due to your broken leg which has already happened.

Same if an close relative gets diagnosed with a serious illness and dies 2 days before you travel and you cant travel. You need to have cancellation insurance before the diagnosis.

Both these scenarios happened people I know in the last 10 years.
 
noproblem said:
I'm with Irish Life Health and travel insurance is included in my policy. Was with Glo-Health last year and that included it also.
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Exact same situation here. We just include it as one of our complimentary add-ons every year.
 
From what I can see in the above link...you are actually paying extra for this "travel insurance". Also is it actually "travel insurance" as we know it Jim or is it in fact "overseas health insurance"?

Does it include items lost or stolen, cancelled flights, that sort of thing?
 
This is the policy document we received when we signed up last August.
[broken link removed]
 
When to buy depends partly on the wording in your policy. I would recommend buying your travel insurance at the same time as booking. A general consideration is that you need to be covered at the time the event impacting your holiday occurs. If you have a bad accident 3 months before your holiday, and you are still unable to travel, then your policy needs to have been in place at the time of the accident.
 

Just wondering if you got your travel insurance sorted? Are you certain your HI hadn't included it as part of your policy? Just curious as to why not?
 
emeralds said:
This is the policy document we received when we signed up last August.
[broken link removed]
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This policy limits compensation for cancellation or curtailment to 1,500 EUR (page 3 summary of cover), which is not a lot of money if you are travelling outside of Europe. From what I can see most Irish travel insurance policies are OK for package holidays and weekends away in Europe, but for anything else you need greater cancellation insurance. Don't think it won't happen to you. Two years ago a medical emergency forced us to cancel an adventure holiday in the Far East. Luckily we were insured with a UK insurance company with a high cancellation limit that refunded everything bar the excess within a few weeks.
 
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