First-Person: My Experience with Travel Insurance

I recently had the occasion to use travel insurance. The majority of my trips are military-funded for military business. I have taken four personally-funded trips for pleasure, and each time I purchased travel insurance. I have never had to use it until last month.

A few months ago, I scheduled a trip to go to Las Vegas with friends. I got my airfare and hotel room and everything was lined up and good to go. I packed for days in advance, and was so excited. At the last moment, however, we had a family emergency come up, and I had to cancel my trip. The hotel allowed me to cancel and receive a refund of my full deposit. However, I purchased my airline tickets through CheapTickets.com, and thought I had forgotten to purchase travel insurance. I was pretty distraught over losing that $400.

I spent a couple of weeks moping over the money I had lost, and kicking myself for not purchasing insurance. I was going through old papers and shredding them one afternoon, and found a copy of the confirmation email that I had gotten when I purchased my airline tickets. I almost fell out of the chair when I saw that I had spent the additional $19.80 for travel insurance. I was ecstatic.

I immediately went online and filed a claim. I waited for two weeks to hear back from the company, but my claim status simply said "pending" when I checked it online, and the two inquiries that I had sent to their customer service department were ignored. I was able to do some sleuthing on their website and see that I needed to send in a form of proof as to why I had to cancel my trip. I faxed those documents in, and waited a couple more days. Finally, I logged on to the website one morning to see that my claim had a preliminary approval, and was moving on to the next department.

Two days later, my claim got final approval and a check was issued. It took another week to get the check in the mail. The sense of relief I felt when I got that check in my mailbox was immeasurable. I am so glad that I purchased that trip insurance, and will always do so in the future, no matter what. It was the best $19.80 I have ever spent.

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