Annual travel insurance plan plan is unusable due to the fact of the pandemic. Is it refundable?
Q: Just before the pandemic, I paid out $1,025 for an yearly journey insurance coverage by means of Allianz for my wife and me. She’s in her 70s, and I’m in my 80s. Then COVID-19 came together, and we had to terminate anything we planned to do in Europe. So our plan grew to become worthless.
I questioned Allianz if we could transfer our policy to subsequent year when travel seems to be coming back again. The enterprise provided a 90-working day extension, but it’s distinct that there will be no travel for us throughout all those 90 days. I’d like your help to both get a refund for the worthless travel insurance plan or have the policy prolonged for a different calendar year when it appears we will basically be in a position to make use of it. — Durndord King, Santa Monica, California
A: I’m sorry you experienced to cancel your vacation to Europe. You would think that your journey insurance policies would be refundable, but it commonly isn’t.
Allianz vacation insurance policy strategies provide protection for any trips that are a lot more than 100 miles from your household and manifest throughout the policy’s productive interval. So it would have also applied to your trips within the U.S. to pay a visit to mates and relatives during the summer months and holidays. If you want to terminate your once-a-year journey coverage, you can do so for any rationale and get a prorated quality refund.
It appears you requested for an extension of your plan. Allianz was featuring extensions throughout the pandemic on a circumstance-by-case foundation, so it made available you an additional 90 times of protection. But you explained to an Allianz agent that you couldn’t use the added 90 times, which is entirely comprehensible.
Travel insurance plan companies have some flexibility when it comes to requests like yours. You could have appealed to Allianz online (I recommend a penned charm with any documentation). You also could have appealed to an government at Allianz. I record their names, quantities and e-mail addresses on my buyer advocacy website at www.elliott.org/organization-contacts/allianz/.
By the way, I have the similar yearly coverage that you do. It makes a lot of sense for travelers who acquire multiple trips in a 12 months.
However, the time for a prorated refund had by now passed by the time you contacted me, and a 90-working day extension would not have been beneficial. The phrases of your travel insurance policies purchase had been crystal clear, but you had been asking the business to bend a rule throughout a pandemic. I consider that was a good request.
I contacted Allianz on your behalf. A representative mentioned that as a “one-time consideration” it would refund your program in whole.
Christopher Elliott is the chief advocacy officer of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit group that aids people take care of their troubles. Elliott’s most current e book is “How To Be The World’s Smartest Traveler” (Nationwide Geographic). Get hold of him at elliott.org/assist or [email protected].
