Is his annual insurance coverage coverage refundable?

Q. In advance of the pandemic, I paid out $1,025 for an yearly vacation insurance coverage coverage through Allianz for my spouse and me. She’s in her 70s, and I’m in my 80s. Then COVID-19 arrived along, and we experienced to terminate all the things we planned to do in Europe. So our coverage became useless.

I asked Allianz if we could transfer our coverage to following 12 months when travel appears to be coming back. The corporation available a 90-working day extension, but it’s obvious that there will be no vacation for us all through these 90 days. I’d like your help to either get a refund for the ineffective vacation insurance plan or have the plan extended for another 12 months when it seems we will in fact be equipped to make use of it.

DURNDORD KING, Santa Monica, Calif.

A. I’m sorry you had to terminate your vacation to Europe. You would think that your vacation insurance would be refundable, but it normally isn’t.

Allianz vacation insurance plan programs offer protection for any visits that are far more than 100 miles from your dwelling and take place through the policy’s effective period. So it would have also applied to your outings in just the United States to take a look at close friends and loved ones through the summer time and vacations. If you want to cancel your yearly travel insurance policies, you can do so for any cause and receive a prorated high quality refund.

It appears you asked for an extension of your plan. Allianz was offering extensions through the pandemic on a case-by-circumstance foundation, so it made available you an more 90 times of coverage. But you informed an Allianz consultant that you could not use the further 90 days, which is absolutely easy to understand.

Travel insurance policies providers have some adaptability when it arrives to requests like yours. You could have appealed to Allianz on-line (I endorse a penned charm with any documentation). You also could have appealed to an government at Allianz. I checklist their names, figures and e-mail addresses on my consumer advocacy web-site at www.elliott.org/company-contacts/allianz.

By the way, I have the similar annual coverage that you do. It would make a lot of feeling for vacationers who take many excursions in a yr.

Regrettably, the time for a prorated refund had by now handed by the time you contacted me, and a 90-day extension wouldn’t have been helpful. The conditions of your vacation insurance plan order were distinct, but you were being inquiring the company to bend a rule during a pandemic. I consider that was a honest ask for.

I contacted Allianz on your behalf. A agent said that as a “one-time consideration” it would refund your system in whole.

Christopher Elliott is the chief advocacy officer of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organization that allows buyers take care of their problems. Elliott’s hottest guide is “How To Be The World’s Smartest Traveler” (Nationwide Geographic). Get hold of him at elliott.org/assistance or [email protected].