Travel insurance and bad weather. What type of cover?

[ranj]

Dear all



Myself and my partner are off to our honeymoon in Florida during August, I don't go on holiday often and its my first time to the USA and I had a question regarding travel insurance.



I am aware that it will hurricane season whilst we are in Florida so wanted to ask who is the best travel insurer for this. I been looking at a few travel insurance company websites as well as moneysupermarket and confused but a lot of them dont seem to mention cover for bad weather.



Is this cover standard on most policies?



Some companies are offering standard or premium options, for florida which option would be best?



Has anyone experienced a hurricane whilst in the USA and if so what was there travel insurance like when having to claim?



The cheapest I have found is flexicover, Has anyone used them and are they recommended do they offer good support when things go wrong?



If anyone can offer me and good or partial answers to this, it would be much appreciated



many thanks

[elsiegee40]

We have annual cover with the AA now and it's been very good.

Experience of holiday claims:

Cheap cover (forgotten with whom) on holiday to France: My father died unexpectedly and we had to return to the UK - the children were aged 6 and 8. The company refused to pay for the children's cancelled holiday and their unscheduled return, because the children "were not close relatives of the deceased"! What were we supposed to do? Leave them in France? We actually argued this out with the help of Which? and they did pay up eventually.

After scouring the policies we settled on AA Travel Insurance as the one that seemed to cover most eventualities. This was tested when I had to have an unexpected operation less than 2 weeks before we were going to fly to Florida. They asked for all the paperwork, but paid up without a problem.

We always insure with them now!

We did make it to Florida and missed the hurricanes by about a fortnight. Hopefully, you will too.

[srochford]

can't really offer specific advice but I think it would pay to phone any company before you go and ask the question "will I be covered if a hurricane spoils my honeymoon?"

I suspect many companies won't cover you - I think the term is "pre-existing risk" - ie you know there are likely to be hurricanes but insurance is for things you didn't expect.

This is how Direct Line tried to get out of covering people who lost bags at Heathrow T5 - they tried to claim that people should have known that they might lose their bags. Fortunately most insurers didn't take this attituted and DL backed down but going to an area which has bad weather at a particular time each year may count against you.

[cookie_monster]

I can't tell you about hurricane issues but i can say that i've used Options a few times they are helpfull and most important they've paid out when i've claimed. It might be worth emailing them to ask the questions they're usually very helpful.

http://www.optionsinsurance.co.uk/general/default.asp