Pricey Vacation TROUBLESHOOTER: Ahead of the pandemic, I paid $1,025 for an yearly travel insurance policies coverage through Allianz for my wife and me. She’s in her 70s, and I’m in my 80s. Then COVID-19 arrived alongside, and we experienced to cancel every little thing we planned to do in Europe. So our policy grew to become useless.
I requested Allianz if we could transfer our plan to future 12 months when vacation seems to be coming again. The business provided a 90-working day extension, but it’s crystal clear that there will be no vacation for us for the duration of individuals 90 times. I’d like your enable to both get a refund for the ineffective journey insurance policies or have the plan extended for one more calendar year when it seems we will actually be in a position to make use of it.
— Durndord King, Santa Monica, California
Response: I’m sorry you experienced to cancel your excursion to Europe. You would believe that your travel insurance policies would be refundable, but it generally isn’t.
Allianz vacation insurance policy designs offer you coverage for any excursions that are a lot more than 100 miles from your house and manifest throughout the policy’s productive interval. So it would have also utilized to your visits within just the U.S. to check out buddies and family for the duration of the summer months and holiday seasons. If you want to cancel your annual journey insurance policy, you can do so for any purpose and get a prorated top quality refund.
It appears you asked for an extension of your coverage. Allianz was presenting extensions all through the pandemic on a situation-by-circumstance foundation, so it supplied you an additional 90 times of coverage. But you informed an Allianz consultant that you couldn’t use the more 90 times, which is absolutely comprehensible.
Travel insurance plan companies have some overall flexibility when it arrives to requests like yours. You could have appealed to Allianz on the web (I endorse a penned attractiveness with any documentation). You also could have appealed to an govt at Allianz. I checklist their names, numbers and e-mail addresses on my consumer advocacy internet site at www.elliott.org/organization-contacts/allianz/.
By the way, I have the identical annual coverage that you do. It will make a whole lot of perception for travelers who just take several outings in a year.
However, the time for a prorated refund had already handed by the time you contacted me, and a 90-day extension wouldn’t have been helpful. The phrases of your vacation insurance policies acquire had been clear, but you have been asking the corporation to bend a rule through a pandemic. I assume that was a fair ask for.
I contacted Allianz on your behalf. A agent said that as a “one-time consideration” it would refund your approach in total.