Notes on Travel Insurance That Covers Real Failures
Electronics, medical, trip delay: read the exclusions. A policy that covers adventure and skips your laptop is a brochure.
[ journal ]
I read exclusions first. A policy that covers adventure and skips laptops is a brochure. I buy insurance for failures I have already met: a delayed bag with the charger in it, a clinic bill in a city where I do not have a GP, a laptop that leaves a café and does not come back.
Electronics need a declared value and a deductible I can actually pay. Some policies want original receipts. I keep them in the same encrypted store as the passport scans. Portable electronics and unattended in a vehicle are phrases that have eaten claims. I check whether café theft is covered or whether they mean a locked hotel safe. I check whether I must file a police report within twenty-four hours. I put the claims number in a note that works offline.
Medical is not the same as having a health system. The health-care note is about finding a clinic, prescriptions, and what you do when you are already sick. This is the policy: does it cover emergency treatment, evacuation if the local hospital cannot, and the flight home if you cannot sit in economy for twelve hours. I read the sports list. I read the pre-existing paragraph without pretending I am an exception.
Trip delay and interruption matter when a missed connection is also a missed week of paid work. I want hotels and rebooking, not points and a shrug. I note the hours you must be delayed before it pays. Four hours and twelve hours are different lives.
I do not buy the cheapest annual plan because the price looked like a win on the builder budget. A denied claim is more expensive than a better policy. I also do not assume credit-card coverage is enough. It might be for a long weekend. It has not been enough for a laptop and a clinic in the same year.
Read it. Mark the no’s. Then buy the thing that still says yes to the failures you actually have.
— JV · Dark Heart Labs.