DAN travel Insurance

[KeithG]

Yes I have Dan Dive Insurance, I was asking about the travel insurance side of it. I know that any company will try their hardest not to pay a claim, but I do not want to reward them for it. I told Allianz that I was not going to use them again for the bull**** they tried with me, so alas now I am looking for the next best evil....

Hang on a minute! Like all industries there are reputable companies and scum suckers. In general reputable insurance companies provide excellent customer service. But unfortunately they are battling on two different fronts:
- fradulent claims
- unaware (dis-satisfied) customers who did not read the fine print - you get what you pay for!
Both ofmthese issues tend to cause lots of friction at claim time.

Low cost insurance products generally provide minimal benefits. If it is cheap, there is a reason. In order to provide a low cost offering, the insurance company must exclude many (most!) things.

When we look for insurance, we read the fine print and have always rejected the low cost providers since we think their product will not be "good enough" in times of our expected need. So we pay more. For adequate (or better) coverage. We have never had any issue when we submitted claims. We present the facts, they present their position as per our contract. So far we are ahead of the game and are amazed each year that they allow us to renew our coverage.

There is no free lunch or tooth fairy. Good insurance costs good money.

 

[Akimbo]

Yes, yes - they offer a number of insurance products. She wants to know about Trip/Travel insurance, and it looked like you were talking about Dive insurance.

I can see how you got that impression after re-reading my post. I should have been more clear.

If anyone is considering travel insurance on top of DAN for a diving vacation, it might be worth spending a little more so you don't get caught in a dueling match between insurers.

There is always a gray area where one company can claim it is a diving accident while the other says it isn't. Probably a poor example but say you get hurt boarding the dive boat from the dock. It is sort of like having earthquake insurance with a different company than your fire insurance. Just like you don't want a company with a poor reputation for honoring the policy, you don't want to be caught in a pointing match in your time of need.

 

[Cali_diver]

Hang on a minute! Like all industries there are reputable companies and scum suckers. In general reputable insurance companies provide excellent customer service. But unfortunately they are battling on two different fronts:
- fradulent claims
- unaware (dis-satisfied) customers who did not read the fine print - you get what you pay for!
Both ofmthese issues tend to cause lots of friction at claim time.


There is no free lunch or tooth fairy. Good insurance costs good money.

Nice try but sorry... they were just straight out dragging their feet to put it kindly. Allianz is one of the top companies and we had the top of the line policy for a trip that was very expensive. I had all the documentation for the trip but they would say "oh we need one more thing... after this last piece the claim will go right through.." They did this 3 times all pretty ridiculous in my eyes and their final request was a letter from the airport in Indonesia (The International non-english speaking one) stating that the airport was closed due to the Volcano... I had already given the requested letter from Garuda stating that the airport was closed. So by this time I was beyond mad... I had already submitted close to 15 documents for an extremely straight forward claim. In the end it took a nasty letter and links to every article I could find that discussed the airport closure, including one with a direct quote from the President stating the exact hours that our second cancelled flight fell under to get paid.

We travel a lot and we have bought many policies through them and never had to make a claim until now. It was frustrating and crazy. I was lucky that I had a friend in Bali help me get the letter from Garuda in English, not everyone has friends in Bali so I pity the others who may be going through the same thing.

I have been told by friends in the insurance business that this is standard practice when an event like this occurs. They tend to drag out claims so they do not have to pay out everything at once. I asked one of the adjusters from Allianz if they had other claims from the Volcano eruption and she laughed and said "oh boy, yes we do". I wonder if everybody had to get a letter from the airport? I still haven't received the requested airport letter....