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Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 3 Nov 2012, 2:37pm
by Valbrona
Mr CTC Head Honch ... Have you seen this thread?

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 3 Nov 2012, 3:19pm
by meic
I dont think that they will.

Why would they be looking through a thread titled "Travel Insurance" in the Technical Section?

No criticism of any body involved in any way, just it is very, very unlikely they will be looking here unless directed to do so.

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 27 Nov 2012, 9:33am
by seventeezlad
Posted on behalf of Citybond -

The Annual Multi Trip policy can be used for trips in the UK as long as there are 2 nights consecutive accommodation booked, but this does not need to be 2 nights in the same place. So Wirral_cyclist is correct and the ‘touring sentiment’ is appreciated.

If you have any queries that you would like to talk through then please do feel free to contact me directly on 0845 618 0333 ext 4263 or rebeccafp@citybond.co.uk I will be happy to help.

Best regards Rebecca, Sales Manager at Citybond Suretravel.

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 3 Dec 2012, 10:43am
by Paul Smith SRCC
May be worth asking your bank, for example my HSBC account comes with travel Insurance; sadly I have used their insurance when I dislocated my shoulder on a London to Paris tour; they paid my fees with no fuss or drama.

Paul

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 28 May 2013, 11:37am
by hufty
INSURE AND GO

I'm resurrecting this thread because I posted nice things previously about Insure and Go, but that wasn't the whole story. They now exclude cycle touring from their single and multitrip policies for personal accident and personal liability.

Luckily if you are mountain biking, bungee jumping, river or cave tubing, sandboarding, ice skating you get the idea, you are covered under these sections. Presumably the underwriters have accurately assessed these activities and deemed them less risky than cycle touring.

[Edited after phonecall with I&G - nothing of substance changed]

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 28 May 2013, 4:44pm
by CJ
hufty wrote:INSURE AND GO

I'm resurrecting this thread because I posted nice things previously about Insure and Go, but that wasn't the whole story. They now exclude cycle touring from their single and multitrip policies for personal accident and personal liability.

Luckily if you are mountain biking, bungee jumping, river or cave tubing, sandboarding, ice skating you get the idea, you are covered under these sections. Presumably the underwriters have accurately assessed these activities and deemed them less risky than cycle touring.

I think theyve simply assessed that if someone is 'cycle touring' that automatically means they'll spend all day every day doing something active, and that's obviously more risky than sitting on a beach. If you look into the small-print you'll perhaps find that they don't cover any of those (obviously riskier per hour than cycle-touring) activities if you intend to do them more than occasionally during your holiday.

The days are almost gone when all travel insurance was lumped together and those safely (apart from the risk of obesity and skin cancer) lounging on beaches subsidised us more adventurous travellers!

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 28 May 2013, 6:47pm
by hufty
No AFAIK they don't have a main activity weasel clause, which is why it's annoying. This would be a great policy if you were going on holiday primarily for ice skating, surfing or mountain biking - you would be fully covered. I didn't really think they had done some intelligent quantification of relative risk by the way.

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 29 May 2013, 12:01pm
by slogfester
A Citybond rep recently told told me that under new annual policies bikes are covered in the UK. It was only when I double checked the policy and phoned back that this was clarrified as 2 days away in the UK. Unimpressed with their reps knowledge of their own policies.

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 30 May 2013, 10:23am
by shane
Most insurers consider cycle touring as a class (something) extreme sport. Some will let you do it "incidentally" for the first couple of days but for most you will have to pay alot more for a longer trip if you want to be covered.

Interesting that the CTC endorses an insurer that doesn't cover cycle touring, you would think the whole point of a ctc policy would be that it covers or gives discount on all cycling activity.

For my big trip (18 months cover) World wide insure gave the first month or so free cycling cover (extreme sport) for the other 17 months pretty much doubled the price of the policy. Though getting cover for more than 12 months is a challenge in itself.

http://www.shanecycles.com/long-term-bi ... insurance/

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 30 May 2013, 3:22pm
by BeeKeeper
This thread got me thinking so I have just checked my travel insurance with Direct Travel Insurance and discovered I am not covered for cycle touring - which they class as a hazardous activity. Their cut off is 25 miles per day - less than that is not classed as touring. It also does not help that I am touring independently, organised tours with medical support they are happier with.

Current situation is they are consulting the underwriters and as I leave for Europe this Sunday this is a bit of a worry but if all else fails I have my EU Card and as we are not cycling in Spain (topical!) this should be enough to keep me alive if I have an accident but of course it would not cover getting my injured remains back to the UK.

Afternote: AXA Insurance cover cycle touring and have just quoted me around £30 for cover for a single trip in France of 17 days. I will take this if I don't hear back from Direct Travel in time. Others can probably get cover cheaper as I had to declare a pre-existing medical condition - Old Age!

Other insurance companies are no doubt available (or perhaps not if you are a reckless cycle tourist) but I found the AXA online system easy enough to use: http://www.axa.co.uk/insurance/personal/travel/ Just click on Get A Quote and then follow your nose and when you get to the sports activities button select cycle touring more than 3 days. It worked for me for France but not sure what it would do if you said you were going to spend a year cycling through the 'Stans.

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 30 May 2013, 3:51pm
by hufty
Just to confirm about the I&G policy - cycle tourists are covered for medical, it's the personal accident/public liability cover that is just too risky for the company to contemplate. So it still may be a useful policy. If I'm run over they should in theory pay for my emergency medical treatment up to £10M, if I'm run over and lose a limb, no benefit paid. No £2K payout to my grieving spouse if I die. I'm in a similar situation to Beekeeper - off very soon and not as insured as I thought I was. As it's really all about the emergency medical cover, I may end up swallowing my principles and going with I&G again.

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 2:09am
by monxton
We recently returned from a cycle touring trip down the Danube. We took out the CTC Citybond Suretravel insurance.

On our return trip, the overnight train from Budapest to Zurich was over 3.5 hours late, which meant that, although I had allowed more than two hours for the change, we missed our connection to Paris, and had to rebook the rest of the return journey at an additional cost of about £320. I expected that the claims handler would give me grief over evidence for the delay, so I got a hand-written note from the Hungarian train conductor confirming the time of arrival. I was rather pleased with this achievement, as I spoke no Hungarian.

Citybond subcontract their Missed Departure claims handling to Rightpath Claims, who sent me a load of forms to fill in and return. After about a week they contacted me to tell me that the "recoveries" form was missing (the one where they try to find other insurances that might also provide cover, e.g. if you have travel cover with your credit card). I knew I had sent it, and told them so. After a further week they then told me that I had not sent any evidence from the train company of the delay. So again I replied and pointed out that they had the hand-written note from the train conductor.

They chap on the phone told me that this evidence was not acceptable to them. I was getting quite fed up by now and told them that I wanted to be referred to their complaints department, with a view to going to the ombudsman. However I did also contact both the Hungarian and the Swiss train companies asking for confirmation of the time of arrival. When the Hungarians eventually replied that said they only knew the time that the train left Hungary, when it was only 20 minutes late, so that was not much help. However the Swiss came up trumps, with an email beginning "It is utterly deplorable that you missed your connection because the train arrived late at Zürich.", and after forwarding this to Rightpath they eventually capitulated and paid the claim in full. I suspect this was mostly because it was clear I was not going to give up - it doesn't make sense that they could consider the Swiss email, which could easily have been a work of fiction, better evidence that the contemporary hand-written note.

So, not a great experience with the claims handling company. At least in our case it was only money, because I would not like to have to deal with them over one of the more stressful insured risks, such as a medical emergency.

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 15 Aug 2013, 11:07am
by johnonhisbike
Hi,
For our bikes we use ETA cycle insurance - http://www.eta.co.uk - and found it very good (had a breakdown recently and they responded immediately and no quibbles). I've discovered they also do travel insurance, which we might try in future, but up til now we have used Insure and Go for touring in Europe (as suggested already by Barrenfluffit).

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 30 Sep 2013, 11:19am
by suethorne
Having injured myself in the US which necessitated cutting the holiday short and returning to the UK, I am in the process of submitting a claim through Citibond SureTravel. I was contacted by Aria Assistance. They were unable to provide assistance at the airports (I could only manage my luggage and not my bike) and so I am now in the process of trying to get it repatriated. In theory I should be covered, but they are proving difficult to deal with. Has any one else tried to get a bike repatriated through them or another company?

Re: Travel Insurance

Posted: 30 Sep 2013, 12:17pm
by CJ
suethorne wrote:Having injured myself in the US which necessitated cutting the holiday short and returning to the UK, I am in the process of submitting a claim through Citibond SureTravel. I was contacted by Aria Assistance. They were unable to provide assistance at the airports (I could only manage my luggage and not my bike) and so I am now in the process of trying to get it repatriated. In theory I should be covered, but they are proving difficult to deal with. Has any one else tried to get a bike repatriated through them or another company?

My understanding of the conditions of this insurance is that the bike gets repatriated for you, only when you are so badly incapacitated as to be incapable of repatriating your own self, i.e. need physical assistance throughout the journey. Even in that case, the insurance conditions state that the bike will not be repatriated if the cost of doing so exceeds its value.

If you were capable of making the journey by yourself, of packing and managing your other luggage, I think the insurer is likely to argue that you could have made arrangements, e.g. with a bike shop, to pack up your bike and have that transported to the airport too.

I am not aware of any specific bike repatriation service, but if the person you left it with can be persuaded to pack up the bike, you could ask them to use a service such as http://www.bikeflights.com/.