Travel Insurance For Extended Stay?

[Mochas]

Going back many years, whenever we've had holidays abroad - generally for no longer than two weeks - we've always taken out travel insurance as a matter of course (and, as it happens, never had to claim on it).

Now we're retired and having a small holiday home in France, for the first time we plan to spend the summer there, around four months. It strikes me that travel insurance for two of us for that length of time would be rather expensive, particularly for me as the wrinklier one.

We're both in pretty good health right now and we have E111s but I wonder what other people would do in the circumstances, insure or don't bother?

Any thoughts, advice or experience would be much appreciated.

[Mochas]

Now I'm totally baffled...

A reader kindly suggested that I should try Europ-Assistance for annual insurance which I did, and I also tried the RAC as an alternative, with the following results:

E-A...Annual rate for a couple = £110.96

Maximum single trip = 91 days

Maximum in the year = 183 days

RAC...Annual rate = £235.98 (includes extra premium for over 65s)

Maximum single trip = 65 days

Maximum in the year = 180 days

However, we want to stay for four months which breaks the above single trip limits so I tried both companies for a one-off trip of 127 days and got:

E-A.........£305.40

RAC Extra...£938.16 !!!

I'm sure the insurance companies have their reasons for charging considerably more for lengthy one-off stays (albeit well within the overall maximum) than they do for a full year's insurance. Why, though, there is such a big discrepancy is well beyond my admittedly limited comprehension.

As I say, I'm baffled and for the moment I'm not sure what to do for the best. One thing's for sure though, I don't think I'll be taking up any more of the RAC's time...

[La vieille]

My parents were driving from Cherbourg to us in the Vendée on April 25th.   They turned their car over on the road from Rennes to Nantes, were cut out and taken to the Pontchaillou Hospital in Rennes.   My father was released after a two hour check over, but my mother broke bones in her back and had multiple injuries of her right hand which necessitated surgery.   She stayed there for 10 days and had the most wonderful treatment.   The insurance company arranged the airlift home last week, ambulance to airport, wheelchairs at airports, the actual flight, ambulance home in England.   Believe me, the hassle of arranging the trip back would have been worth the insurance money alone.

In addition to paying all the hospital treatment and the airlift, they can claim £30 a day for every day she spent in hospital which will help to cover some of the petrol costs in visiting every day, they can claim for broken specs plus the other items they lost.

Don't imagine it won't happen to you...  

By the way, the insurance company did check with the ferry company to make sure they travelled when I said they had.

Your choice, but I know what mine will be in the future!

[Iceni]

We have used a very good insurance broker in Colchester. They have extensive experience in getting travel cover for either those with existing problems (and getting them covered) or finding insurance for unusual instances. This is because of their own personal medical problems in the past.

John had a severe back problem out of the blue in late Dec 1999 in Lanzarotte. Suffice to say that this stretched over the 2000 extended holiday in the UK and he was finally flown home in Jan - there are no direct scheduled flights from Lanz. so they took out 14 seats from 2 scheduled airlines and provided 2 private ambulances. We also had an Intensive Care sister with him at all times. No idea what the total cost was but well over 10K. Now we got the offer to go to Paris the next April when John was still on crutches. I talked to the owner of this company and said I was not prepared to go unless we had cover for John's back - we got annual insurance that covered this.

The problems in Lanz. were an eye opener, we had private medical cover in the UK which included overseas medical cover. When we offered this to the private hospital they refused - simple, this company never paid their bills, E111 is not accepted in Lanz. so our cheap annual travel insurance covered it all. In the next bed was a chap with an appendicitis - the last day of their holiday, no money, no travel insurance and he was looking at urgent surgery and it would be 3 weeks before they could return home (someone would have to look after him so wife had to stay). The wife was in tears, she had to find accommodation, pay the clinic before they would transfer the chap to the state hospital, pay the hospital fees and then pay for them both to fly home. They had taken a cheap holiday as they were not very well off (understatement I gathered) - well I would imagine the savings they made by not taking travel insurance was an error they will never forget.

Please send me a PM if you want details of this broker. We used them for all our business and personal insurance in the UK - they are a family firm and I have to say from being very anti broker I became totally impressed by their service and care.

May I also say how sensible I think you are being asking this question - I hope that you make others think and realise that cutting corners is not the the way to go.

All the best and I really hope you enjoy this summer in France.

[Mochas]

Well, I took the advice offered in response to my original request and now have long stay insurance for the summer.

I contacted the broker recommended by Iceni who came up with a couple of suggestions and eventually bought online from a company called www.flexicover.com.

They gave me a quote for £304.75, virtually the same as the one I'd had earlier from Eorop-Assistance - not surprising in the event as E-A proved to be the underwriters for the policy. There was an advantage in using Flexicover though in that they offered a discount of £15 for couples and every little helps. I did have to pay an extra tenner to cover a minor medical issue for The Loved One and there was a £3 admin charge so the total cost was £302.75.

One slight drawback was that Flexi's system (or maybe E-A's?) isn't very flexible so I had to pay for a full 5 month's cover even though our stay will be be for only 4 months and 3 days.

Another was that querying the minor medical issue involved emailing a health check company which took 3 days to reply. A follow-up phone call was handled by a call centre in India which mightn't have been a problem if the girl who took it had spoken rather better English and wasn't sticking rigidly to a pre-scripted question and answer format. In the end, to be fair, a second call was dealt with by the person (English) who answered the email and the matter was then quickly resolved.

Obviously, it makes sense to be covered for all eventualities so I'm pleased to have got it all sorted out but I'm still miffed that I could have had 180 days cover for less than half the price for any number of trips so long as none of them exceeded 91 days.

Insurance companies surely seem to move in mysterious ways...

[Mochas]

Question re www.flexicover.com above - how the hell do you post web addresses so they appear as web links?

Other people can do it so where am I going wrong?

[Alane]

Mochas

I've just posted a separate topic in House Renovations specifically on cover for renovators but does your flexicover policy cover you for injuries sustained while working on the house (if indeed you have to do any)? Mine only covers me if I'm not using any power tools so would be interested if yours does so.

Best Regards

Alan.