travel insurance to avoid

ms teo siew hoon's letter; captioned: travel insurance to avoid was published in the st forum online on saturday.

in her letter, ms teo recounted her claim's experience with general insurer, chartis on her damaged luggage which took almost 4 weeks (add another 2 weeks after her claim submission) for her to be informed to obtain a quotation to repair her luggage and send it to her insurer.

as a comparison, ms teo cited that if she had made a similar claim for damaged luggage to an airline, the latter would probably pick up the luggage, assess the repair and inform quickly whether the luggage would be repaired and returned or replaced.

she ended by expressing her hope that other insurance companies do not make their customers wait the way chartis has done.

my comments:

as a financial planner and a traveler myself, i can empathise with ms teo over her damaged luggage and also her claim experience with chartis.

many of my clients take up travel insurance, which is probably the smallest priced component of any vacation for peace of mind.

i am not trying to discount or minimise ms teo's feedback but in my experience, travel insurance claims like damaged luggage are very much the norm, rather than the exception and insurers usually admit and pay such claims speedily, after due diligence of course.

but take a step back and look at the big picture in terms of the comprehensiveness of what a travel policy covers and not what ms teo has chosen to focus on how an airline will deal with her damaged luggage.

after all, as the saying goes, one swallow does not a summer make.