I have a Citibank Platinum card. I was under the impression that car hire booked on the card has excess cover. I found out the hard way, it does not.
Apparently, you have to book return flights on the car 2 weeks each side of the car hire for it to be covered.
Just thought i'd share that as it reads like there is excess cover on the car hire.
I'd recommend considering another card that actually does cover you.
Care to elaborate on the minor technical clauses?
Purchased a phone using my ANZ platinum. I cracked the screen within the first 3 months. I made a claim with ANZ Credit Card Insurance (underwritten by QBE). I was paid out $340 to replace the screen (no excess). Pretty straight forward for me. I've never tried claiming the travel insurance, but I assumed that as long as you book correctly ($250 in prepaid travel), it would be just as easy. Always sucks hearing about stuff like this.
Maybe switch to ANZ.
welcome to credit card insurance.
Ouch! That will be a costly bill.
I think credit card insurance is 'ok' and will likely cover catastrophes, but not minor things. The excess has been too high for me to claim any minor things like a flight issue causing accommodation costs or a lost kindle.
I figure a serious incident outweigh these excesses.
I'm also heartened by this story of a poor woman who was very badly injured in Thailand, but was covered by credit card insurance:
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1354816/family-holi…
And remember that paid for insurance isn't a blank cheque. You still need to deal with that insurer (often the same people providing the credit card policies). When my mother-in-law had to get home from Europe after a serious illness, the paid-for policy provider was clearly doing all they could to skimp out on costs, second guessing medical advice etc.
Yes I remember her. She had that magpie that was really friendly to the whole family (magpie was found sick and was brought to health). Apparently the bird kept coming back every now and then…
Anyways,I think with any insurance,you'll find they would want to minimise the cost to them. Their KPIs are quite directly linked to that.
Read your pds. It's there for a reason, it's a contract.
Agreed, but it is hard to read a PDS and anticipate all the things that could go wrong.
They tend to have disclaimers like "we will cover you for all circumstances except the general exclusions when you fulfil the terms of the cover validity period, excepting additional exclusions due to high risk activities (see high risk activities pg24) or where an accidental injury is the result of direct or contributory negligence on the part of a third party".
If you can wade through that, you might work out that an unstable railing causing an injury like that above would not be covered, but when you are thinking of travel problems before your trip, you think of illness, disasters, cancellations etc. Working out whether the exclusion of direct or contributory negligence is a big or small risk is hard (although easy in this instance with hindsight).
With a PDS of 50 pages of this 'plain English' is hard for anybody to work out if cover is good or bad.
The best I think non-industry professionals can do is consider some scenarios that they are concerned about and see if the PDS would cover those.
Otherwise, ask a travel agent or insurance broker for their thoughts on who has a good reputation.
I believe that also applies to a 'proper' travel insurance.
Just had a quick browse through TID; they also have a similarly lengthy pds.
Asking questions is definitely recommended, so is actually reading the pds, no matter how painful that may be. The information is there spoonfed to you.
Would you mind showing us where it says that you need to have a flight tix 2 weeks each side of the car rental?
I'm looking at the tc and this is all I found:
Rental vehicle insurance excess We cover you for reimbursement of any excess or deductible you become legally liable to pay whilst on your journey in respect of a claim made under the rental vehicle comprehensive insurance policy during the period of the rental, if you have: (a) rental vehicle insurance as part of the rental agreement; and (b) complied with all the terms and requirements of the rental agency under the rental agreement and of the rental vehicle insurer; and (c) not violated any terms of the rental agreement of the rental vehicle.
Seems like you just need to get the vehicle insurance, comply with everything and make sure you haven't broken any agreement. The excess will then be covered by the cc insurance.
I read through the T&Cs and agree with above that it does not say anything like what they told you in there.
You might like to clarify exactly which card you have, when the travel/claim was, whether it was interstate or overseas, and if you met all of the other conditions.
Hahahaha also - according to them, rental car includes a sedan or station wagon, but no other types of vehicles.
Domestic rental car excess cover are provided under interstate flight inconvenience insurance which cover for trips up to 14 days. You will need to pay for the domestic airfare on your citibank card.
I suppose this is what they were referring to. It's all in the pds.
Good point regarding the vehicle types. Didn't know that. Wonder if you can classify people mover like the hyundai imax as a station wagon.
That's sounds right. And it was an imax!! :D So they would have another excuse not to pay. Anyway lesson learnt. Glad i wasn't driving and didn't have to pay. It cost my mate $880.
I've recently come to the conclusion that free credit card insurance is not worth the price of admission. Our lesson came from Commonwealth Bank's free travel insurance, with which they denied every one of our recent claims based on minor technical clauses in their PDS (a PDS I should have read in much more detail and with a much more cynical mind than I did).
It made me think about why a credit card company would even offer free travel insurance to begin with. My private theory is that it is not really travel insurance, it's just called travel insurance. In reality, it's a disclaimer. I think the credit card company worked out that for certain international service transactions, clawback provisions were becoming too expensive to enforce and so unpredictable that it undermines the stability of the income stream. But how to continue offering credit services without these clawbacks? Solution: develop a product that explicitly lists all the different types of travel situations in which a clawback could occur, then wrap it in a disclaimer that means the credit card company can choose not to engage the clawback (i.e. to pay to the claimant), and then give the product away so that customers cannot resist taking it up.
Most people probably won't claim anyway, so in most cases they walk away thinking that the credit card provider has given them something valuable for free.