Insurance you say?
Having recently had to look into insurance policies for my trip, after days of searching, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are all pretty much the same, no joke. Obviously there are good insurance packages and bad ones but once you differentiate between the two, you realise that there is very little difference between them, it all comes down to the small print.
For example, all good insurance policies will offer at least £5m of hospital bills cover, some offer £10m. This sounds even more ridiculous but apparently its not that hard to burn through a few million in hospital bills when you’re away, i.e. helicopters, ambulances, fire services, medical costs, new legs etc I guess it does add up to a hefty sum. You will also see things like £2m for personal liability, not really sure what that even means :P. Deaths and personal money never seem to pay out much at all so tell your folks now to now expect much money if you die.
The key thing about the insurance policies and what confused me the most was the winter sports options. This is a must, especially if you’re going to do a ski season like moi. When I first started looking I was always ticking the winter sports options and the premium didn’t usually go up by that much but after reading the small print I realised that standard cover for winter sports wasn’t good enough. The first insurer I looked at was Essential Travel and their insurance was pretty cheap, £242.76, even with the winter sports but then I saw this…
In any event Winter Sports cover is limited to 21 days in total in each period of insurance (if you have paid the appropriate winter sports premium to include this cover)
…21 days! Are you joking?!? I then researched a little more and it seemed that this was quite common, not many insurers, specially the cheaper ones, i.e. less £300 for year, would ever cover you for a whole year of winter sports, you might get away with 14, 21, 24 or if you are lucky 31 days of winter sports cover, which for a ski season (that lasts 6 months) isn’t great.
That’s just one of they key things that shouldn’t be missed in the small print but there are so many… some insurers don’t even cover contact lenses?!
Anyway I could go on but to wrap it up here is a list of some of the quotes that I got from different places:
Package name: Essential
- Duration: 1 year
- Without winter sports: £278
- With winter sports: £555
Package name: Comprehensive
- Duration: 1 year
- Without winter sports: £306
- With winter sports: £611
Package name: Silver
- Duration: 1 year
- Without winter sports: £324
- With winter sports: £650
Package name: (through OWH)
- Duration: 6 months (extendable)
- With winter sports: £330
Package name: (through OWH)
- Duration: 1 year
- With winter sports: £585
Package name: Gap cover
- Duration: 9 months (non extendable)
- With winter sports: £309
In the end I spoke to BUNAC, the agency that sorted out the working holiday visa and they really sold me a policy they had in place with Endsleigh and it worked out cheaper than the price above. It was £586 and this included winter sports and activities for the whole year.
Expensive yes, but its also worry free so a winner all around.
Anton
(big kiss, little kiss, big kiss)
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I agree with the post above and I will find more information from google.