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Another Plug for Travel Insurance


teddy

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Seasoned travelers won't find any Earth shattering info here, but we only started being able to travel in 2019.  We never would have even thought about third party insurance if not for this site.

Back in September, we cruised out of Nassau on Adventure.  

We bought the ship to airport shuttle from Royal and on the way to the airport, my wife's suitcase got crushed.  It was very noticeable, to the point that it wouldn't stand up on its own....although when we grabbed our bags at the airport, hers was strategically wedged in between others so it was upright.  It would stay closed, but it will never roll again.  It was kind of a bummer since it's only been used twice.

The transportation company was not Royal Caribbean, however they gave us an RCG claim form to fill out.  After a couple months of no response despite sending all asked for documentation and repeated emails/phone calls/social media messages, we submitted a claim through our third party travel insurance (Allianz).  They asked for pictures of the damaged bag, a copy of the claim form we sent RCG, and something that showed replacement cost (we sent a screenshot of a current Kohl's page that showed the replacement cost).

After two emails apologizing for any delays due to high claims volume, we received a check for full replacement cost a couple weeks later. 

While it's not an expensive piece of luggage, it still sucked to have to buy a new one.

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Many thanks for the good advice!

Royal actually lost my wife's suitcase at Southampton in 2015, with all of our gifts inside (plus her special cruise clothes).  Luckily, our trip insurance (Allianz) came through even though Royal was not too helpful.  We found a Royal executive's email at another site, badgered her a bit, and got $300 from Royal to cover their negligence (max without insurance).  What we learned is that without receipts on your clothes purchases/luggage, you aren't given anything over the "minimum".  The insult to injury is that when I furnished my Royal CC number to them for the luggage credit, someone at Royal stole the number and charged something in Puerto Rico.  I protested, and the charge was removed.  I now prefer secure online sites instead of paper forms....

We now walk our suitcases off the ship to avoid another surprise, although we thought our loss was a one-off. (I really think that one suitcase lost out of maybe 45 suitcases in 15 trips may be par for the course.)

Yes, travel insurance is essential, but so is cross-packing on departure so you don't lose everything if one suitcase disappears.

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28 minutes ago, ChessE4 said:

$300 from Royal to cover their negligence (max without insurance).  What we learned is that without receipts on your clothes purchases/luggage, you aren't given anything over the "minimum".  

We had a very similar scenario in Galveston.  The suitcase was never recovered. Whoever took it got a bunch of dirty clothes and not much else.  But I was so annoyed that Royal was only going to give me $300 (the suitcase itself was worth more than that !  I actually did have a receipt for the luggage)  I just told them to shove it and cancelled the claim.  I also had Allianz but never bothered to make a claim with them. We also never do the luggage-outside-the-door-the-night-before anymore, either.  

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From these horrible stories, I'm wondering why people are such RC fans! Stealing luggage, not answering emails, stealing credit card numbers. Plus all of the "sales" gimmicks, the website constant issues, the already horrible time I've had with customer service spending probably 20+ hours on the phone to get simple accommodations for my disabled mother (with Carnival, these were automatic and super easy to schedule). I've never sailed RC, and Carnival only twice. We weren't formerly big cruise people but thought with a kid we would start this type of vacation. I'm still looking forward to our first RC cruise next month but very VERY skeptical...and hopeful basic things can go smoothly. 

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9 hours ago, cast530 said:

From these horrible stories, I'm wondering why people are such RC fans! Stealing luggage, not answering emails, stealing credit card numbers. Plus all of the "sales" gimmicks, the website constant issues, the already horrible time I've had with customer service spending probably 20+ hours on the phone to get simple accommodations for my disabled mother (with Carnival, these were automatic and super easy to schedule). I've never sailed RC, and Carnival only twice. We weren't formerly big cruise people but thought with a kid we would start this type of vacation. I'm still looking forward to our first RC cruise next month but very VERY skeptical...and hopeful basic things can go smoothly. 

People love RCI because for the most part, they have a wonderful time, and are treated very well.  The few complaints we have are balanced by very, very many great experiences.  You will find that over and over on these boards. 🙂

ALL cruise lines have gimmick sales, but those of us who have sailed before know how to maximize our savings.  You can find great tips for that here. And damage to bags could have happened on the ship, but more likely in the port as they were offloaded. I’ve had the airlines mangle one of our bags beyond repair. 

No, I’m not a Pollyanna.  I am one of those people that tries to shrug off negative situations when they are minimal compared to the rest of the experience.  It doesn’t hurt that we just got our Concierge email about dinner reservations, and within 24 hours, the concierge emailed me back to confirm all dining times.  So, yes, we are sailing soon, and know we will have a fantastic time because we always do on RCI. 

I hope you have a great experience on your cruise. 🙂
 

And back to the topic: we wouldn’t sail these days without insurance. We purchased our first (of many, hopefully) annual policy for our next cruise.

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11 hours ago, cast530 said:

From these horrible stories, I'm wondering why people are such RC fans! Stealing luggage, not answering emails, stealing credit card numbers. Plus all of the "sales" gimmicks, the website constant issues, the already horrible time I've had with customer service spending probably 20+ hours on the phone to get simple accommodations for my disabled mother (with Carnival, these were automatic and super easy to schedule). I've never sailed RC, and Carnival only twice. We weren't formerly big cruise people but thought with a kid we would start this type of vacation. I'm still looking forward to our first RC cruise next month but very VERY skeptical...and hopeful basic things can go smoothly. 

I am sure you will have a great cruise.  We have had more good experiences than bad, and are loyal to RC for the overall satisfaction we enjoy.  We don't know any other institution (in our price range) that offers consistently high on-board service. When I report a misfortune, it is to reinforce the travel tips that Matt and others offer, like carrying some type of travel insurance.  We have found that our occasional "travel worries" have been caused by airlines, not Royal Caribbean.  But we have survived even delayed flights (and a train that broke down) to make our cruises on time.  We always use travel agents, just in case an issue crops up.

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I suspect that the three experiences seen here are not representative of most Royal Caribbean cruises.....or any cruise line.  Things happen.  It's why we have insurance.

In spite of our bad experience with the transportation company in Nassau in September, we could not wait for November to arrive so we could go on our next cruise....and now we cannot wait for January to go on our next one.

29 minutes ago, ChessE4 said:

When I report a misfortune, it is to reinforce the travel tips that Matt and others offer, like carrying some type of travel insurance. 

Yup.  We never thought about travel insurance until we started reading about it right here.  All the things we had read coalesced when we saw someone medevac'd from Labadee.

 

12 hours ago, cast530 said:

I'm still looking forward to our first RC cruise next month but very VERY skeptical...and hopeful basic things can go smoothly. 

No reason things shouldn't go smoothly.

I'm certainly no Pollyanna either, not by a long shot. I've been called a lot of things in my adult life, some good and some horrible, but the one I prefer is "realist"  People are human no matter what we expect out of them.  Travel enough, and there is a good chance you (or your luggage) will interact with someone having a bad day or so much in a hurry that they aren't as careful as they should be.

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After so much travel…including so many cruises…I’ve learned that anything can happen. Especially after reading stories on this forum and others. Although these incidents seem to be very few and far between, that doesn’t really matter when it happens to me. The best I can do is make sure I do my research and exercise due diligence regarding where I spend my money. 
The biggest takeaway from all the stories is the benefit of good travel insurance. That and paying attention to protocols, policies and changes regarding my trip. I don’t want to be surprised and have to struggle to get something done at the last moment. I’ve also found that for me, the investment in good, waterproof luggage is so important. I always do walk-off so I need strong, long lasting wheels. And I’ve seen many times where loaded luggage carts are sitting on the pier in a sudden downpour. But…all that planning doesn’t matter if the worst happens. Ergo…insurance!😎

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14 hours ago, cast530 said:

From these horrible stories, I'm wondering why people are such RC fans! Stealing luggage, not answering emails, stealing credit card numbers. Plus all of the "sales" gimmicks, the website constant issues, the already horrible time I've had with customer service spending probably 20+ hours on the phone to get simple accommodations for my disabled mother (with Carnival, these were automatic and super easy to schedule). I've never sailed RC, and Carnival only twice. We weren't formerly big cruise people but thought with a kid we would start this type of vacation. I'm still looking forward to our first RC cruise next month but very VERY skeptical...and hopeful basic things can go smoothly. 

I get your point, but in my experience Royal goes above and beyond with customer service. For example,  my wife had foot surgery shortly before a recent cruise.   We needed an accessible cabin, but none were available.  Once we boarded, we asked at guest services. They moved us to an accessible cabin within 2 hours.

On another occasion,  my son slipped and broke his foot on an excursion.  Royal put it in a cast for no charge. They even refunded the price of the excursion without anyone even being asked.

Does Royal occasionally mess up? Absolutely! Do they work hard to make it right? In my experience,  yes!

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6 hours ago, barbeyg said:

And back to the topic: we wouldn’t sail these days without insurance. We purchased our first (of many, hopefully) annual policy for our next cruise.

Annual policy....can you share more details about how it works, where you get it, and what it typically costs?  We buy for each cruise but have multiple cruises coming up in the next 12 months and maybe should consider other options.

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7 minutes ago, Va4fam said:

Annual policy....can you share more details about how it works, where you get it, and what it typically costs?  We buy for each cruise but have multiple cruises coming up in the next 12 months and maybe should consider other options.

Here are my annual plan details. I use Allianz and it's $475 for me yearly (41 years old FL resident).

Screenshot_20211126-152931_Drive.thumb.jpg.9fe78f1ffc726ef7033b7a30d2c01ebb.jpg

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And we aren’t young whipper-snappers like @AshleyDillo. 😂 We are 60 and 61, got the Allianz Premier plan, didn’t increase Trip cancellation/interruption protection (could have, but we are covered for Covid disruption thru RCI for next week’s cruise, and our AK cruise next year is ridiculously cheap). In other years, we probably will increase those amts. ours cost $471 per year. I like that you are covered domestically and Covid is covered.

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Thank you to Matt and everybody who was always extoling the virtues of travel insurance! Earlier this year I invested in an annual plan, and I'm so glad I did...

I was on a B2B in early November, and the last day of the last leg, I started feeling awful when I first woke up; it felt like a very upset stomach and severe heartburn. It came and went as the day went on, but at dinner, I could barely eat, and finally, I sadly had to bid farewell to my dining companions and I headed off to the ship clinic.

A battery of tests, several IVs, and hours in sickbay later, the doctor was concerned it was an inflamed appendix. 😵 He arranged for me to be evacuated via ambulance when the ship arrived in Port Canaveral. Let me tell you, that sickbay ICU bed and its weren't anywhere near as nice as my aft cabin! I had gone to the clinic early in the evening, so when he first brought up having me medically evacuated, my concern was immediately that I was somehow going to ruin everyone's cruise due to a hasty return. Thankfully, we were close enough that he just kept me plied with pain meds and antibiotics, and we reached Port Canaveral on schedule.

The shoreside docs thankfully determined that nothing had ruptured -- I just had a rather nasty digestive issue. I was sent home with antibiotics. My medical insurance is covering the shoreside medical care thus far, but without travel insurance, my cruise would've been nearly $400 more expensive. 😱 Thankfully, Allianz reviewed and approved my claim in approximately 2 weeks after the incident, and I was reimbursed for the shipboard care in full (for those who don't know, they tack the onboard medical expenses onto your cruise statement). If I have anything that my regular insurance doesn't end up covering, I'll submit the amended claim to Allianz for reimbursement.

Moral of the story: GET TRAVEL INSURANCE!

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11 minutes ago, Chadster said:

Thank you to Matt and everybody who was always extoling the virtues of travel insurance! Earlier this year I invested in an annual plan, and I'm so glad I did...

I was on a B2B in early November, and the last day of the last leg, I started feeling awful when I first woke up; it felt like a very upset stomach and severe heartburn. It came and went as the day went on, but at dinner, I could barely eat, and finally, I sadly had to bid farewell to my dining companions and I headed off to the ship clinic.

A battery of tests, several IVs, and hours in sickbay later, the doctor was concerned it was an inflamed appendix. 😵 He arranged for me to be evacuated via ambulance when the ship arrived in Port Canaveral. Let me tell you, that sickbay ICU bed and its weren't anywhere near as nice as my aft cabin! I had gone to the clinic early in the evening, so when he first brought up having me medically evacuated, my concern was immediately that I was somehow going to ruin everyone's cruise due to a hasty return. Thankfully, we were close enough that he just kept me plied with pain meds and antibiotics, and we reached Port Canaveral on schedule.

The shoreside docs thankfully determined that nothing had ruptured -- I just had a rather nasty digestive issue. I was sent home with antibiotics. My medical insurance is covering the shoreside medical care thus far, but without travel insurance, my cruise would've been nearly $400 more expensive. 😱 Thankfully, Allianz reviewed and approved my claim in approximately 2 weeks after the incident, and I was reimbursed for the shipboard care in full (for those who don't know, they tack the onboard medical expenses onto your cruise statement). If I have anything that my regular insurance doesn't end up covering, I'll submit the amended claim to Allianz for reimbursement.

Moral of the story: GET TRAVEL INSURANCE!

Oh my goodness !  So glad to hear that you were able to get good care so quickly.  Hopefully you will make a full recovery without surgery.  Delighted to hear that the insurance did exactly what it’s supposed to do and that you were fully covered.  Continued recovery !

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