Steve Hart: Protection against the 'what ifs' worthwhile

COMMENT

Travel insurance, like any type of insurance, is boring.

Who wants to pay for something that may not do them any good? It's a gamble. But if you travel without insurance you are playing the odds. Do without it and you might save the cost of the policy and get through your holiday unscathed _ but what if ...

What if you become ill, hurt yourself in an accident or are attacked and left seriously injured, like writer Greg Clark on the opposite page? That's when the cost of a travel insurance policy comes into its own. It's that element of doubt, the big "what if", that forces us to stump up the cash.

If you have to claim, and everything goes well, you will be covered for the cost of treatment and in serious cases an air ambulance home _ but there are pitfalls for the unwary.

Pre-existing conditions are not automatically covered by most insurance policies and if they are not declared in full they can cause major problems if a claim is made. It could give an insurance company the opportunity to refuse your claim, leaving you high and dry and facing a potentially huge medical bill.

One reader suffered such a situation in America, a place notorious for its high cost of medical treatment. He found himself in hospital suffering from a life-threatening condition and thought he was covered. The travel insurance firm thought differently.

It blamed his predicament on a pre-existing condition and refused to pay his medical costs, which tipped the $100,000 mark. He was sure his illness had nothing to do with his existing medical condition.

Back home, and on the road to recovery, he instructed a lawyer to sue the insurance firm. It settled before the case went to court.

We can't tell you the details because the company threatened us with an injunction as the man signed a confidentiality agreement as part of the settlement. Being clear about pre-existing conditions is critical when buying travel medical cover.

One of the problems of buying medical insurance over the phone is that people make mistakes, things said can be misheard or misunderstood (on both sides).

Asking for an application form to be sent out will often give you the chance to read the terms and conditions of the policy. This is the contract, it spells out what the company will and won't provide if a claim is made and should be read before you agree to buy _ not after.

Having said that, some terms and conditions can stretch to 7000 words or more. Yes, it will take time to read, but if you want to understand fully what you are buying, you need to read the policy document first. Insurance companies rarely leave anything to chance _ so why should we?

At its best, travel insurance protects you from huge bills. At its worst, it offers nothing more than peace of mind, but that is worth having on holiday.

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Researchers are claiming many people secretly enjoy boring friends with their holiday photographs. A survey by software firm Adobe say nearly 70 per cent of those questioned admit they hate having to sit through other people's snaps. But 40 per cent say they have done the same thing to others, even when they know their photos are dull.

There appears no shortage of bad photographs to show, according to the poll of 500 travellers. Most people who took their film to be developed said 10 out of the 24 shots on an average roll were so disappointing they wished they had not paid for them.

But many amateur photographers, it seems, are unwilling to throw them away, despite the results. Almost four in 10 people said they kept hold of their shots regardless of how poor they were.