Insurance - Read the Small Print

There may be a few countries on this planet where travel insurance is something you might consider dispensing with, but the USA is not one of them. Jenny and I used our credit card to book and pay for the travel and we have one of those cards where if you do that, you are provided with travel insurance as one of the benefits. We thought! When I read the 50 page (I kid you not) Travel Insurance Policy, I found, on page 37 (Part E: General Exclusions, Section 9 (f)), a little one liner that changed everything. It says that the Insurer (AIG, who provides the policy for Westpac bank) "..will not pay under any benefit ...claims arising directly or indirectly out of...motorcycling outside of New Zealand (unless you are riding a motorcycle with an engine capacity of 200cc or less and hold a licence ....)" etc. I called the companay and asked if they would modify this, given my clean record, 30 odd years holding a motorcycle licence and so on but to no avail. Strangely, I understand AIG is one of the biggest insurance companies in the world and is US-based so I'd have thought if anyone could provide the insurance cover they could. It appears not. Now, I already know that I can get insurance from other companies but as AIG (via Westpac) were offering it to us for "free" I thought I'd ask them. The lessons are old ones but worth repeating. First, read the fine print. In our case, one line in 50 pages made the policy virtually worthless for us and we could easily have missed it and headed to the northern hemisphere under the misapprehension that we were covered. Second, shop around. Two other quotes I received were almost $200 different in their premiums.