CHOICE travel insurance buying guide 2023

Travel
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Edit: The following link to the buying guide is to the latest update, currently 2023.

We’ve updated our travel insurance buying guide for Smartraveller. If you’re planning a trip sometime soon, you can find it on their site below along with the latest travel advice, including warnings and advice on restrictions.

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The harrowing story of the young Australian woman who suffered devastating injuries in a fall in Croatia and was denied coverage by her travel insurance company raises many questions. None of the media stories I have been able to find name the company and only one story suggests that the reason the insurance was denied was because she had been drinking before the accident. I would like to know the name of the company and the reason they have denied the claim .

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I merged your post into this one about buying travel insurance because it could be instructive to some of the pitfalls in not carefully reading the PDS and understanding what it could mean vis a vis one’s activities on a holiday.

As you surmised the crux of the refusal appears to be because according to the local police the pair had been intoxicated when they fell. My bolding. Another possibility is they were ‘kissing on the wall and fell’.

No travel insurance will cover travellers when they engage in illegal or not covered activities. Some examples include while intoxicated. Having a crash on a motorbike and not having an Australian license is another. Not buying optional extras such as ‘snow sports’ another. Not taking care is a broad one that can be a catch all. There are many more, policy dependent.

Because of privacy issues I doubt you will get an authoritative answer unless the victims reveal it.

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Being intoxicated (or under the influence of alcohol) is an exclusion for cover with a large number of policies. So much so that Choice has covered it in the past.

While the family is in a very unfortunate situation, intoxication is an exclusion for travel insurance as the risks of an accident or injury increase substantially. This is even higher when one is in unfamiliar surroundings.

Naming the company possibly serves little purpose. Being aware of the intoxication exclusion is more important and hopefully other travellers will now be aware of the risks of over indulging when overseas.

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Medibank Travel Insurance - do not buy

Just a bad policy

Their travel insurance policy:

  1. Has no provision for force majeur. If you need to change your plans due to circumstances foreseeable or unforeseeable you cannot claim. If a third party changing their plans gives you cause for a claim, that is also no basis. This is covered as “you or any other person’s unwillingness to proceed with the journey or deciding to change plans”.
  2. Additional expenses are only claimable if the claim falls under one of the defined coverage scenarios. For instance, if meals were prepaid, you cannot claim for them. Also, if shortening your holiday, causes you to dispose of food already purchased, you cannot claim.
  3. All expenses claimed must be explicitly covered in the policy.
  4. Additional costs due to rescheduling of transport are only covered under a very narrow range of scenarios: Riot etc.; Cyber incident; Loss of passport or travel documents; collision; delay of transport
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Welcome to the Community @Anton1,

Is your comment the result of analysing a PDS or the result of a claim knocked back?

If you found Medibank’s PDS to be more restrictive than others that is good information but if the latter I suspect you will find all the insurers are much the same - eg they pay only for what is explicitly covered as stated in their PDS and that is the same with most any category of insurance.

It is a learned skill to read a PDS and understand what it actually states, not what one might assume or expect their words to mean. It would be helpful if you included more context as to what happened.

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