Travel insurance for single parents
June 7th, 2007 - Category: TravelAs a single parent I am of course responsible for hoodie culture, the disintegration of society and the rise of global warming and so I was relieved to find that some institutions are rooting for me. To be more precise: travel insurance companies.
Just read the following from AA insurance’s website:
“Single parent families sometimes find it a struggle to meet the cost of a holiday so why should they be penalized by having to pay for family travel insurance that typically cover two adults and up to four children?” asks Kevin Sinclair, managing director of AA Insurance. “AA single-trip travel insurance for one adult aged between 18 and 65, taking up to four children aged under 18 who live at the same address, will bring big savings.”
Quite possibly but using my criteria (annual cover for mother with two children, Europe only and including skiing), the AA charges a single parent family £81.84 and a two-parent family £91.99 for exactly the same terms and conditions. Not a great deal in my book and, as someone who was rewarded by the AA for my completely unblemished driving record with ever increasing premiums, I find it hard to see the allure of buying my insurance from them.
I am particularly wary of cheap travel insurance since a friend, a single mother like me, bought travel insurance for her gap year child before he went up to Oxford. He got as far as Greece and fell out of a fifth-floor window. Luckily, he lived - just. He had to be airlifted back to the UK and his insurance did not cover this. His local community kindly raised the tens of thousands of pounds to cover the outstanding amount.
The window-faller is fine now but the event haunts me, particularly because, in my experience, single parents get offered all kinds of ’special’ deals. So special that they often cost more than the same cover on a two-parent family policy.
Some say ‘kids go free’ but it’s no good looking at the headline prices. They tell you almost nothing, It’s the price coupled with cover that tells you what you need to know. The bottom line costs are usually about the same as cover offered without any deals.
At the extremes of the market place, the very cheap and the very expensive, I have not found much value for money. It’s a matter of looking at the small print and working out exactly what you need from the cover. My concern, for reasons I’ve explained, is medical expenses and so I went online shopping to find out what was on offer for a single parent like me using the terms set out above.
Some of the online insurance price finders are useful. Times Online has a calculator,which gave me prices from £62 (£2 million medical cover) to £310 (£5 million medical cover) with Elect at £64 giving £10 million medical cover. Confused.com came up with some of the best-looking deals including £52.17 from staysure.co.uk, which had £10million medical cover
Independent online shopping came up with few surprises. Virgin Money quoted £99, which included £10 million medical expenses although personal accident cover at £30,000, like a lot of Virgin’s cover, is more generous than that offered by 24/7 at £5,000, which quotes an amazing £35 for cover (£5 million medical expenses). But I couldn’t find any of the cover details and wasn’t even sure that this covered winter sports. Go Travel Insurance charges £75 compared to £96 for a two adult family.
Then I turned to the company I used to use as a student, Endsleigh, which quoted £62.50, and it had a reassuring paragraph that the insurance covered: “…the cost of bringing you back to the UK, by Air Ambulance if required, with a doctor if necessary plus the return of your insured partner and family for £2 million”.
Most of the rest of the sites have to be dismembered, or called, in order to establish if accompanied air ambulances are included. What is certain is that competition is fierce in this market. Some sites, like InsureandGo, criticise other insurers. InsureandGo seems to have major issues with supermarket insurers when it comes to insuring single parent families. I particularly enjoyed the following rant:
“Sainsbury’s Bank, while claiming to offer ‘great cover for less’, requires single parent families to increase its single adult rate by 50 per cent for single trip insurance, making the prices more than double the amount they would pay with InsureandGo. And they’re not the only ones as it’s a supermarket sweep with Tesco charging single parent families the same as a two adult family.
“Perry Wilson from InsureandGo says: ‘Single parent families are being penalised because of their situation and this is grossly unfair. At InsureandGo if you’re a single parent you will pay the same rate as a single person and this includes covering up to three kids for free as well. Everyone should be able to purchase high quality insurance at the lowest prices possible and not be penalised just because of their situation.’”
At last! A single-parent saviour! Except that I tried several times to get a quote from InsureandGo only to find that my session had timed out (in about two minutes mostly) before the site could give me a price. Sainsbury’s quoted me £97.41. And Tesco’s, whose policy extends to only £2 million medical cover, quotes £72.79 for a single parent family compared to £80.79 for a two parent family.
I have insurance with the Post Office at £65 which gives me £10 million medical cover. At renewal time, though, I think I’ll be going for Staysure’s offer - once I’ve combed the fine print.
Have you found some good - or bad - single parent travel insurance deals that you want to tell us about. Post your comments below, or e-mail us at yoursay@timesonline.co.uk
