How Does Re-booking My Trip Affect My Initial Deposit Date?

by Steve Dasseos on March 28, 2022

How Does Re-booking My Trip Affect My Initial Deposit Date?
Prior to Covid, the most common reasons we saw that a traveler would potentially cancel and re-book their trip and not file a trip cancellation claim on their policy were these:

  • Your travel supplier cancelled and they offered you a great deal on a new trip if you switched to the new trip.
  • Or, there was some scheduling conflict so you decided not to pay your Final Payment and instead you cancelled your trip before you were in penalty.
  • Or, you simply chose not to take the trip before you were in penalty.

With all our plans, if you were not incurring a financial loss, you could change the dates on your policy to cover the new trip.

After Covid arrived in the USA on Jan 20, 2020, countless travelers had their trips cancelled or interrupted, rescheduled and sometimes cancelled and rescheduled a few more times.

I proactively sent out over 39,000 emails to our customers four times in 2020 (March, June, September and November) telling them exactly what they could do to preserve the value of their Trip Cancellation policies so they didn’t lose the money they had paid. I linked to this page and other Blog posts I wrote. Sadly, none of my competitors did this, so now there are many people who unwittingly lost the money they paid for their now-worthless policies. They are understandably angry and skeptical.

If you have a trip that was cancelled due to Covid, one of these applies to you:

  1. You are re-using a policy that insured the original Covid-cancelled trip to cover a new trip: Your Initial Trip Deposit Date is the date you used the Travel Credits as any part of the first payment towards the new trip.
  2. You do not have a policy to re-use and you are booking a new trip that you will pay for with the Travel Credits or a combination of cash and Travel Credits: IMG, TravelSafe and Travel Insured and a lot of the many companies I don’t offer, define your Initial Trip Deposit Date as the date you originally bought the trip that later caused the Travel Credits as the first payment. Since these plans offer the 75% Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR), I don’t have any plans with the 75% CFAR coverage for this scenario.

Your Initial Trip Deposit Date is important because if you want Pre-existing conditions coverage, Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) and Supplier Financial Default you generally have to buy your Trip Cancellation plan within so many days of your Your Initial Trip Deposit Date, aka “Time Sensitive Period”.

By the way, if you have a plan with the Cancel For Any Reason coverage, read this Blog post I wrote two months ago called “Does Cancel For Any Reason Cover Me if the Travel Supplier Cancels My Trip?”.

I hope this makes sense. If you want the right travel insurance advice, call us at 1-888-407-3854 and we'll help you figure it all out.

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