Navigating Credit Card Travel Insurance: Lessons Learned

Using Credit Card for Insurance
===

Meggan: Hey everyone and welcome back to the Travel Mug podcast with Meggan and Jenn. I am Meggan of course, joined as always by the best partner in podcasting, Jenn. How are you doing this fine day?

Jenn: I am doing well. We both decided to dress in pink today, so we're twinning it up.

Meggan: We are in, I never even noticed, but yes, we are. It seems applicable. All right. Well, at long last, we have a conclusion to the windshield crack from our trip to Iceland in June and the claim on our credit card because of it. But since this time, Jenn, you've also chosen a travel credit card to use. So we are going to get into all of that in this episode. So updates as well as some new info.

So I do want to say that this has been resolved for several weeks now. So it didn't take as long as it seems, but of course for the podcast we had other stuff going on. So it did get pushed a bit. So it did not, in fact, take three and a half months to get my money back, but it was about six plus weeks.

So to recap, when we were in Iceland, we rented a car for two weeks from Sixt, uh, and chose not to take their insurance and instead to meet the requirements for our Avion Infinite Travel Visa through RBC, we paid for the entire rental on the credit card, which then allowed us to use the insurance on that card for the car, as long as we declined the rental agency'sinsurance, which of course we did. So our rental in total minus insurance, because of course we didn't pay that for the two weeks, was just under a thousand Canadian. We did this also on our last trip to Iceland and actually knew much less about it at the time and we weren't prepared at all. So thank goodness in 2018 nothing happened. But we weren't so lucky this past summer.

So on our third full day after we got off of a ferry within one minute a rock hit the windshield and left us with a starburst crack. I had brought the booklet you get mailed when you receive a new card for ease. Didn't think I would need to use it. Um, and then we called the number and we were told it's fine.

Just file a claim when the rental is returned. So it seemed easy, but honest, I have to say. It was kind of on our minds a bit because as we were told by the RBC rep, we were going to have to pay up front

before we could leave Iceland. So we were prepared for the worst, or so we thought. So on departure day, we arrived bright and early, only to be charged $2, 500 Canadian. Oh, I, I, I can still see the looks on our faces. I'm not my own, I guess, of course. But I'm sure mine mirrored Peter's when I looked over and our mouths were just like agape. And you could tell the girl was even like nervous to tell us how much it was because in Krona it was like 243, 000 and blah blah blah and trying to do the quick math.

I was like that is over $2, 000 and like I guess to say we were shocked was an understatement But also like we had no choice we had to leave and they knew it So what were we gonna say

Jenn: Right?

Meggan: you didn't take our insurance. You can pay us that the money.

Jenn: Yeah.

Meggan: Um,

so we got a few documents from them and an email thanking us for our rental with, um,

thank you.

Jenn: welcome.

Meggan: You're so welcome. With the time that we returned it, blah, blah, blah. And we set on our way. So this was on June 29th. So the day we got home, we called the number from the trustee booklet again. We gave her info and we were told to expect to hear from someone on July 2nd because it was Canada Day long weekend.

So on the Tuesday, Peter got an email and had to fill out a bunch of info and include a bunch of documents, except he did not include one. Honestly, I'm not sure why, but that's a story for another day. And I'm going to say that like two weeks later, we were CC'd on an email from Aviva. Which is the insurance company RBC uses, to the rental agency.

I don't know why we were CC'd on this, asking them for the invoice of the actual repair costs. As I'm sure people at Aviva also probably felt that $2, 500 couldn't be right. It simply must be a mistake.

Jenn: Yeah,

Meggan: Um, and they were also asking for the closed rental agreement. We had sent them the email we got when we returned the vehicle that literally showed the time and the fact that we returned it so like that part confused us a bit because we didn't have anything else in regards to a closed rental agreement.

So, that kind of made us feel like, well, we don't have anything further in that regard. And we also felt too, that if we had to wait for Sixt to give them an invoice, we would never get our money back because Sixt is probably given the big middle finger from Iceland. Like, Whatever.

Jenn: yeah.

Meggan: So in the meantime, though, we had to pay off of off this money on their credit card, or it's going to start accruing interest.

So you either have that choice, you leave it, you get interest, you pay it off, you're out the money literally at this point from your pocket as compared to just your credit card. So I would say maybe three weeks after this, we were very patient. Peter did follow up again and spoke to the rep From Aviva that was helping us directly on the phone.

So thankfully, it wasn't just a bunch of people touching the file. We just had one person working on the file. So that was really good. She said they were still waiting for this info from Sixt and then it dawned on Peter to send the other piece of paper. So They'd given us a yellow piece of paper she had written on.

So, you know how you write on paper and it goes through to the second copy?

Jenn: Yeah.

Meggan: We had, of course, the second copy. You could barely read what was on there. She did, she wasn't a fan of pressing her pen hard. so you couldn't really see what was on there. And Peter had sent it a picture of the actual, like, printed receipt.

So the little white piece of paper. So when it dawned on him to finally send this yellow piece with the very light writing, our rep also wrote and said, what's the piece of paper in the picture under the receipt, also the yellow paper. So Peter's like, okay, well, I guess we'll need to send it. And I think the reason he didn't send it initially is because the bottom section was not filled out where it proved we paid.

So I think he was nervous for some reason that they were going to rebuke us because that part wasn't filled out by the agent.

Jenn: right.

Meggan: So anywho, he sent that piece of paper he had, even though they said they needed this other information from Sixt, lo and behold, Same day the case got closed. I know and we were emailed saying that we would get the full amount and the next week The check was in the mail.

So I would say in total about six weeks. So yes, there was a piece of paper We did we didn't send but also it didn't match what they said they were waiting for

Jenn: Hmm. Right. Yeah.

Meggan: Regardless, we got the money. So our takeaways, which I guess is the big piece of what I'd really like to talk about is And I cannot speak for all travel credit cards.

This was an RBC Avion Infinite Visa that we used. So please, always read the fine print and make your own decisions about your travel card. But for us, the biggest learning was that you need to have the money and the space on your credit card if something does happen. So it terrifies me to think, like, what happens if the damage is worse?

Jenn: Mm-Hmm.

Meggan: if it had been $8, 000 in damage? What if it had been $12, 000 in damage? There has to be help for, like, if you total a car. But let's say you use your credit card with no space and you have to pay up front. So you have to have space available on your card to pay, plus plan not to get your money back for a while.

So not only do you need that available space on your card. You need to understand that that money is going to be in limbo. Now, maybe if it would have been sooner, we, and we'd included that one document, it might've happened, you know, a bit quicker, but it still would have been several weeks. And can you afford to wait is the question. Are you able to pay off the credit card before accruing interest or let it accrue interest knowing you're going to be paying the damages plus interest. So all of this will depend on who you are, your financial situation, because if you do follow all the steps, you're likely going to get your money back. Or, would you prefer to pay up front to avoid all of this and get their insurance? So the longer the rental period, the more money you're going to save if you don't take their insurance, but is the peace of mind worth it for you to pay for their insurance up front regardless of the length of the rental and not have to think about it again?

Jenn: Yeah, for sure.

Meggan: So secondly, document everything if you don't take their insurance. When you first get the car, take a video and pictures, and if something happens, take pictures of it. When it does happen, everything will have a time stamp. So that's very important. Thirdly, when you drop the car off at the end, ensure you ask them for every document you can to ensure When you are asked by the insurance company, you have everything because you're going to need it. And then fourth, we were never sure at any point we would 100 percent get our money back. We felt we'd followed all the steps and had everything we needed, but never once did we have reassurance we would be covered from anyone with Aviva. No one said, yeah, you're getting your money back. So it was stressful. The waiting was hard and we had the money to cover it, but it's still very hard to wait for a conclusion. So this is really something to consider as well. Peace of mind while you have the rental, plus the peace of mind you won't have if something happens to you like it did to us.

Jenn: Yeah. Mm

Meggan: So I guess the big question is, would we use it again? I honestly don't know, because I'm not sure what would happen if we had, like I mentioned earlier, $8, 000 in damage, or if we totaled the car, do we have to pay that up front? And if I was going to use it again, I think I would have to just find this out, because that's a scary prospect. Like, I would have to, like, contact Aviva, do something to say, what if these scenarios occur?

And then I would probably make the decision. So in the end, it saved us a lot of money to use the credit card because we got everything back and we did not pay for insurance with Sixt. But that wasn't without stress and trip interruption in terms of it being on our minds throughout the journey.

Meggan: So, it does leave us a lot to ponder for next time.

Jenn: hmm.

Meggan: So, Jenn, after hearing all this, what do you think you would do?

Jenn: Oh, this is such a good question. And we also usually decline the insurance from the rental companies and in the past have relied on our car insurance because our policy covers us in Canada and the U. S. and we've only rented a car outside of Canada in the U. S. one time, which was the day of the disaster in Inverness, Scotland, which thankfully did not, uh, mean that we had to file an insurance claim, but it still wasn't a great car rental day.

Um, I think we took their insurance for that, but it was a one day rental, so like, It wasn't a big deal. But yeah, after, after hearing you go through this situation, I feel like I would have to like really carefully consider all of the options before I choose what to do, because like you said, you can be on the hook for like a total car replacement, which is like absolutely terrifying to think about.

Meggan: It is, and that will be the deciding factor for next time. Whatever details I can get on that before we make that decision for

Jenn: Yeah. Yeah. I'll be interested to hear. What, um, what you find out when you, when you do that, just to see what happens, maybe you can update us on another really quick travel tip Tuesday. What happens if you,

Meggan: Yeah,

Jenn: what happens if you total a car on vacation?

Meggan: I think it's important information to have.

Jenn: well, and I know, you know, a lot of the times, That we travel we take either travel insurance or car insurance or whatever it is Um, you pay for that and and you don't use it and like thank gosh You don't have to use it like 99. 9 percent of the time but that one time you have to use it it's really important and especially something like this where It could make a very large dent in your financial situation is like, it's scary to think about.

Meggan: It is for sure. Now, having settled this, I know you recently decided on a travel credit card, so sort of tell us about that process in case our listeners are contemplating getting one.

Jenn: Yeah. So I think this could be like a whole episode or a series of episodes. Um, but I'll just kind of give you a little bit of an overview of the process I went through. For some reason, I've, I've never had a travel specific credit card, which does seem weird considering how much we like to travel.

But part of that reason was I was very against having to pay for having a credit card. So we'll call it a relic from my days as a frugal personal finance blogger who was paying off debt. It seemed ridiculous to me to have a fee to pay to have a credit card. So that being said, I went into this process knowing that whatever card I chose had to be worth it.

So whatever the fee, the yearly fee was for having the card, had, the perks had to make up for it. So, I'm a spreadsheet girly. So, I started a spreadsheet. And I compared eight different credit cards, ranging from airline specific cards to general travel credit cards. The things that I personally took into heavy consideration were, like I said, the annual fee.

How much was that? The types of points that you accrue, whether or not it had lounge access benefits. Whether it included travel insurance, which all of the travel specific credit cards do, and then just kind of the other perks. That it had available, so I'm not going to make broad recommendations because one, um, I'm in Canada, we're in Canada, and a lot of our listeners are not in Canada, so that doesn't really help you, but two, the benefits that you might want might not be the same ones that were important to me, so I did end up choosing the scotia bank passport visa infinite because it had a reasonable to me Annual fee of $150 a year um, some of them I looked at were like $499- $599 a year So I mean if it's worth it to you for the perks you get go for it but to me That's, that was a big jump for me.

So, um, this was one of the lower ones. I feel like, , one other card was like $120 a year, um, around there. So the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite accumulates scene points, which we can use to Uh, here in Canada for groceries. You can also use it for travel things. I wasn't really looking for points that were specific for travel.

So that wasn't super important to me. It did include, or does include, six lounge visits per year. Which was, uh, It's something that I did want, that was a perk that I wanted. And most importantly to me, it waives foreign transaction fees, which for me, automatically makes up for the annual fee. Like I will, especially, we just booked our trip to Disney.

And just probably when we pay off our trip to, um, to Disney, that package, we will make up the difference from the annual fee, um, from what the foreign transaction fees would have been on that charge. So, that was, that was really important to me. There's not many travel credit cards in Canada that waive foreign transaction fees, which I thought was really strange.

I thought there would be more options, but there isn't. Um, and then it also included an Avis preferred membership. And we usually rent cars from Avis, so that was like a little extra bonus. Well,

Meggan: Definitely.

Jenn: yeah, and then I, I already do, um, some of my banking with Scotiabank. So I was essentially able to call them and have them switch one of my, the credit card that I already had to this one. So I wasn't adding another credit card, um, to my wallet and I wasn't closing a credit card as well. So that was really nice. So, yeah, if you're listening to this and you're interested in more, like, in depth episodes about travel credit cards or like travel hacking, let us know because I think we can provide more info and then we can reach out to guests that are more knowledgeable, um, than us.

So I will say when I got my, um, travel credit card, the book that came with it is now in my travel wallet with my passports. So it's ready to go.

Meggan: See, even that one little tip might help you someday.

Jenn: So that brings us to the end of this Saga for Meggan and the end of the episode I'm, so glad that this is resolved and you can like move on with your life now and not think about What's gonna happen to that money?

Meggan: You and me both.

Jenn: So you can find us on social media at travel mug podcast on our website travelmugpodcast. com On youtube at you guessed it Travel mug podcast. We'd also love it if you left us a five star review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, they mean the world to us. And I just want to say, we've gotten a couple of messages and emails recently from listeners who found our episodes useful. And honestly, it like makes my day to read those. So thank you so much to those of you who have reached out and, uh, we'll chat with you again soon. Bye.