This trick will double the cost of your cheap travel insurance

If you're heading off overseas it's always advisable to have travel insurance. But a trick used by online travel agents could mean you end up buying insurance twice.

For many people the internet is the first port of call when it comes to booking holidays. Using online travel agents and comparison websites makes it easy to compare flight costs and find a decent hotel.

Some websites offer you numerous extras to help you plan your break. But unless you pay close attention to what you’re signing up for, you could end up paying for more than you expected.

Auto-ticking

Some online travel agents auto-tick or auto-select travel insurance - and sometimes other extras too - which add money to your final bill. And although travel insurance is well worth having, the insurance they offer is rarely the cheapest and unlikely to be the most suitable cover for your trip.

In theory EU rules prevent websites from auto-ticking the insurance box, but in practise many of them are still at it.

I visited a few online travel sites and found that some of the main players are not playing by the rules.

Take Opodo.co.uk for example. I searched for a return flight for one person from London to Sydney next March. When I selected my chosen flight single trip travel insurance was already ticked at a price of £39.99.

It was a similar story on lastminute.com. When I selected a holiday to Tenerife for a family of four, single trip family travel insurance was automatically selected at a cost of £26.10. It pre-selected luggage requirements too: four suitcases at a cost of £151.92.

The insurance lastminute was offering would be unsuitable for most travellers too. It offered just £3 million medical cover (most policies offer £10 million) and a miserly £200 personal possessions cover. My mobile phone alone costs about £200 – what about the rest of my stuff? Cancellation cover was just £500 while there was no payout for delayed departures. All in all, a very sub-standard travel insurance policy.

Thomson Holidays doesn’t pre-select travel insurance but it does give customers the opportunity to buy cover when booking. Single trip insurance for a trip to Florida for a week costs £48.99 per adult and £29.99 per child. So a family of four would pay a total of £157.96. However, you can pick up a decent family single trip travel insurance policy for about £30, a fraction of Thomson’s price.

The law

Under EU laws, companies are not allowed to pre-select extras in this way and include them in quotes to customers.

However, they get away with it because the Government has yet to put the relevant legislation on to UK statute books. It is expected to do so by the end of 2011, but until then, firms can carry on pre-selecting extras without fear of penalty.

How to find the best travel insurance

As I said, it’s a good idea to have travel insurance before you travel abroad. But before you rush out and buy some to cover your next trip, double-check you don’t have cover already. Some packaged current accounts include travel insurance, often annual multi-trip cover.

If you don’t have insurance already, it’s time to shop around. If you go abroad more than a couple of times a year then an annual policy might be better value than buying a single policy for each trip. If you’re planning a long-haul trip then check your destination is covered on any annual policy as the cheapest ones exclude the US and Canada.

One of the most important things a policy should cover is medical expenses and repatriation cover. A good travel insurance policy will cover you for about £10 million in medical expenses; this might sound a lot, but the cost of medical care can be eye-wateringly high in some countries, such as the US.

A good travel insurance policy will also include about £1,500 worth of baggage and personal possessions cover. Some expensive items such as cameras might need to be insured separately.

Other cover you should look for includes personal liability, end-supplier failure (in case your airline or hotel goes bust) and terrorism cover. Travel disruption cover is also a worthwhile add-on and will come in handy if snow or ash grounds your flight.

And the best way to find the right policy for your needs, and at a competitive price, is to make use of lovemoney.com's travel insurance comparison centre. Why not give it a go?

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