$5 Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance

[Ania]

I wonder, when I get a room through PL and purchase the $5 Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance they offer, and I cancel the hotel, do I get all the money back? By

[thereuare]

From the policy (current when posted, but policies do change):

Covered Expenses for Hotel Reservation Cancellation

You will be reimbursed for the total cost of the pre-paid, non-refundable Hotel payment made to Your Travel Arranger, subject to the Maximum Benefit Per Insured as shown in the Schedule.

To me this sounds as if the total cost paid will be refunded. If you really want to make sure and this is going to be a factor in whether or not you take the insurance, there is a toll-free number to call just for the insurance company, so hopefully you'll be able to easily reach a live person to confirm.

[Ania]

After being over 30 minutes on hold, I got to talk to a real person. The lady instead of answering my question she was reading me the rules of the insurance. She also wanted to email me all the rules. I already read them, since they are posted on PL. The thing is it still didn't answer my question.

Finally, she told me that since I have a standby ticket and I am not sure I am going to make it that night to the hotel, I wouldn't get refunded for it anyway. The most common reason of claim is either death or sickness....great!

I guess this $5 cancellation insurance is a bigger of a scam than help.

[thereuare]

I wouldn't call it a scam as they do pay for covered items... it's just that what you want it to insure isn't covered by their policy.

If they covered such things as users with standby tickets that didn't make it to their destinations, the premiums would be thru the roof. As an example, if 75% of users with standby tickets make it to their destination the same day as their standby ticket, the insurance premium would have to be 25% (the percent of claims they expect to pay) of the average hotel stay + an additional mark-up for the insurance company to make a profit (as well as an additional mark-up to cover all of the other things that the insurance does cover).