Many people don’t expect how important to insure their expensive electronics and other high-tech gadgets while travelling, as theft, loss and damage are quite common things that may happen to you. But this kind of policy is still occasional in the majority of cases, because it isn’t widely known.
But you shouldn’t think that you’ll get complete compensation for loss or damage of your gear, as usually insurance policies may be quite ambiguous, especially in the event of making a claim. You may discover that you need to cover almost all expenses for replacing damaged or lost belongings, as opposed to your insurer offered in the advertisement.
That’s why you have to be exceedingly attentive when you select a particular insurance policy, as it will have a significant effect on the result of any claim. So you should consider a couple of things before a purchase, which are the following: replacement cost, limit of items, policy excess, responsible parties, and exclusions.
First of all, you should check that your policy provides coverage of total replacement cost of any item you want to include to its list. Otherwise, you would pay bulk of an amount on your own, because your insurance company usually prefers to estimate the actual price of your possessions, taking into account their age and state, current market value and so on. Therefore, it will be only a problem of yours if the compensation isn’t enough to buy an identical item.
Item limit can be quite tricky as well. Because it may be advertised that a policy has tangible coverage for damaged or lost luggage, but you can often find out a reference to the individual item limit that doesn’t cover more than $100 per item. However, some insurers allow you to add a specified item premium to cover expensive items, but it isn’t a common practice.
A policy excess suggests that you cannot make claims of a lower value than this excess, but it may provide you with insurance at a lower premium. Nevertheless, it’s possible to take out policies without any excess, you’ll have to pay an additional premium for it though.