- Rating:
Summary:
American Express is a trusted name and they offer a brief but well-rounded set of travel insurance package plans with varying limits to meet the needs of nearly every type of traveler.
Editor Review of AmEx Insurance
The Good: With over 150 years of helping people travel, and decades in the travel insurance business, American Express certainly has experience under their belts. American Express offers bundled products that address all aspects of protecting your trips, including cancellation, medical, delays, accidents, evacuation and more for both domestic and international trips.
The Drawbacks: The American Express site can be difficult to use and travelers can become confused between the travel insurance policies and the credit card travel protection plans. None of their plans offer rental car coverage or coverage for high-risk activities like SCUBA diving, which many travelers are likely to do on a vacation trip.
The Bottom Line: American Express is a trusted name and they offer a brief but well-rounded set of travel insurance package plans with varying limits to meet the needs of nearly every type of traveler.
How to Get a Quote
Compare quotes from all companies: Click here to get quotes from all major travel insurance companies using a comparison tool.
Company Information
Company Name | AMEX Assurance Company |
|---|---|
| US Travel Insurance Association Member | Yes |
| Refund Policy | 14-day Free Look Period (some plans can be refunded up to the day before departure) |
| Travel Insurance Plans | Package plans Global Travel Shield Classic Global Travel Shield Deluxe Gold Platinum |
| Company Contact Information | AMEX Assurance Company P.O. Box 53701 Phoenix, Arizona 85072 623-492-7675 623-492-3355 Fax |
| Policyholder Questions | 623-492-7675 |
| AMEX Assistance/Emergencies | Inside US/Canada:1-800-332-4899 (toll free) Outside US/Canada: call operator & connect to 303-373-6497 (no charge) |
More about American Express Travel Protection
American Express is a well-recognized name brand, and their AMEX Assurance Company is a trusted provider of travel insurance plans, all of which include coverage for foreign and domestic terrorism, hurricanes, financial default, mandatory evacuations, and more.
AMEX travel insurance plans come with pre-trip planning assistance to help with embassy information, weather forecasts for the insured’s destination, foreign exchange rates, visa and passport requirements as well as vaccination recommendations.
American Express offers four full-featured package plans with no age limits, but their website can be confusing to use partly because American Express Travel Insurance is not available to residents of all U.S. states but also because their plans come with trip length limits.
Optional Coverage Available in American Express Plans
- Cancel for business reasons is offered as an option in the Gold and Platinum plan levels.
Highlights of American Express Travel Insurance
- All AMEX travel insurance plans include coverage for pre-existing medical conditions (with short look-back periods) if the plan is purchased within 14 days of the initial trip deposit.
- All plans include coverage for trip cancellation due to foreign and domestic terrorism (with some conditions).
- All plans include trip cancellation for financial default with a short 7-day wait period.
- None of the AMEX plans offer ‘cancel for any reason’ or missed connection coverage.
- All plans have trip length limits of 31 or 60 days, depending on the plan.
- All plans include trip cancellation and trip interruption, so these are all travel insurance package plans (i.e., not a travel medical plan).
American Express Travel Insurance Plans
Global Travel Shield Classic
This is the plan when you just want basic protection for your trip without spending a lot
This is American Express’ budget plan, with good protection for trip cancellations. The medical coverage limit is not high, but it’s plenty for the standard traveler depending on your destination. This is a basic travel insurance plan to help travelers avoid high financial losses as long as you’re not traveling to a remote location or participating in risky activities.
Global Travel Shield Deluxe
Higher medical coverage without sacrificing the basics
This plan is an excellent blend between a basic plan and the higher priced premium plan, and it offers higher medical expense and evacuation coverage for trips where that’s important to you. The baggage loss limit is also relatively high when compared to other plans, so this plan will help a stranded or injured traveler very well.
Gold
Good travel insurance plan as long as you’re not traveling remotely or adventurously
None of the American Express plans cover risky, adventurous activities, but this is a good plan that will deliver the protection most travelers need. The medical coverage is not high, but it might be right depending on where you’re headed.
Platinum
Nice, well-rounded plan with high medical, evacuation, and delay coverage
This is American Express’ premier plan with high limits for nearly everything. It’s still missing coverage for rental cars and ‘cancel for any reason’ but it’s an affordable full-featured plan for everything the typical traveler needs.
How to Get a Quote
Compare quotes from all companies: Click here to get quotes from all major travel insurance companies using a comparison tool.
Screenshots from the American Express Travel Protection website
How to Get a Quote
Compare quotes from all companies: Click here to get quotes from all major travel insurance companies using a comparison tool.
The Pre-existing medical conditions requirement are so all encompassing that my wife was denied cover for an emergency operation and repatriation because she had consulted a doctor about period pain and bleeding a few days before travelling. The doctor reassured her that her symptoms were normal for a woman of her age!!
MY ADVICE: Contact your GP and get them to provide a pre-medical report to submit to AMEX. Anything else gives them room to wiggle out of paying. In our case we have been saddled with bills of $7,000 for medical treatment and $8,000 for repatriation.
And by the way, the AXA claims team are useless. Their sole purpose is to find a reason to deny your claim. They delay, make excuses, and lie. They require all kinds of documentation, which they are supposed to obtain, but after a few days delay, they will tell you that you have to obtain it for them.
In our case, it took 16 days from my wife’s medical emergency for them to decide they were completely denying our claim.
It is so frustrating to read now reviews from people who have never claimed. My advice is ignore all those good reviews. Find the reviews of people who have claimed. They are the true reviews, and their conclusion is this product is junk at best and a straightforward con at worst. DO NOT BUY.
DO NOT PURCHASE TRAVEL INSURANCE FROM AMEX!!! I have been a gold card member for almost 25 years. I love my card and have always purchased travel insurance. I have never had to make a claim until a very recent trip to Thailand. The claim was only for about $600 so it is about the principle, not the amount. My home medical coverage reimbursed $320 of the $600. The balance, $280 should have been covered by the Amex Travel Insurance. They only paid $60!!! So, with the $80 coverage that I paid for, I am actually WORSE OFF by paying for AMEX Travel Insurance than if I did not purchase anything!!!!
AMEX TRAVEL INSURANCE IS A SCAM. How can a business model possibly work if the insurance you pay for winds up costing the customer MORE than what their damages would have otherwise been WITHOUT the Amex coverage?! Unacceptable!
Again, it is not the amount of money. Thank goodness this wasn’t a claim in the thousands of dollars as it would have been pointless to have Amex on my side – which they obviously are not! Horrible way to do business Amex. You should be ashamed of yourselves for bilking the public out of money that you never intend to actually stand behind!!!! Despicable!
I only wish I could take back all of the policies that I did pay for over the years thinking that I was covered. It pains me to think that I have supported your SCAM for all of these years. No, it really makes me feel sick and dirty. Shame on you!
I wish I had seen these comments before I bought this lousy insurance, I would NOT have purchased it. It seems that the AMEX name is NOT worth paying for anymore. The insurance help although very polite when you finally get one on the phone is NOT at all helpful. My search for a supervisor has yielded NO results and the entire experience is causing me to re-evaluate my relationship with AMEX. I’m pretty sure, It’s over!!!
I agree this insurance is awful
American express is the worst travel company i have ever dealt with. I cancelled my holiday due to illness 5 months ago and i am still waiting for the money. I have make over 20 calls to them an the same thing they say money has been authorised an will receive in 3-5 days but never received. I would advise people to go somewhere else they are disgusting an dont care about their customers.DO NOT USE AMERICAN EXPRESS
A truly awful experience trying to get a claim paid.. Apparently a death certificate is not sufficient proof of a reason for cancelling a trip.
I am appalled at the unsatisfactory level of customer service I have been receiving every day for 5 days now and surprised that the Travel Insurance department is even Amex affiliated. I have been an Amex cardholder for 20 years and always received superior customer care with my card questions. With travel insurance the experience is polar opposite. I paid $775 for my travel policy and expected adequate service in return. I have reported a claim on Monday morning and although I was told their processing time to send me required claim forms for me to fill out was 24-48 hours, I still haven’t received an email from the claims department. I have been calling them every day, and every day a super-polite representative tells me that there is nothing they can do to generate an email to me. Reminding, this is the 21 century. It takes 5 days to send an email out!
Sharp contrast – Allianz. Couple of years ago I had to cancel my trip to Europe. I called the claim in and as I was on the phone I got an email with instructions to complete it. 5 days later I got an email that the claim was reviewed and about 10 days later I got a check. Boom, done.
Bottom line – I will NEVER purchase Amex travel insurance products again and don’t advise anyone to fall victim to bureaucracy and inefficiency at it’s extreme.
I’m absolutely appalled at how poorly I have been treated while trying to get the re-imbersement… I was hung up on THREE times w/o being called back. Beware if you request a TOTAL cancelation from AMEX travel for a flight because the person flying was in a head-on collision and ended up on a ventilator in a nursing home and the agent “cancels flight for future use”… You get screwed because they “can’t” change it in the computer- though it was their mistake… You loose! I have never ever received such poor customer service… Though I’ve been w AMX since 1998, I’m seriously considering leaving because it’s been the worst experience in my life!
I was enrolled in Amex’s Airline Insurance programme until today when I discovered how utterly bogus it is. By enrolling it was my intention to purchase coverage for myself but upon finding multiple premium charges I discovered that they will charge you a premium for anyone in your family you buy a ticket for… even a two year old child! When I called to have them remove these premium charges, they claim that when you sign up for the programme, you are agreeing to buy insurance for anyone in your family who’s airline ticket is charged to your card. So maybe they have cleverly hid this fact in the small print of their legal contracts but it is improper and dubious at best. BEWARE OF THIS SCAM as it can cost you hundreds or even thousands of Dollars you never meant to spend.
American express is a rip-off in terms of its travel medical insurance. Beware the fine print, all Canadians are insured to a significant extent by their home provinces for several months travelling or working outside of their home provinces, especially students. AMEX considers ‘date of departure’ for trips (ie. to the US) as being the date one leaves their ‘Home’ province. So, if you reside in Ontario and spend a week in Calgary before leaving for 15 days in Hawaii, and you have a medical emergency on the 9th day you are in Hawaii, AMEX will exclude you from collecting medical insurance…why? because they cover you 15 days and those days started from the day you left Ontario. They embed this in the fine print and you find that you are up the creek if you spent a few hours in an overpriced US hospital. Beware, they are robbers, they are robbers because there is NO REASON to insert this clause in Canada, as canadians are covered well province to province, with only small differences existing at times (very low amounts) between what their home province will pay and what the province they are visiting will charge. Certainly nothing to invoke emergency traveller insurance. AMEX abuses the fine print and will screw it’s credit card holders over. I spent $699 simply for the travel medical aspect and was denied insurance when I wound up in the ER in California. I lived 4 years as a full time student outside of my ‘home’ province, being fully covered by my home provinces medical insurance in the province I lived. I assumed leaving to travel from the province I lived meant that the travel insurance would kick in when I left Canada. No such luck. It is a complete and shameful scam that AMEX is running.
Would not waste my time and money with this policy, its provided by AXA the cover is very poor if you experience cancellations or delays the amount they pay out is limited there are far better products on the market
Amex got the names wrong on the policy so we tried to phone as they tell you i!!! 3 days and 8 cut offs later we actually got through! Waste of time!
Had to cancel cruise, with coverage by AMEX Assurance Company. Based on this experience, I would suggest:
a) Do not accept any verbal or written explanations of coverage and limitations. You MUST read and understand the entire written policy in detail once you have received it. , Reconsider all verbal or written explanations given in this light.
b) Realize that agents and coordinators provide only short direct answers to specific questions, as they interpret them, for coverage and claims. They do not necessarily consider all your inputs. They look only from perspective of costs. It may be worth crosschecking questions and answers.
c) They may not look at all points in letters or forms. They may not follow up with doctors as referenced by you or by other doctors, but focus on comments or questions related specifically to B). In our case, they were referred by me and by another doctor to contact an additional doctor and said they would not, since they felt he would not change their interpretation.
d) Realize that policy and the agent representing that are legal document focused, and may not make things clear unless pushed. Also, answers to hypothetical situations should not be considered as true representations of the policy. Only actual policy terms and conditions as applied or interpreted by AMEX agent to actual case/situation can be considered as reliable.
Please be informed Mr. Guillermo Gomez with travel medical protection certificate number 01351566 has been admited in our medical facilities onboard M/S Voyager due to a medical emergency, this e-mail is to activate his insurance,
regards, Carlos Isaza
I would like to comment on American Express travel insurance. This is nothing but a ripoff/scam for those who purchase this insurance….BE SURE TO KNOW THAT (I DON’T KNOW OF ANY OTHER COMPANY THAT DOES THIS) IF YOU CANCEL DUE TO JOB TERMINATION THIS COMPANY DOES NOT PAY ANYTHING UNLESS THE PERSON HAS BEEN EMPLOYED FOR A PERIOD OF 24 MONTHS CONSECUTIVELY AT A JOB.
I have never heard of this rule in any other travel insurance agency. Can anyone tell me differently?
Nearly all travel insurance plans with coverage for cancellation due to job termination require that the insured be working at the same company for a certain amount of time. The amount of time varies, but 1 to 2 years is standard. I’m really sorry for your situation.