Chase Sapphire Reserve travel insurance saved the day

In September 2023, my fiance and I were about to leave on a road trip to New Orleans for my birthday. We had been dreaming of this vacation for more than two years.

Then I got a text from my dad: My grandmother had fallen and broken her hip. She wasn't going to make it and was in hospice.

We unpacked the car and I canceled the vacation rental I had booked.

The next few days were spent going back and forth to my grandmother's facility. One night shortly before she died, I was stewing over the whole situation: I was losing someone important and had to cancel my dream vacation. On top of that, I was out nearly $500. Because I canceled the rental after the deadline for a full refund, I was only eligible to get back $243 back of the $717 I paid for the house.

I write about insurance almost every day. But when planning my own trips, like most people, I never imagine anything will go wrong. I was mad at myself for not getting travel insurance.

Then I remembered something: My Chase Sapphire Reserve® (see rates and fees), the card I used to book the reservation, came with a built-in travel insurance policy.

I love to travel and had been thinking about applying for the Chase Sapphire Reserve card for years: It has an annual $300 travel credit, airport lounge access and reimbursement for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck® — plus 8X points on purchases through Chase Travel℠.

I hesitated, though, because of the $795 annual fee.

I finally pulled the trigger in early 2023. My fiance and I were planning several international trips and I figured out that we'd be spending enough on bookings to come out ahead.

I paid for a flight to Tokyo with the 60,000 points I earned from the welcome bonus offered at that time. (Current offer is 100,000 bonus points after you spend $6,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.)

We used the travel credit toward a luxury hotel on a trip to Toronto and, thanks to the card's Priority Pass benefit, relaxed in the airport's Plaza Premium Lounge before our flight home. Plus, because the Chase Sapphire Reserve doesn't have foreign transaction fees, shopping in Canada didn't come with any unpleasant extra charges.

But I hadn't really looked into the credit card's travel insurance policy before. Turns out it includes:

• Trip cancellation insurance. Reimburses prepaid non-refundable expenses for trips canceled or cut short due to injury or illness, death in the family, severe weather and other extraordinary situations, up to $10,000 per person and $20,000 for the total trip. 
• Trip delay reimbursement. Refunds expenses relating to delays longer than six hours or requiring an overnight stay, up to $500 per ticket booked with the card. 
• Baggage delay insurance. Reimburses up to $100 per day for five days if your carrier misplaces your bags for more than six hours. 
• Lost luggage reimbursement. Luggage lost by the carrier is covered, up to $3,000 per passenger. 
• Emergency evacuation and transportation. Transport required for illness or injury is covered up to $100,000.
• Emergency medical and dental coverage. Covers up to $2,500 in medical expenses for incidents occurring more than 100 miles from home. 
• Rental car collision damage waiver. Reimburses up to $75,000 if your rental is stolen or in a collision. Kicks in before your auto policy, so you can avoid a premium increase.

Chase Sapphire's offerings are on par with a standalone policy you'd buy from a travel insurance company for about 3% to 5% of a trip's non-refundable expenses. Plus, bundling travel insurance with your card saves you the trouble of getting a new policy with every trip.

Reading the fine print, I couldn't find a reason why my policy with Chase wouldn't cover the balance of our New Orleans reservation. I gathered details of my original booking and refund from the home-share app, a note from a hospice nurse and a copy of my grandmother's death certificate.

Filing an insurance claim is never fun but the process with Chase was relatively painless — I completed the form and submitted my documentation entirely from my phone. Six weeks later, I received an email that my claim had been approved. The $474 was automatically deposited into my checking account, so there was no hassle with a paper check.

I never wanted to file that claim. I wish we had driven to New Orleans, come home, and shared our stories about our adventures with my grandmother. But, sometimes, life has other plans.

The experience convinced me that travel insurance is a must — and that I made the right decision with my Chase Sapphire Reserve card.

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