Travel insurance update: Voyageur Tours school trips bankruptcy

I wanted to follow up on my original post about the Voyageur Tours bankruptcy. It caused the cancellation of my teen daughter’s school trip to France this summer, and led me to take a hard look at travel insurance and then write this post:

Why your family should consider travel insurance: a cautionary tale

We’re still pretty much out of luck for getting most of our money back, which is why I should have bought third party travel insurance (NOT the insurance offered by the tour company itself, since it is worthless because of the bankruptcy) or family travel insurance.

A chunk of the trip fee, about $1600, was charged to our Chase Visa credit card, and after going through the “Dispute this charge” process on the account, we were told by a customer service representative today that the amount would be refunded to our account since the service charged was unsatisfactory.

It’s usually pretty easy to dispute charges on any card – log on to your credit card account online and look for a little flag or a link somewhere, with a phrase like “Dispute this charge,” then follow the instructions.   Have a solid reason for disputing and be able to back it up.

One big drawback of debit cards (and I use mine all the time) is that they generally don’t have such simple or generous dispute methods.  Sometimes, “cash on the barrelhead” is not the way to go.

Thanks, Chase, for helping salvage some of our financial loss.