Does Travel Insurance Cover my Vitamins?

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If you’re a person who regularly takes vitamins, you may be  wondering whether travel insurance will cover the loss or theft of those vitamins. We wondered too, so we did a little digging around and made a couple of calls to find out.

First, the number one thing a vitamin-taking-traveler can do to protect their vitamins is to pack them in your carry-on instead of your checked luggage. If you have them with you, they are far less likely to be stolen.

According to the travel insurance providers we called, vitamins are part of your personal effects, and if those are stolen and you have adequate baggage coverage, you can receive reimbursement for them along with all of the other stuff stolen from you (up to your policy limit).  See the complete information on baggage coverage, including policy limits, and remember that travel insurance protects your bags even after you collect them from the baggage carousel.

That being said, however, it’s important for you to help make a travel insurance claim easier by implementing these steps:

1. Take a photo of the vitamins before you pack them. (This is also true of the other items in your luggage as well – photographing the contents of your luggage makes it far easier on everyone when you have to make a claim.)
2. Save a copy of the photographed contents, either by leaving one with someone you trust back home, or storing it digitally (think e-mail, or your mobile device) just in case the copy is also stolen from you or lost.
3. Keep your receipts if you replace anything. If you have to replace your vitamins by visiting a local drugstore, keep your receipts because you’ll need them when you make a claim on your baggage coverage.

We also recommend you keep the vitamins in their original containers because it might mean less scrutiny at security, but of course many people travel with their vitamins organized into day-by-day plastic bags too. We have no statistics or information on whether it’s a problem for security or not.

A brief search of the TSA.gov website revealed this (rather generic) statement when we plugged ‘vitamins’ into their Can I bring search tool: