Budget Direct Travel Insurance Review

The business model of budget is to provide cheaper cover and then deter people from making a claim. With budget you don’t even get what you pay for. They make the claims process as slow and painful as possible. It doesn’t matter if you are at fault or not, they will make the claims process so difficult that it’s not even worth having a comprehensive insurance. Do not fall for the fake reviews on their website as they are all paid reviews bought from bazaar voice. Try posting a review on their website. If you just want to have insurance and will not ever make a claim or are willing to get your life sucked out of you than budget direct is the company for you. No matter how many times you call, make an internal complaint or even make a complaint to AFCA it won’t make any difference to them. It is better to pay more with any other company and if you can’t afford to pay more better opt for third party insurance from any other company than a comprehensive policy from budget.The claim process takes months not days. They are the worst insurance company I ever had to deal with.

Absolutely abysmal service, this company should be ashamed of themselves, not paying out reasonable, lawful claims. And to take nearly 9 months to reach a decision is disgusting. I will NEVER EVER EVER insure through them again.

When my car was written off by a drunk driver Budget Direct literally tittered with happiness when they told me I wasn't covered under my 'uninsured' clause because the drunk had insurance even though her company disowned her and left me high and dry. The Budget Direct claims manager then tried to tell me that being hit by a drunk who ran a give way sign versus me hitting a kangaroo at night on a country road was essentially the same claim. Awesome, thanks guys.<br/>Moved to RACV.

Really poor experience with this travel company. They refused to cover my flight and still charged me for the premium even though I never left the country as Australia issued a do not travel ban!!!

We had a trip booked to South Africa in March 2020 which obviously had to be cancelled due to COVID 19. We were due a refund of $6000 and were offered $32 after our $400 excess was accounted for. Budget direct claimed as we were offered credits from the companies we used we were not at a financial loss (we are unable to use these credits). This is not mentioned anywhere in the PDS we received at the time of booking the insurance. What is mentioned in the PDS is that "they will pay a benefit under this section of the cancellation of your trip is necessary and unavoidable as a result of... you being an unable to travel because of travel restrictions imposed on you after an epidemic". Somehow they believe this doesn't apply, we will be pursing this further with the AFCA and legal action if necessary

Did not make sure my car was safe to drive before returning it to me. 8 days after the repair, while driving on the freeway my car started to smoke and made really bad noise. I rang claims department about it, towed the car back to the repairer just to be told the next day, the repairer didnot repaire anything because according to them the problem was caused by my car for wear and tear and has nothing to do with the accident, why didn’t they tell me that before they even repaired my car in the first place? Very shifty!!😡 i ended up shouldering the cost of the repair including the damage they’ve caused to my car.

Don't waste your money. Very bad experience with travel cover. 1 star is to much. Delay tactics used and failure to reply to questions and concerns. Never again.

Policy was not flexible enough to consider voluntary cancellation of trips when countries were locking down due to COVID-19. We did not just cancel the entire trip as purely change of mind but as an effect of restrictions and who expect that there would be such as thing as worldwide travel ban when what I was trying to do is to save my money before losing them. Claims ended up being declined. Won't buy this travel insurance next time I'll travel again!

About 10 years ago, someone reversed into our car in a car park. Honest and told us and gave us their contact details. We didn't need to claim on our Budget Direct policy, but Budget Direct sorted out everything, i.e. liaised with the other side to get the repairs organised. Fantastic service 10 years ago.<br/><br/>Last night: Car was parked and damaged by person parking next to us. Severe dent in the side panel and scratches etc. Person was honest; we have their ph no and email. Phoned Budget Direct this morning – but this time Budget Direct won’t help at all to get it sorted (unless we want to lodge a claim on our policy).- We are waiting to hear from the person who caused the damage ...

thank you Budget Direct you made our holiday amazing. We unfortunately broke 4 phones whilst in holiday and when it came to claim these - it was simple, easy and efficient. Definitely would choose Budget Direct again for my travel needs.

In February myself and friends travelled to South Korea, we got caught in a town right as the Covid-19 cases in Korea spiked, after being bombarded by emergency warnings telling us to stay indoors and avoid unnecessary travel, we made the decision to contact our insurer (budget direct) who let us know if we decided to cut our trip short that we would be able to make a claim.<br/>We rebooked flights and cut our trip short. Immediately after returning home I put in a claim – I gave as much information as was available to me. After requesting more information I called up to inform I was unable to provide a lot of it, as it wasn’t provided to me – after a gruelling 2 months of fighting with booking companies and other parties involved I sent through the additional information. I then proceeded to wait the 10 days for them to make a decision as per their email. After not receiving any confirmation I called up to be informed that as it had taken me so long to get back that “it had been missed and most likely left in an inbox as the claims person dealing with my claim had left the company”. Obviously a part of their tactic to delay the claim as long as possible to deter customers. A week later they emailed me asking for even more additional information. I provided it and again waited the ten days only to call up and be informed that again, the additional information was sat in an inbox…. Another week passed and they then sent a new email, disregarding the existing chain, asking for the same information again.. when I called I was informed that airlines had retrospectively refunded customers, despite this having nothing to do with what I was claiming. Finally fed up, I decided to have a look at other customer reviews and found I wasn’t the only one experiencing this, so I raised a claim with their IDR department. Miraculously my claim was moved into the review stage, and within 4 days was told it was rejected due to our claim being made “too early” as travel warnings changed just days after we were in Korea. Very odd given many people who have made complaints were given almost the exact opposite response…<br/>Typical though – this company is doing everything within it’s power to delay claims and detest customers until they give up, or finding every reason to deny claims. Very disappointing that despite being well within the VAGUE PDS, I was ultimately declinded a refund. Once international travel starts to open up again will definitely not be returning as a customer to budget direct, have left me immensely out of pocket and wasted months of my time. Surley there will be a class action against them in the near future. Will definitely be lodging a dispute and raising with AFCA.

We have all probably heard of it happening in the broader insurance company community whereby the Insurer deliberately creates delays and generally makes it so hard for the consumers to pursue legitimate claims that the claimants eventually give up. Going on our own personal experiences and by looking at so many other similar instances documented on this site, it is very apparent that Budget Direct are the masters of employing these tactics. We lodged our claim for international flight refunds (flights cancelled by the airline)then followed up several times when nothing happened and were then asked to submit "additional" information (which we had already previously submitted) then chased up again and again. After months of deliberate delays our claim was rejected as the airline, South African Airways (SAA), have offered to anyone holding a cancelled ticket a "credit" against future travel. However as the trip for us was a one-off and we will never be flying long-haul again due to our age and health reasons (further complicated by the advent of Covid 19). Additionally SAA have been placed in something akin to Receivership with the SA Government making a recent commitment to inject funds some funds into a new national carrier. SAA announced that they will not be flying into Australia and have already sold the only planes that were capable of flying that route. So even if we were wanting to fly again we could not use the so-called credit for a flight out of Australia.<br/><br/>As a result of all this we then asked that the rejection be reviewed by a Manager/Team Leader in accordance with Stage One of the Budget Direct Dispute Resolution. We were promised written determination within ten business days and then fifteen business days but nothing ever happened well beyond that period. No contact, no apologies just silence. <br/><br/>Now after further urging from us we today received an email saying the claim is still rejected even though we had comprehensive cover but we can further challenge the decision by going to Stage 2. Here is how Budget Direct summarised things:<br/><br/>"Given the above information, we are only able to provide coverage for items which you are unable to recover from any other source and you must take all reasonable steps to reduce your loss which could possibly lead to a claim. As you have been offered credits for the bookings you are claiming, this is considered as recovering the costs from the source and accepting these is considered a step which you could take to reduce your loss. Therefore the costs are outside the scope of the policy."<br/><br/>Apparently according to Budget Direct it doesn't matter that the offered "credit" cannot be used by us or the fact that SAA are unable to provide anyone future flights from Australia it is simply a matter that the airline has made an offer and we according to Budget Direct's interpretation are obliged to accept a worthless offer. Go figure.........<br/><br/>So don't be fooled by the cheap insurance quote you may get from Budget Direct as its real value will only be exposed if you have to make a claim. Our strongest recommendation to anyone considering using Budget Direct is DON'T USE THEM AS THEY ARE TOTALLY UNETHICAL.