Budget Direct Car Insurance

Was involved in a small incident where I will admit to fault but before the other driver submitted his claim he added extra scratches so I would have to pay for a whole new bumper even though the damaged caused was minor but he also had paint peeling off in other areas. Insurance company is stinging me for the whole amount too even though I can… Read more

prove he added more damage after the incident..... Insurance fraud at its best. Also it had been 4 months since I wrote my letter of proof......yet I still had to contact them to find out what was going on, was thinking they'd take me to court, but no the service is non-existent. I'm still waiting for this to be resolved......and moving away from this company.

I took out a comprehensive insurance policy for my van with Budget Direct in December 2025. Unfortunately, my van was involved in an incident in February 2026, and I lodged my claim immediately. It has now been several months, and my claim still has not been resolved. During this time, I have received numerous calls from the Budget Direct review… Read more

team, but despite these conversations, there has been no outcome and my van has still not been repaired.

Today, I spoke with Mohammed, who advised that he would provide me with an update by this Friday.

Based on my experience, I cannot recommend Budget Direct. I expected better communication, faster claim handling, and a stronger commitment to customer service. Unfortunately, my experience has fallen well short of those expectations.

Bad service. Made me wait over a month driving my car around in disrepair until I could finally book it in. Their automated service kept asking for photos of the accident when my phone wouldn't allow me to send. So I sent the photos on the day of the accident via email which they never bothered to check. The email address was the one… Read more

provided by then after the claim too. They never bothered to inform me they had approved the claim either and neither did the smash repairer they had advised me to accept. I've been a loyal customer to Budget for years and they treated me poorly. I have left them now for another company which promises better service and lower premiuns

Having a terrible experience with Budget Direct, I quit and will never buy their vehicle insurance ever. The fact is that, I have a car crash in… Read more

April with another vehicle. Which the other car hit my right rear end. Where in common sense is that the other driver is at fault. While I have a dashcam record, they said it is not clear enough. I requested them to provide the solid evidences the other party have for me to discuss with my lawyer, they just ignored it. You guess what I got after two months after the crash, their legal recoveries department surprisingly stressing me to admit fault once in a phone call and I got another call said that I have no further evidence so I am the at fault driver. Isn’t that amazing ? I don't know whether their staffs are incapable or ignorance. One word to describe, Crap!

Left on the side of the road for nearly two hours because they didn’t transfer our policy to our new car correctly. We did everything right and called more than two weeks in advance to have the policy updated. Despite that, they failed to update… Read more

their system.

After spending 1.5 hours on the phone, we were told we had to pay because our policy had only been updated “today” — even though they never processed the change when we originally called. We were passed around from contact centre to contact centre, with no one actually helping.

We have all the emails and proof.

I can’t express how poor this experience has been. You get what you pay for. Their customer “experience” director should be fired!

And as I type this, I am still sitting on the side of the road. I have been here since 11 a.m.

I made a claim on a van that my company had insured with Budget Direct under their Comprehensive Vehicle Insurance policy. The van sustained front-end damage in an at-fault accident. It took two weeks and multiple phone calls to their Claims… Read more

Department before the van was even collected and taken away for assessment. It then took a further week before a repair quote was provided.

The repair quote was approximately $9,000. Despite the van having an agreed insured value of almost $11,000, Budget Direct decided to write the vehicle off.

They eventually paid the agreed value, but after deducting GST, the $1,000 excess, the $2,000 buy-back value, and the remaining $1,000 insurance premium, my company was left with the damaged vehicle, had to fund the repairs itself, and was approximately $3,000 out of pocket.

This was my experience with their “Comprehensive Vehicle Insurance” after being a loyal customer for many years.

I also had other vehicle and home insurance policies with Budget Direct, but following this experience, I have cancelled all my policies and will never insure with them again.

I encourage any prospective customers to carefully read Budget Direct’s policy terms and fully understand their claims process before choosing them as an insurer.

Man these guys came in at $800 cheaper than NRMA and the other insurance companies, stoked I got a good price on it. Pays to do a bit of research out there, just hoping it is smooth during a claim though. TIme will tell Show details ·  1

Only purchased policy in last 6 weeks thankfully no claims yet. Application process was easy, having a table with specifics for comparison and seeing cost as you added information is important in deciding on a policy. Taking photos rather than trying to describe car is a great idea. The only hitch was getting them to load but knowing I had cover straight away was a big relief. Show details ·  1

This process was made a lot easier with the customer service I received . As they were extremely helpful & offered different options to suit my needs & requirements & above all very friendly & professional in their manner , extremely down to earth . Show details ·  1

This company increased my premiums from $53 a fortnight to $83 a fortnight in the space of one year. Terrible company. Complete and utter scam. Can’t understand why they’ve won so many awards. Avoid at all costs. Show details

Budget direct ripped off my elderly parents $500 more than any other car insurance company...they should be ashamed to take advantage of older people who cant speak well English.. Show details

Didn’t get the chance to use this insurance as my application was denied! Can only presume that it was (old) age related as no explanation was given at the end of the online application process. All other insurers came up with quotes so get your act together Budget and at least be transparent & let people know your ageism policy at the beginning… Read more

of the process. (I’m happy to be corrected, but ran through the process twice to make sure I wasn’t entering the wrong info somewhere)

Absolutely appalling. Extreme mental manipulation and stress in an effort to break and destroy my not at fault son who was rear ended by their customer. No car repair or compensation after 4 months, paltry low ball offer for repair. The assessor B, dishonest and legal advice has been activated, next will be AFCA and Current Affair. This is wrong,… Read more

crooked, cruel, bent, and beyond a joke. It has been no end of extreme stress for my family and my son, who still has no car or transportation through no fault of his own.

My experience with Budget Direct has been nothing short of frustrating from start to finish. After my accident, the claim process dragged on far longer than it should have. The assessor approved some repairs but then inexplicably refused to repair other damage that was clearly related to the same accident. There seemed to be no logic or… Read more

consistency in the assessment.

To make matters worse, while my Land Rover Defender was being repaired, they offered me an MG3 as a replacement vehicle. A tiny hatchback is not remotely comparable to a Defender. There was absolutely no consideration of like-for-like replacement, despite the obvious difference in vehicle size, capability and purpose.

The entire repair process was plagued by inefficiency. The panel beater required my vehicle for 30 days, largely because of delays and poor processes. It's little wonder insurance premiums continue to rise when insurers' own inefficient claims management appears to be driving up repair times and costs.

The panel beater told me they couldn't remove a wheel because the locking wheel nut key was missing. The problem? My vehicle doesn't even have locking wheel nuts. Instead of taking the time to properly inspect the vehicle, they claimed they had to perform a questionable repair with the wheel still fitted, despite being perfectly capable of removing it all along.

When I finally got the vehicle back, the quality of the repairs was poor. There was paint overspray and other workmanship issues that should never have passed final inspection.

Throughout this entire ordeal, I lodged a complaint with Auto & General Insurance (Budget Direct's parent company) regarding the handling of the claim. Despite raising concerns from the outset, my complaint was never properly acknowledged or addressed.

After this experience, I cancelled my policy and moved my insurance elsewhere. Between the delays, poor communication, questionable repair decisions, inadequate replacement vehicle, and substandard repair quality, I have completely lost confidence in Budget Direct.

Do yourself a favour and look elsewhere for car insurance. There are plenty of insurers who understand that when customers make a claim, they're looking for competent service, efficient processes and quality repairs. Unfortunately, that was not my experience with Budget Direct.

I lodged a comprehensive motor claim with Budget Direct (Auto & General) on 16 May 2026 after my 2021 Toyota RAV4 was rendered unsafe to drive. It is now 15 July almost two full months later and I still do not have a repair-completion date in hand. What I've had instead is a steady stream of moving goalposts, missed self-imposed deadlines, and… Read more

communication I've had to chase almost every single time. At lodgement I was verbally quoted an "8–10 week" assessment timeframe for just vehicles unsafe to drive a figure that appears nowhere in the PDS, Supplementary PDS, Insurance Certificate or FSG. It was presented as if it were a policy term when it was really just an internal operational estimate. That estimate has now effectively lapsed with the car still not back. The delays started immediately. The car was booked for 20 May but wasn't towed until 22 May Budget Direct later admitted this was because a towing staff member was unwell. The panel quote wasn't completed until 29 May, 13 days after lodgement, and the whole claim then stalled waiting on a mechanical report. For weeks I was told the car was "in queue," that there was "no estimated timeframe," that they'd "follow up tomorrow," and that they couldn't give any timeline until the report arrived. The assessor went unresponsive. Every promised follow-up simply didn't eventuate. I initiated almost every update myself. The core problem has never been resolved: at no point have I been given a single committed completion date covering both the mechanical and panel-repair stages. The parts estimate slid from 25–26 June, to "end of the week," to up to 16 more days, with the delay blamed on Toyota and here we are on 15 July with the car still not returned. Even those estimates only ever covered the mechanical parts; the panel repair stage was never scoped for ordering, and no end date for the return of my car has ever been provided. On the same day they closed out my formal complaint about the communication failures, they told me to take the ongoing timeline issue to AFCA because they "cannot do anything beyond what they are currently doing." For a RAV4, one of the most common vehicles on Australian roads a parts wait stretching past two months is very hard to justify.

Two months on I'm still without my car, still without a completion date, and still without any real accountability for a timeline that has slipped again and again. The handling has been defined by open-ended, non-committal dates that were repeatedly set and missed. I'm now escalating this to AFCA because the internal process has run out of answers.

If you value clear timelines and proactive communication when your car is off the road, think carefully before insuring here and if you do, document everything.