It's was easy to purchase and a good price and gave peace of mind for the trip... Until something went wrong and I had to claim.

It's been over 1 year and they still haven't paid me for my claim. My bag was lost for 3 days from the airline I flew with (lost/stolen luggage was meant to be covered for up to $600) and I had to purchase clothes, toiletries etc.. Which were meant to be covered but no...
The process they make you go through to get the cover is ridiculous. I sent them papers of proof from the airline that the bag was lost, I sent the...

It’s the first time we used Budget Direct for our travel cover. Our holiday was booked last March. We flew to the UK, then we were due to have 10 days in Dubai. Whilst we were in the UK, the Australian government issued a statement for all residents of Oz to return home. We contacted Flight Centre, whom we our booking with, and they wanted $8,500 to get us back. We then contacted Budget Direct who asked if we could go to the airline direct and get it cheaper and they would cover it. We managed to get it sorted for about $2,500. We have since be...

Will not cover my travel losses and will not return my policy premium ,no help if you phone them.I feel this company is in the business taking money and then relinquishing all responsibility and service.please save your money and go elsewhere.

My partner and I had booked a trip to the UK so that I could go home to visit my family and decided to align this with a much needed holiday. UK to Portugal and Italy, then back to Australia.

COVID-19 hit and understandably flight providers, hotels, insurers were all over the place and noone knew what to do / to expect. But the assumption was that if your insurance policy covered epidemics you were covered...and that ultimately all good businesses would "do the right thing'

Our trip consisted of 5 flights and 5 hotels.

Before cancelling an...

Canstar rating suggested this was a good value policy and it seemed so on purchase. In December 2020 and January 2021 I arranged our annual Europe trip to see our family. I took out travel insurance in early February. In May it became clear we would not be able to leave Australia as planned in September. I set about the task of claiming refunds for the various airline and accommodation providers and obtained many refunds and flight credits. However one accommodation provider and Ryanair would not issue any refund so I made a claim. Budget dire...

We regularly take multiple overseas trips and selected Budget Direct for our insurance. When COVID struck, we had several trips cancelled. Would BD pay out - would they heck. They expected us to take credits for things that who knew if we could even use a year in the future. Abysmal service and the length of time it took to respond was atrocious. I would NEVER EVER EVER use them again. Stay away from this dodgy company. They'll happily take your money, but when you actually have the right to a refund, they'll try everything in the book they can to stop it from happening!

Like most others here my experience with Budget Direct has been lamentable Legitimate claim (pre-covid) and 12 months later still waiting for them to finalise. I guess this will be one ore for the Ombudsman.

Sickening.

Really poor experience with this company. I was unable to fly due to COVID19 and they refused the claim, stating I should have known at the time of booking that it would be a world event. Even though at the time it was only in china. Also no refund given on premium even though i never left the country! They are crooks!!! Don't bother with this insurance company

I purchased a travel insurance policy just before budget direct changed their PDS not to cover pandemics. They initially refused to pay my claim. After numerous emails and some help from a member on this page, they agreed to partially pay some of the claim. They were deliberately obstructive and made the process unnecessarily complex to put people off. Eventually we were to AFCA and they finally came around.

They agreed to pay some of the claim “in good faith” as long as we agreed to waive rights to rebookings/credits.

If you got in before the PDS change I’d encourage you to keep at them and go to AFCA. Despite wasting hours of precious time on this, I’m glad we were paid out based on principle. Thanks to the member who helped me out!

After lodging a claim for a policy bought before COVID started, I sought to claim back part of the cancelled domestic trip. Budget Direct said I should have anticipated the problem! Unless you have a personal crystal ball, don't trust this insurer.

Budget Direct are the gold standard for being an extremely difficult company to deal with. They turned a simple and straight forward claim into a drawn out, delayed, cumbersome and frustrating process.

In summary ........
- Caught up with COVID travel booking cancellations
- Very small claim of less than $700.
- Request after request from them for further information
- Waiting, waiting, waiting for BD to respond
- Around and around in circles

They don’t work with you but work against you, putting hurdle after hurdle in your path to wear you down. Save your money and a whole load of pain and use a different provider....

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...

Good Morning
Taking out Travel Insurance some time before Covid we felt comfortable leaving in early March from Brisbane. Things went haywire in India from the 25th March with everything shut down. 5 months later we managed to escape at the last minute , last 2 seats on a repatriation flight to Canada ( my wife has a Canadian passport ) , no flights or way to get to Australia from Trivanduram in sth India.
After reaching Canada and having family here we put in a claim for Flights cancelled and accommodation etc whilst in India....ha ha....they ...

I have used Budget Direct Travel Insurance only once for a trip to New Zealand. The premium was reasonable given that my wife and I are both seniors.
However due to bad weather and road closures we had to abandon part of our trip that involved a Trans Alpine train trip to return to Christchurch. At significant extra cost ( i.e no refund on train travel, extra accommodation, and air fare) we made the return to Christchurch by air.in order to be there in time for our booked air travel back to Melbourne.

On making a claim for our disrupted trav...

I purchased an expensive comprehensive multi trip travel insurance policy with Budget Direct in august 2019 (a long time before COVID. I rang for advise as to how to handle my tickets after the boarders closed and they simply said cancel and lodge a claim which I did for cancellation charges incurred . The gall of these people is despicable. They deliberately delay the process by sending multiple requests for "Further information" weeks apart, rather than asking for all the information at once. Also, they keep asking for the same information I...