Bupa Travel Insurance

The outcome of my claim took three months. I was asked to provide the same information over-and-over. I was told different information by different staff members when asking about my claim. My case manager [Name Removed] was likely straight out of high school and not good at her job or just not intelligent. I would never buy BUPA travel insurance again. Waste of time and money. Show details

I didn't realise that in order to be covered for the excess on car rentals you have to take out the car rental company's comprehensive insurance, which to me defeats the purpose of having this travel insurance extra cover. Also, if something outside, one of their categories of cover happens, for example, I had to have a tow truck remove my rental… Read more

car from a busy highway when it broke down, it's up to them whether they cover that, which probably means they won't cover it.

Well done BUPA – We were travelling to Canada and back through USA so started looking for travel insurance. As my parter and I are both older we have pre existing so every quote we got pushed our insurance up to close to 4000AUD. I am 75 which caused a high added cost for pre existing. I went to Bupa as they offered 15% discount for having Health Insurance with… Read more

them. I did the quote which included all pre existing conditions for both of us and it came out nearly 1500AUD less than our cheapest quote. The other great proviso they had was you didn't have to add any transit countries if less than 72hrs. On our return we had to transit through LAX so USA was exempt....that is what really caused the quote to be so much lower. Well done BUPA on that option in the policy.

Due to a 24hr delay on our flight from Montreal we lost one nights accom in LAX and Air Canada would not compensate us. I went through insurance once home to claim that one night we lost. It was denied due to our 250AUD excess. I had gone through to check our policy as we had taken the top cover. It said Travel delay no excess.

I replied to the deny email and within 10days I had another email advising me the original reason for denial was not correct and they were transferring the lost accom amount into our account within 4-5 business days! It is now there...

This customer service follow up by the claims department is why I am giving them a positive review plus the fact they give a 72hr transit window and to exclude the USA saved us a lot of money. I read reviews where the passenger is not happy but I can only go on my experience

Paid exactly as promissed – Purchased first in my life travel cover for 1 month travel in Alaska in Aug 2023. $366 premium, 200 excess Had accident on Turo car share platform rental with AUD5700 bill. Submitting documents online was quick and easy with same day approval and pay out. Excellent value. Show details

travel insurance-Excellent service – I applied for a claim for cancellation of my tour due to COVID 19. All the costs were covered by them Thank you, Suzzane at CGU for being supportive, I recommend BUPA insurance for anyone Show details

WORST INSURANCE COMPANY EVER – Worst insurance company ever. Stay away. Even after cancelling the travel insurance more than 40 days ago they are still charging my credit card. Show details

Terrible Service. Very Long Delays and Non-payment of Approved Claim – My mother travelled overseas to visit family in September this year. She fell down stairs and broke her wrist very badly. We contacted the Bupa emergency team and they provided permission to the hospital to perform the required operations. We subsequently had to delay and upgrade the return flight - all with written permission from the Bupa… Read more

insurance emergency team. Three months later, none of the hospital bills have been paid. The hospital is sending us final demands for payment. In addition, no action has been made on the out of pocket claims for the changes to the return air ticket despite four follow-up phone calls and numerous emails. At every step, a new petty obstacle is presented that delays processing. We send an email and get a request for the same information two weeks later. The phone contact takes forever and still doesn't achieve a result other than a promise to look into it.

Worst Travel Insurance Ever Avoid! – This is the worst insurance company ever, have had so many issues with them its insane, for a start they are not really bupa its just outsourced to the worst company in the world, the claims website is down and they barely answer your emails, when I required them to pay the hospitals bills they would delay as much as they could, in the end they… Read more

paid the hospital bills but good luck getting any money back you had to pay upfront, there website is down, when you submit a claim they cant find it, send emails get no responses, ring their number they just hang up on you, its appalling.

Assistants were rude and determined $100 "fair" compensation for $800 worth of damage. Show details

Terrible heath insurance – Spent a collective 2 hours on hold trying to get clarity on why they wanted me to resubmit documents i had already filed after a processing delay. Will be canceling my Bupa Health Insurance and changing providers after this horrible experience. Show details

Live or Die - 20 hours to ponder – I’ve been a loyal member of Bupa Health since early 2012. Having been with Bupa Health for so many years, and trusting them as one of Australia’s premier Private Health providers, I took out a Travel Insurance Policy promoted by Bupa on their website when in May this year, I travelled overseas to Africa. Unfortunately, I experienced a medical… Read more

emergency two days later. It took Bupa Travel almost 20 hours and more than 40 phone calls to provide the necessary information requested by the hospital. All that the hospital could do during this time was to stabilise me and try to manage the pain. This could have cost me my life after suffering a major heart attack and which was not taken seriously enough by the representatives from Bupa Travel answering each call made.

Following my heart attack, and two months later, I’m also still being harassed by service providers who haven’t been paid, although this is now currently being resolved.

Besides the trauma from the heart attack, I suffered immense emotional trauma due to the fact that for almost 20 hours whilst Bupa Travel took their time providing the required information that the hospital required, I wasn’t sure if I was going to live or die. What was meant to be a trip reuniting family who I hadn’t seen for a couple years, ended up being a trip filled with emotional trauma and one of survival.

"Health Insurance Hassles: A Disappointing Experience" – When it came time to file a claim, they started causing problems. This isn't the first time; I've been a Bupa customer for many years without making any claims, but when I started claiming for chiropractic services, issues began to arise.They are looting people and show their real face when you claim Show details

4 Month and Waiting – Simply medical; issue overseas, All receipts and medical certs supplied claim approved very quickly, we have now been waiting since July for the payment to be made, claiming bank rejections but have confirmed account details 4 times then they say will be in the next 2 business days but nothing. I would hate to be in the situation that really… Read more

needed this money. DO NOT USE THEM especially if you required them to support when you are still on your travels it would be you pay now and we will pay you when we can figure out how to enter the correct bank details.

Deceitful – Took out BUPA comprehensive duo insurance covering an overseas trip for 7 weeks My wife had a trip to a GP and some time later i also had a trip to a GP The policy states on the cover base excess $200 So we had a $200 excess for each visit and they had the gall to refund us $1.59 It transpires this is the excess for each medical visit and the… Read more

details explaining this is very well hidden in the small print of the PDS This is very deceitful and the main covering certificate is misleading As BUPA is underwritten by Allianz don’t bother contacting them as they are not interested ,the lady from Allianz actually let out a very loud SIGH when i started to discuss this with her and suggested i should try alternative insurers if i need cover in the future Do not bother contacting BUPA as they refer you to another third party Do not use BUPA and steer clear of Allianz

Never can contact them – I arrived in Australia and got quite ill three weeks later - I had developed Kidney stones from the long travel, dehydration, etc. It was clearly an acute problem as I never had this before. I tried to manage the pain for a few days and when I couldn't walk - I had to seek help. I tried a few times to call Bupa's call center to find out who and… Read more

where should I go as they had a list of preferred providers. However, due to the usual "high call volumes, I was told by the answering service that I could contact them via their chat service, which I did at 08:23. They only replied after 10 hours to my questions @ 17:20 - and this was on a weekday during office hours. This is no exaggeration (I have the message history as proof). Because I couldn't handle the pain - I ended up going to a hospital which charged me $360. Bupa refused to pay for this indicating that I needed to go to a GP first or get admitted. I asked them how was I supposed to know this if they didn't answer their phones or replied to chats and I was then told by Katie, the call agent, replying to my message after 10 hours, that the Bupa app would have told me which GP to go to. And No, it didn't because I checked this and after telling her that the app didn't do this - she then told me said I should have googled it. Like WTH, What I should have googled is other short-term insurers in Australia. Really poor service. Wouldn't recommend it at all. My kidney stones were confirmed and I was discharged with meds and a treatment plan - and Bupa still refused to pay for this despite it being confirmed as a valid medical emergency.

They never paid the bills they approved, we still get demand letters months later! – We had travel insurance with Bupa, including ski and mountain coverage. While skiing my wife broke a bone in her knee and needed to see a specialist. - At first their team were super helpful and gave us all the details we needed to see the specialist, and approved the expenses - after sending the bills to their billing department, the went silent.… Read more

- its been over 3 months, and we recieve a new demand letter every fortnight or so. - every bill and demand letter we send gets met with silence.

Do Not Use This Product or Bupa. They have a shocking internal process, to the point where the "service" of insuring you from overseas medical bills is not delivered and borders on false advertising.

Made a claim but I was the one following up with the airline! NOT RECOMMENDED!!! – I don't recommend bupa travel insurance! We were suppose to have a holiday to the Philippines 2 years ago but because of Covid this was cancelled. In the course of almost 2 years I was contacting the Airline for a refund and just this year they provided a refund voucher number but we have to wait for at least 5 months for the refund. We didn't… Read more

want to wait for 5 months so we decided to make a claim and provided all the information we received from the airline. Following up on the claim, I was asked to provide a letter from the airline stating how much is my refund? So I contacted the airline but they won't give me an exact figure and asked me to contact the travel agent who also won't give me a figure for the refund and asked me to contact back the airline.

It came to me that I am the one making the claim in behalf of the travel insurance. They did not even try contacting the airline about the claim. If I was able to obtain a figure from the airline as to how much was my refund, I would have lost $200 of excess for the claim to the travel insurer for a claim that I made and an easy money for them! Not to mention I am a bupa member and I was trying to be loyal to them by getting travel insurances and health insurance from them.

I requested for my premium refunded instead because I was doing their job anyway.

Excellent travel insurance – We purchased travel insurance with BUPA and I can only commend them for their professionalism & service. We had to cancel our trip to China due to CoVID-19 and BUPA refunded all our travel expenses. I won’t hesitate to use them again a special shout out to Julieanne at BUPA who processed our claim. Show details

Cant get an answer – The company cannot establish if you are covered without proceeding with a full claim with claim managers only available in the week. This caused significant distress following a family death trying to understand the best course of action at a difficult time. I would never insure with them again and will be changing health insurer also as a result Show details

Customer service staff exceptional!!!! – We needed to talk to Bupa Travel insurance phone staff whilst we were overseas and back in Australia and I was exceptionally impressed on their outstanding customer service. They were both so friendly and courteous and explained what I needed to do, for our situation, in an easy to understand way. I felt extremely supported and comforted by… Read more

their level of expertise and guidance. Our policy was a very reasonable cost and our claim was handled with great ease and efficiency. This will be our 'go to' policy for every Travel insurance need we have in the future. Thank you so much.

I will never use BUPA! – I usually use BUPA when I travel overseas but last year when I tried to make a claim due to the fact my flight was delayed by 15hrs which meant I lost 1-day accommodation & my car transfer was missed to due my flight. BUPA said I could not make that claim because it was a a technical issue with the airline. Is this not the reason why we buy travel insurance????  Show details

Misleading policy – My flight was delayed in Vietnam overnight for 18 + hours. I had to urgently get to Sydney and took another flight, thinking (based on the policy) I was covered for delayed travel. Some pages of the policy stated: “canceled or rescheduled travel” unlimited for singles. The fine print unfortunately meant that if the carrier has delayed due to… Read more

engineering reasons, I wasn’t covered at all for the alternate flight I purchased. Also I had to chase up the CGU end of the operation to get any clarification, they weren’t overly proactive about getting in touch.

They kick you out when you are 70 – 3 years now I had the travel insurance and thankfully never had to use it. Now I got a letter, that they kick me out because I am 70 years old. What a poor policy this is!  Show details

Helpful with first time claim settled – I used Bupa travel insurance for a trip to Europe last year, I made a claim as airport lines and set up made me miss my flight and as result of this the return trip was then cancelled by the flight operator. I purchased alternative tickets to get to and from my destination. I made a claim when I got back home and they were helpful in telling me… Read more ·  1

what information I need to support and process my claim.

The process was simple and straight forward and very happy that I went with them.

Insurance Claim settled quickly and profesionally – Unfortunately due to becoming ill I was unable to travel and my travelling companion and had to cancel ouroverseas holiday. We rang Bupa claims and they organised a claims consultant who listed the necessary documentation they needed. We sent this through Friday and had our total claim approved on Monday including the visa's and medical expenses… Read more ·  1

incurred. We highly recommend using Bupa travel insurance - good value for money, the claims service was professional and prompt. Very impressed.

Did Not Need Insurance – The policy was good value. The Cruise followed the Cyclone "Iris" up the Queensland coast where our Cruise was going and believe it or not "Iris" turned around while we were in Cairns and the Cruise followed her back down the coast .we still enjoyed the Cruise although three days were very "Rock and Roll" Very good entertainment-Very good Crew. I am so glad that I did not have to claim on Insurance  Show details ·  1

Heath conditions that are not covered – I was disappointed that there is no cover for heart conditions. Even if your condition was resolved more than 20 years prior to travel there is no avenue to provide Specialist Doctor reports to get cover. I will be going with another insurer that will cover me with a doctors advise on my next trip.  Show details

Very supportive, quick and generous – My policy was fantastic value. I have a pre existing medical condition. And after ended up in hospital whilst on a tour (although it wasn't directly related to my condition-but my condition made the situation worse), they reimbursed me costs for non direct medical bills which i still needed to purchase to make sure my holiday remained as… Read more ·  1

comfortable as possible. At the time I thought it would only be the physical hospital bill/script medicine reimbursed which was the much smaller portion of what I spent. The whole claim process only took 24 hours. And the money was in my acc the next business day. Only complain was when the lady rang me back to chat further, she left SGIC's number so I wasted 45 mins on the phone to them totally confused as the people I should have been talking to were CGU.

Hidden exclusions in travel insurance. I'm going back to RAA – I took out domestic travel insurance. Our flight was cancelled at the last minute so we had to buy expensive last minute tickets to get there, but I had read the insurance PDS and had seen that on page 6 of the PDS, the Australian Plan covered us for cancelled or rescheduled planes and the amount was 'unlimited'. And also, a bit contradictorily,… Read more

on page 17 it clearly stated "We will cover the reasonable costs of additional accommodation and travel expenses that result from you being delayed or interrupted." Immediately after this, it stated; "Under the Australian Plan we will pay up to $10,000 for Singles and $20,000 for Doubles." So I felt confident we could recover this additional expense just $170. I was wrong. Under the above information, after the PDS says "yes we will cover expenses from delayed or rescheduled flights", and "we'll pay up to $10,000 of expenses", was a list "oh but we won't cover it unless....your plane was hijacked, or crashed, or severe weather, or your travel companion died, or if you broke your 3rd toe in a helicopter accident on a Wednesday in May". Just searching the 68 page document for 'cancelled flights' was not enough. No. You need to read every single paragraph and even if the paragraph appears to end after saying how much they will cover and how huge the payout can be, they will then go on to explain exclusions. Many exclusions. And they are sometimes hidden under separate headings. It's not under Cancelled or Rescheduled Travel. It's not under Delayed or Interrupted Travel. It's under another heading "Additional Expenses" after the claim to cover all, up to 10,000 per single. Hidden. Very unclear. Devious even. Claim denied.

Very Poor – Currently going through a dispute process. It was to my surprise that the travel policy is not BUPA but unwritten by CGU. Dealing with the representatives was stressful, and it felt like the first instance was to reject a claim irrespective of the details and the circumstances. I only went with BUPA because I have Health Insurance with them. I shall be reviewing that policy now based on them washing their hands of the claim.  Show details

Very Helpful – While we didnt need to use our insurance, we had to change our trip due to Cyclone Gita. BUPA gave us good support and advice to get us on our way safely to a new destination  Show details ·  1

Online Travel Insurance – Received an email regarding travel insurance with an added 10% off to their members 15% off. If you have an existing medical condition and it's approved online, you MUST phone Bupa. Bupa, however, are unable to give you the extra 10% as it only applies to online. Works well if you have no premedical condition.  Show details

Incredibly poor experience with BUPA – Having had private cover with BUPA for over 15 years we took out travel insurance while on an extended break overseas to visit family. I had an unforseen health issue while overseas and when I returned attempted to lodge a claim. It was incredibly difficult to do so as when we went to BUPA they could not deal with it at the local office, as they… Read more

said it was a wholesale policy. After spending 2 or 3 hours on phone calls explaining the issue they requested we go back to the doctor and specialist we had used overseas to verify the claim even though we provided receipts and a report from the specialist which gave complete details of the issue. We found their claims processor incredibly unhelpful and unfriendly. Going back to doctors and specialists overseas takes time and costs additional money even though we provided full details and a detailed report form the specialist when making the claim. I will never use BUPA again either for travel insurance or ongoing health insurance in Australia.