True Traveller Reviews 3,340

Edit: I have been corresponding with truetraveller at axa-assistance.cz - claims at truetraveller.com were copied in to the original email on 3rd September. I had also called the number on your website - to say I haven’t been in contact with you at all seems, entirely incorrect?

My father has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, I had to fly home to see him. It's been a horrendous time. So far I haven't had any help from True Traveller and question what use the insurance is.

After purchasing my insurance I received an email from True Traveller stating that I am covered for trip curtailment (see document Insurance Product Information Document). Tomáš, who I initially spoke and emailed with said I would be covered for the cost of economy flight tickets. After an email exchange confirming this I went on to book my tickets.

Given True Traveller's assurance, I felt confident in booking the flights, only to face unexpected obstacles when it came time to file my claim.

I have now temporarily resumed my travel to attend a course I had already booked and paid for, whilst my father undergoes treatment. This is an incredibly sad and stressful time for us as a family and I do hope you will escalate this matter and provide help. Otherwise, in distressing, unforeseen circumstances such as this, why bother paying for insurance?

I have tried calling and emailing about this matter to no avail, if someone would be able to provide some assistance I would be happy to amend my review.

After leaving the UK for an 11-month trip, my partner developed a chronic infection. We sought medical treatment and she received multiple rounds of antibiotics (all of which were ineffective), before being told by both a Japanese doctor and a UK specialist that she needed to return to the UK for treatment because Japan doesn't widely recognise this condition, does not have access to her health records, and cannot give her the treatment she needs.

We appealed to True Traveller to help get her home and were told that they would not do so because the infection can be treated in Japan. This is despite us having written confirmation from two medical professionals stating that it cannot, as well as evidence from multiple rounds of ineffective antibiotics that have been prescribed here.

True Traveller are treating the incident as a standard infection, which it is not. The dangers of chronic infections are well documented and, if left untreated, can result in long-term organ damage. True Traveller refuse to take this into account.

What's worse is that True Traveller's 'medical team' will not take her case seriously. We keep receiving copy 'n' paste responses saying they won't recognise the claim. When we ask them reasonable questions, such as what additional costs might be covered if we have to stay in one place to receive treatment, they ignore us (as other reviewers have noted).

When she left her own review on Trust Pilot, True Traveller immediately responded saying that they were only made aware of the situation yesterday. This is absolutely not true. We have been seeking medical advice since 23 October, which we have paid for ourselves. We contacted True Traveller's Emergency Medical Assistance line on 2 November asking for help so they have known about this for five days.

As a result, my partner has spent the majority of our trip in Japan in bed and in substantial pain. I'm extremely concerned for both her mental and physical health, and True Traveller are showing no inclination to help us.

I'm sure True Traveller will provide a prompt, comprehensive response to this comment refuting my claims. If they put as much effort into providing medical support for their clients as they do to managing their brand image, we wouldn't be in this situation. They haven't even responded to her questions about whether she needs to attend the appointment they have arranged for her and what information she needs to get from that appointment to support her claim.

Between us we paid in excess of £2,200 for this policy, and paid extra to have curtailment protection added to the policy. Which True Traveller are now refusing to come good on.

Avoid this company at all costs.

I am currently stuck in Japan with a chronic, antibiotic resistant UTI for which I have managed to arrange a specialist appointment in the UK for treatment but True Traveller are refusing to acknowledge that, after five rounds of antibiotics and being sick since at least the 20th October, I cannot be treated properly here. I have even obtained a medical note from a Japanese doctor explaining that the course of antibiotics I probably need is not available here and have been advised to return to the UK for treatment.

Their responses are cut and paste, their 'medical team' does not seem to understand how dangerous an unresolved infection of this kind and back-to-back antibiotic treatments can be, and the potential long-term damage this could be doing to my bladder and kidneys. I have lost half a stone and can't eat properly.

They do not fully answer my questions around what I need to do/get to qualify for curtailment (for which I paid extra to have added to the policy), or what next steps will be. They just keep telling me my 'condition can be treated in Japan'. If that were the case, why am I still ill after four appointments and five different antibiotics?

TT have an office based in the UK but all of our correspondence has been funneled through the Czech Republic through medical teams who don't offer the same level of care expected from a UK company, and won't even respond to questions or requests for advice.

We are now making a formal complaint and will be taking this further. We had to decide between TT and another insurance company and absolutely regret our decision as this has both ruined what should have been an 11 month trip (we are one month in) and left me sick, stranded and in chronic pain on the other side of the world.

Edit: Thank you for responding - seeing as you have been ignoring my emails to the
.cz address. In response, I contacted the assistance line on the 2nd. I sent them details of all my issues to date on the 4th along with a request for curtailment. I submitted my claim for all medical treatment to date yesterday - but let me be clear - I am absolutely desperate to go home and have a medical note from a Japanese doctor telling me that I should. I cannot be treated properly in Japan. I am in pain and absolutely losing my mind and this response just goes to show that they have no idea what is actually going on across their teams. Maybe if someone could contact me directly and actually tell me what I need to get to prove to you (beyond a medical report) that a chronic infection that is not going away is dangerous and terrifying, please do let me know as every request I have made has been ignored. THIS IS AN UNEXPECTED ILLNESS THAT MAY TAKE MONTHS TO RECOVER FROM - I'VE HAD THIS BEFORE. 10 years ago it took almost a year of prophylaxis antibiotics to fix and I have had confirmation Japanese doctors will not prescribe these.

I claimed my diving computer loss. And I was surprised by such a quick communication and resolution of my issue. Highly recommend!

Prompt replies
Friendly staff
Hassle free experience
A special thanks to Dylan who was so helpful with my experience

Easy to communicate with and settled all my invoices whilst I was in the USA. I got into a pretty severe accident involving my eye. I was so stressed and down already due to the accident and then the emergency department bill came through and added a whole new level of stress. My vision is permanently impaired due to a freak accident, and I really didn't want to think about owing money to the emergency department on top of my injury. Luckily Truetravelers were great, they said they along with AXA insurance will handle the medical bill from the emergency department. And they also have a very smooth and easy smaller claims set up who handled my doctor bills so fast. Definitely sticking with Truetravelers for all my future visits!

I would not take insurance with this company. I did so because it said it was underwritten by AXA and it was UK based. When I needed to claim it was difficult to get through on the phone number provided. The IVR was in a different language, sounded Eastern European even though the phone number was a UK one. The woman who answered was rude, asked me why I was calling, didn’t know anything about my policy, she hung up on me then we tried to call back and were told we needed to speak to someone else who we had to wait to call back, meanwhile I was suffering terrible AMS and the window to get taken to hospital was closing; no care or urgency. After the event I tried to give written feedback, which was treated in an offhand way with no apology or intent to improve customer service. I rang the emergency line! Unbelievable, unprofessional and should not be underwritten by AXA.

Their website and customer service are atrocious.

Spent over an hour today completing a quote and multiple times it failed when adding a pre-existing medical condition.

I add this medical condition to insurance forms regularly with all manner of companies and never have an issue. With True Traveller the online form on their desktop site asks you to add it then lacks the ability for you to actually type it in. Fast forward two chats with customer service agents and I'm left with "we'd recommend to start again on another tab", sound.

Attempted again this time on the mobile set, hooray, you can type in the medical conditions. Boooo, once you've added one you're stuck in a continuous loop of being asked to add your medical condition... y'know, the one you've already added.

One further conversation with customer service, "We can start it again over the phone if you like?". If they're this useless while trying to give them my money, I can only imagine how bad they'll be if something goes wrong.

STAY AWAY!

EDIT: Nonsense responses from True Traveller...

"What we don’t know is what browser the end user has, and whether they have disabled JavaScript or all the cookies on their machine, which may make all but the simplest of websites fail."

I tried separately with both a laptop and mobile phone, unless your suggesting both devices had the same issues with cookies & JavaScript, or that Google Chrome itself was the issue (one of the most common browsers in operation), this doesn't stack up. Not-so-subtly implying the fault lies with the end user, instead of acknowledging a poor experience, reinforces the suggestions I made in my review, it doesn't refute them.

"We cannot fathom how someone having problems with a website could possibly conclude that claims would be handled badly..."

Very simple conclusion. Bad customer service before you receive custom = equally bad service post receiving custom.

The positive reviews must be manipulated, no doubt. BEWARE.

I am having the most distressing experience with the insurance.

I am an open travel insurance holder for period of 18 months. I broke my ankle while travelling.

1) First contact with emergency team after being admitted to hospital was horrible. The agent on the phone was rude, was not able to locate my policy for 1 hour ( all while I was awaiting a surgery that had to be preapproved according to policy terms) and in severe pain.
The agent then sent an email in spite to a completely fictional email address with details to my situation ( after he refused to send a test email while still on the phone) . This delayed me receiving the surgery and added to the anxiety and trauma i experienced after the accident.

2) the insurance would not confirm in any definite terms whether they would pay for hospitalisation and were dragging their feet. Every day I had to ask for another day cover, and every day the answer would be received too late so I was left in a limbo of whether the cost would fall to me eventually. It seemed like a tactic to deter patients from getting the treatment required medically. This is despite multiple follow ups on the phone and email where agents again were most rude and unhelpful saying ' as we said we will get back when we can on your issue'. I eventually was approved for my urgent surgery 17 hours after I first contacted them.

3) Repatriation home - it's a 6th day since I made the request to have flights home booked due to my condition, and I am now after falling down stairs with my broken ankle. The insurance initailly said they would wait for a medical report ( even though it was already made when i was admitted).

After 6 days they said ' we never said you couldnt go home, you can purchase your tickets yourself). I had clearly asked for the flights to be paid for as they are immensely expensive.

On Day 6 they sent me a default email with a link to make a claim with wait time up to 60 days.

In the meantime I have been stuck in a hotel room every day, unable to move and having to cover all the costs while I am awaiting their proper response to my situation.

Their answers every time are most elusive and unhelpful, never definitive.

I have an appointment with doctor now who would have to split my cast to travel, but since insurance hasn't gotten back to me I would have to wait another week now at minimum until I can make plans to return home.

They have no consideration for your health. I have experienced a real trauma as a result of this daily stress following my accident. Unable to plan from one day to next where I will be.

It is a very clear strategy adopted by the insurance to buy them time, make it expensive on the patient so as to deter them from repatriation.

BEWARE.

I intend to make a formal complaint but want to spread the word. This insurance is beyond unreliable and should not be trusted.

Refer also to another independent review by WORLD WIDE WALKIES blog describing their conduct in another case.

Klaudia

A company who tries its best for its customers with quick response times.
Whilst initially the outcome I wanted wasn’t achieved the company worked with me to try find a compromise which is something most companies won’t do.

I rang up yesterday to clarify some questions I had in regards to taking out a policy for my trip around south east Asia and Australia with my whv. Chris was beyond helpful at answering all of my questions and also making me aware of certain aspects which I hadn’t have thought about prior to the phone call. I decided to then choose to go with True Traveller after the amazing communication I had received from Chris, the ease of navigating their website and reading the policy. My mind is now at ease knowing I am with a trusted provider. Very happy with my experience so far.

Great travel insurance. It was my second time using it and I have no complaints. I had to make a claim and it was very easy to do. Moreover, the claim was settled in a matter of couple of days.

Would recommend and I'll consider them again for the future.

However, they resolved my claim after three days of not answering my query and after I left a negative review on here. 4.5 Stars from me

I had some health issues while in the US. I call the customer service and they didn’t cover my expenses for urgent care, nor the ER. I would have had to pay everything by myself (almost 3600+170$) and then…. Later….. maybe…sending them all the documents they could’ve refunded me in a little percentage. The worst thing was that while feeling very sick, tired and aching I had to speak with an agent who were not able even to speak a good English! Shame on you

Had an injury in America, phoned insurance for advice came home submitted a claim at 11am and it was in my bank the same day, couldn't ask for any better service.

Good value, comprehensive travel insurance, easy claims procedure, fast response and friendly assistance. Allows you to travel with piece of mind.

Cannot recommend these people highly enough.
Recommend to all my friends since son had unfortunate event in Bali and great if already travelling.

Very fast response to our claim. No issue in reimbursing the money. We had 4 small claims throughout one year of travel insurance with True Traveller and each was solved very fast and with no issues.

I appreciate their fast response and professionalism which made my situation so much better.

I made a claim in the evening and the following morning the money was in my bank account. The staff are friendly and extremely efficient.