My main warning is that the fact that a policy with Direct Travel Insurance is easy and cheap to obtain (as so many of these reviews are based on) is largely irrelevant if when you actually need to claim, they make it extremely difficult (and misleading). My suitcase was lost when flying abroad on 10th July. Prior to flying, my wife and I took out a policy with DTI as, at a glance, the reviews looked reassuring and it seemed very reasonably-priced. We had read about airport issues with losing luggage so opted for a policy which clearly stated that it included £1,500 for lost luggage. To cut a long story short, it is 22nd October and only recently did we receive any money back and then, even though between us our claim came to around £1,200, we received £155. You would have thought it would be straight forward to get in touch to discuss this but this is far from the truth. As expected, at any point of the day you ring, you are told by automated message that it is a particularly busy time to call and you should try another time. Then Covid is used as a reason to not expect any correspondence to be answered sooner than 31 days. So far, my attempts to speak to someone who can help talk me through our claim and explain why we have received so little money, have ended in one of the following scenarios:
1. When you finally get to speak to someone (this takes minimum 20 minutes on hold), the person you get through to says that there is no one available who can help (why does this person answer the phone then?), could I either call back again or give a convenient time when they could call me.
2. Having naively trusted this promise and agreeing a time that evening for a call back, I heard nothing from them.
3. A few days later, I received a call from them. I was very excited by this, until the person (a lovely, friendly lady) who called me telling me they were not able to help with claims enquiries (what was the point in the call, in that case?) but she would ask a member of the claims department to call me urgently. That was over a week ago and I am yet to hear anything.
In summary, what I have learnt from this experience is that when I need to buy travel insurance in the future, I will ignore any reviews which simply talk about how easy and cheap it was to get the policy and only study any which detail how the company behaved when it actually came to paying out a claim. My advice, from my experience, would be to avoid DTI and opt for a company with the history of settling claims in a more efficient and transparent manner.
Should this situation get resolved and should I actually get the opportunity to discuss my claim with them and it reaches a fair resolution, I shall amend this review accordingly, but currently I simply cannot offer any more positivity regarding my experience with them.
Addition: Thank you for your prompt response, our Policy Reference is: 9455-0920-14730
Further addition: Today (27th October) I received an email informing me that I would receive an amount for the contents of my suitcase. Firstly, I am appreciative that DTI have clearly looked into this fairly promptly, though it does worry me that if I hadn't brought this to their attention would I never have received what was due to me?
Various sums were taken off for wear and tear and there is apparently a policy that no perishables are covered so bottles of new supplement tablets were not covered which was a shame as they are pricey but I can live with that.
However, the issue I have and which needs explaining is that, as mentioned previously, the pay-out we had originally received (£155) was to cover the clothes and toiletries we had needed to buy when we arrived due to our bags being lost. My wife's bag then arrived four days later so an extra sum was included for that delay and this total then came to £155 after excess was removed. What has surprised me further is that they have now deducted that £155 from the amount that covered the contents of my suitcase, even though these are completely separate, non-related issues. Therefore, not only does this feel again like they are doing everything they can to reduce pay-outs even when not justified, but it will now take yet more of my time emailing, calling (presumably with no luck), to get this £155 back.
I shall give credit where it's due in terms of DTI dealing with this matter relatively efficiently once I raised it, but now trying to take money back for no legitimate reason is once again just not a good look for a company which presumably would like to be seen as a reputable broker. I hope that they will resolve the final part of this saga as soon as possible and I'll continue to amend this review accordingly.
