Budget Direct finds a way to win!

I purchased a comprehensive travel policy long before COVID was a known event. Unhappily, our once in a life-time extended holiday to Iceland & Norway was cancelled. The airlines and most of our hotel bookings were happily refunded but I had used hotels.com and bookings.com for over $3,600 worth of bookings (it was to be a long vacation!). Both of these companies refused to refund the money and offered vouchers instead. I did not seek the vouchers, nor did I want them. The original vouchers were due to expire in May 2021 but were then automatically extended - not at my request. I decided that enough is enough as we are not prepared to undertake this trip any longer, as the virus is continually evolving and it is not worth risking our health or being stuck overseas due to unforeseen border closures.

Budget Direct has refused to honour my claim because "You have been offered credits for the bookings you are claiming and accepting these is considered as recovering the costs from the source and a step which you could take to reduce your loss. Therefore, the costs you have claimed are outside the scope of the policy."

Last year I called Budget Direct and was told that IF I DECLINED the vouchers I was not making sufficient efforts to recover the costs.

Today I was informed after a Stage 2 appeal that because I DID NOT DECLINE the vouchers I was deemed not to have made sufficient effort to recover costs.

This is despite sending copies of repeated requests to the companies for refunds instead of vouchers.

So with Budget Direct you are damned whichever way you go!!

If you read this and other reviews of Budget Direct, please note the cut and paste responses from their representatives. When they say that all disputes are resolved with reference to the terms and conditions, go back to what I say above about the contradictory advice from them on two different occasions. They seem to have terms and conditions that accept two different realities.

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