True Traveller was our insurance provider when we were full-time travelling for almost 2 years.
In this post, we want to tell you about the time we had to make a claim with them.
Because you won’t believe what happened.
This is our shocking True Traveller experience.
Ready?
Let’s begin.
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(Can you tell who is British, out of the two of us? 😂)
Here’s a little bit about our journey, if you are new here! If you know us, feel free to skip this part.
After leaving our old life in Scotland in March 2022 (it rains too much there), we travelled full-time for almost 2 years. Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well, it was. If you think that carrying overpacked backpacks in 45°C heat around streets that aren’t even on Google Maps is fancy. And that’s just 1% of all the fun we had! 😆
During the 2 years we volunteered in Italy and Bulgaria (free travel while learning new skills, anyone?), explored other amazing European countries and backpacked Southeast Asia. Even our secret wedding was more of an expedition than a wedding. 😅
And, of course, we researched and planned everything ourselves, because you gotta keep the budget low, right? If you are like us, you’ve come to the right place, because we want to share all the useful tips and info with you!
Excited? Good. Let’s get into it so you can go on your own adventures too!
Note: We are not financial professionals, and this post only details our own True Traveller experience. As always, do your own research before buying travel insurance and any other financial products.
True Traveller insurance
We’ve done a full review of True Traveller insurance here, so check it out if you want to know more about the company and what they offer.
TLDR?
We researched A LOT when choosing travel insurance for our full-time backpacking adventures.
We considered 23 (!!) different providers and then went with True Traveller.
Says it all.
What happened
So many things can go wrong when you are travelling – this is why we talk about travel safety a lot.
The funny thing?
The health emergency that we had to make a claim for actually happened when we weren’t actively travelling!
We were visiting family in Slovakia when Mirka’s tooth started hurting big time.
Although, us being us, with our 💩 luck, it wasn’t just a toothache.
It was a problematic tooth, a day before we were leaving for more travels, while Mirka was battling a terrible stomach bug.
Oh, and did we mention the trip we were leaving for was to celebrate her 30th?
We never do things just partially – research, crazy trips or 💩shows – we make sure they are always 100%. 😂
With the trip next day and the pain getting worse, we concluded an emergency visit to the dentist was necessary.
One X-ray and a procedure later, the tooth was fixed, but we had to pay €114 out of pocket.
Not a huge amount, but we are all about saving money.
Since we were insured, we decided to claim the money back and see what the True Traveller experience of submitting a claim was like.
The claim
According to the True Traveller website, to submit your claim, you just have to sign into your True Traveller account on their website, where you can start the online claims process.
This sounds like a really easy, simple process – ensuring that you have a great True Traveller experience every step of the way.
Our claim process
We are not sure why now, but we submitted the claim via email.
All we had to do was:
- Write a short accompanying email
- Attach the relevant documents that were requested (True Traveller will guide you)
- Fill out the medical expenses form
Because Mirka couldn’t sign the form online, we also had to print the last page of it, sign it IRL and then take a picture of it.
That’s actually another great point, all the documents we needed to provide? We just took a pic of them and attached it to the email. No scanning or sending via post required!
To be perfectly honest, it does sound to us like doing the whole process online on the True Traveller website would be an even easier and simpler way, and we wish we could remember why we did it over email.
What we do remember is that it was still very easy to do. And, more importantly, we want to highlight what happened afterwards, when the claim was processed.
This is the shocking True Traveller experience we want to share.
The shocking True Traveller experience
In the end, it doesn’t really matter how we submitted the claim.
The reason we wrote this post is to highlight what happened afterwards.
Because we still can’t believe it ourselves.
What happened
This was the timeline for the processing of our claim:
All of these happened on the same day, so we are only including the times.
- 14:03 submitted the claim
- 14:06 received a confirmation email (from an actual human, not an automated response)
- 14:57 claim was approved
- 15:01 received reimbursement in our bank account
!!!!!
Look at those times again.
It still blows our mind.
In less than an hour, our claim has been received, processed and approved.
In 58 minutes, we had the money physically in our bank account.
Isn’t that absolutely unbelievable?
Just in case you didn’t believe us, we’ve included screenshots of the emails below (personal details redacted).
Consider this
We’ve never had to make a claim with another insurance provider, so our experience is limited, but this does not seem like the standard to us.
In fact, it seems like the opposite – all you read about is how terrible different travel insurance providers are, especially when it comes to making a claim.
And yet, our True Traveller experience is a proof that things can be different.
You just have to be smart.
Pick an awesome travel insurance provider.
There is also one little thing that you can do. It won’t take a lot of your time, but can make all the difference. And yet we don’t see travellers doing this! It baffles us!
What are we talking about?
Speaking to the travel insurance provider before you buy.
True Traveller conversations
While this True Traveller experience blew our minds, it shouldn’t have been that surprising.
We’ve spoken with the company a number of times, prior to buying their insurance as well as after.
This is one of our tricks for testing potential insurance providers before buying from them – we talk about that here.
Why do we think doing this is absolutely crucial?
Again, detailed info is in this post, but basically, if the travel insurance provider sucks at talking to you before you sign up? While they should still be trying to entice you to buy from them? Do you honestly think they won’t suck once it comes to THEM paying YOU money?
It’s something worth thinking about.
As we said, we spoke with True Traveller a few times, before buying and also after, and we’ve always had a great, fast, efficient customer service experience.
So, in the end, this True Traveller experience of submitting a claim shouldn’t have been that shocking.
But it proved that there are still some companies out there who deliver on their promises – you just have to find them (or find people who have done all the work for you and just follow their recommendations 😉).
Keep this in mind
Having read about our True Traveller experience, we would like you to keep 2 things in mind:
1. This is our experience
While we’ve had an unbelievably positive experience, we know that this is just one example.
Maybe we submitted our claim during an exceptionally quiet time and this is why we had such an unbelievable True Traveller experience.
It was also a simple, straightforward claim for a small amount.
That being said, if you need some indication of how an insurance provider will behave when you need them, this is a good start.
We talk a lot about this in our 11-question test, so read that before buying long-term travel insurance.
Another thing to consider is the fact that True Traveller is rated very well, which can’t be said about all other travel insurance providers. The reviews are out there for you to check out and we would always recommend you do your own research before committing.
If you do want to know more about True Traveller, we wrote our own review, highlighting all their cool features here.
2. Bad doesn’t always mean bad
You will find reviews from travellers whose True Traveller experience was far from positive.
Here are the things we do when we come across negative reviews of a product or service we are thinking of buying:
- If possible, read more about the situation. There are always (at least) two sides to each story. The more you know about what happened, the more you can judge for yourself who is in the right.
- We check out the company’s response to the negative review. Is there any response? If yes, how are they speaking to the customer? Are they rude? Dismissive? Or trying to address the problem? This point is so important, because it tells you what the company is like when 💩 hits the fan, not just when they are promoting themselves on social media or their website.
- We try to distinguish between legal and ethical – sometimes a claim gets dismissed because there is no legal basis for it. And as much as a traveller might feel like it would be ethical to honour the claim, it’s not the insurer’s obligation.
We are not trying to defend insurance providers here; even True Traveller. But we like to keep things fair and objective, especially when it comes to emotional topics like travel safety and finances.
What do you think about our True Traveller experience? Crazy, right?
Have you ever had to submit a claim with your travel insurance provider? Let us know in the comments!
As always, if you want to chat more privately, hit us up on our Instagram.
