Beware Goodtogo Travel Insurance – A painful lesson after medical emergency abroad

ClauseAndEffect

We learned the hard way that an “Excellent” Trustpilot score doesn’t mean much when you’re stranded overseas and relying on your insurer.

We took out a single-trip policy with Goodtogo for a holiday starting with a stopover in Singapore then on to Thailand. My husband suffered a motor-sensory stroke on the outbound flight. What followed was five weeks of chaos, stress, and silence from Goodtogo at a time when we were at our most vulnerable.

Despite the policy covering pre-existing conditions (and my husband having no history of strokes), we were told it could take six weeks to even validate our claim while they waited for medical records from our GP. We had to organise that ourselves to speed things up. Even after the claim was acknowledged as valid, they stopped responding.

Goodtogo agreed to help find accommodation once we left the hotel, but then went quiet. We had to arrange and pay for everything ourselves — multiple times — because they simply didn’t respond, despite repeated calls and emails. When my husband was discharged but still medically unfit to fly, we were left stranded with no support.

Eventually, they arranged return flights to Manchester — with a Heathrow stopover. They had agreed that on the flight  we would have medical support but at the last minute withdrew that too. And when we missed the Manchester connection due to our incoming flight delay. We were left to sort that too.

They later refused to reimburse the lost Thailand portion of our trip, claiming it was a separate holiday (!), even though it was one continuous trip booked under one policy. A cap on accommodation reimbursement meant we were left over £10,000 out of pocket — despite the Ombudsman ruling in our favour.

The only reason medical bills were paid was because the hospital in Singapore kindly agreed to wait for payout rather than pursue us.

Final word:

Yes, Goodtogo are easy to buy from — but utterly incapable of supporting you when things go wrong. Their “Excellent” Trustpilot score reflects the purchase experience, not the claims process. I wouldn’t trust them again — and strongly advise others to look deeper before choosing them.

Voyager2002

What a dreadful experience!

I hope you have left a detailed review.

Perhaps you would post something about the Ombudsman ruling. If they refused to pay out even when told to do so, I suggest raising the matter with your MP. That does suggest that there is something seriously wrong with the system of insurance regulation.

MyRealNameToo

ClauseAndEffect said:
A cap on accommodation reimbursement meant we were left over £10,000 out of pocket — despite the Ombudsman ruling in our favour.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? I'm reading this as you were underinsured and so whilst the Ombudsman partially upheld your complaint they obviously won't tell the insurer to payout more than the policy limit. 

Was this a decision by an investigator/arbitrator or an ombudsman?

Voyager2002 said:

Perhaps you would post something about the Ombudsman ruling. If they refused to pay out even when told to do so, I suggest raising the matter with your MP. That does suggest that there is something seriously wrong with the system of insurance regulation.

It would depend on if its a decision by 1st tier or an ombudsman, only the later is binding on an insurer and only if the customer accepts their decision. If they do have an accepted ombudsman decision then rather than go to an MP you'd fill in a N322A form and the court will issue a judgement based purely on the ombudsman decision (the decision isnt revisited or discussed etc. You can then use the normal methods to enforce a court judgement. 


Looking online, there are no decisions against Ancile Insurance Group (the company behind Good to Go) in the last couple of years and so either the OP's decision was very recent or it was made by the first tier. 

Exodi

ClauseAndEffect said:
Despite the policy covering pre-existing conditions (and my husband having no history of strokes), we were told it could take six weeks to even validate our claim while they waited for medical records from our GP.

I'd imagine the policy covered pre-existing conditions if they were declared while taking out the policy (increasing the price in reflection of the heightened risk) or as a chargeable addendum. It would be very unusual for a policy to offer blanket coverage for any pre-existing health conditions as standard.

Not that's it's relevant as you mentioned your husband has no history of strokes.

Honestly the handling of this sounds awful, it's just fortunate you had the ability to pay for accommodation, Singapore certainly isn't cheap and you god knows where you could have ended up if you didn't have access to funds.

lovetravellingx2

The case described above, although far more serious than ours is an accurate description of our experience with Goodtogo (GTG) to date.
After an accident while abroad, one of us required immediate hospitalisation.
We began to realise during our initial calls to IMG who handle GTG's support that we had possibly made a mistake with out choice of insurance provider.

The support we received from the operational arm of the company while abroad was almost non-existent.
We too were left to fend for ourselves with no guidance.

We now understand that the normal practice in cases such as our is for the insurer to submit payment guarantee to the hospital.
The hospital refused to accept IMG's payment guarantee.
With hindsight this should have rung alarm bells but we assumed it was an administrative error and would soon be rectified, however it meant we had to use our credit card for the deposits demanded by the hospital for tests and possible treatment, which were considerable.

Since our return we have found the claims process a shambles.

Over the past 12 weeks we have been repeatedly asked for documents we have already submitted, more worryingly we have been asked for documents and reports we know IMG has already received from other sources, documents which we were never given.
 
We are now in direct contact with the hospital where the treatment took place and they have confirmed that our insurers have been in possession of certain documents for over 10 weeks, documents we were never given, but which IMG keep requesting from us.

 IMG have still not agreed a payment guarantee with the hospital, this means the hospital can not return our deposits as they have no confidence that IMG will settle their invoices.
The hospital has tried to assist us but IMG do not return their calls or emails.

Our claim is ongoing, so I will post again after it has been resolved.