These people are crooks and scoundrels
These people are crooks and scoundrels hiding behind Allianz trademark. We have been customers of Allianz Portugal for more than 15 years for day-to-day private medical insurance and we never had any problems getting reimbursements when making the claims retrospectively. Of course, I could see that Allianz “Assistance” has a different web-site and, thus, it should be a different entity using Allianz franchise, but somehow I thought that under Allianz name the overall standards should be more-or-less the same.
All in all, I was buying their top and most expensive Ultimate Ferias “insurance” 3 times, stupidly thinking that we will be covered for anything unforeseen while traveling. First 2 times we didn’t have any incidents, so I kept having my belief. But January this year my wife felt very unwell during a night in the hotel of one of countries of Central Africa during our last far-away-from-home vacation. It was going worse and worse by the minute, so I had the hotel to call for an ambulance and had her delivered to one of the private hospitals. Needless to say, our holidays were interrupted. But we were secured for this event by Allianz-Assistance PT for up to euro 5.000 per person, weren’t we? After sleepless night in the hospital, my wife finally getting a bit better and us returning back to the hotel I sent a mail to our Allianz-Assistance friends explaining what has happened and informing them that I will be making a formal claim presenting all the documents after our return back to Portugal. About a week after an answer came telling me that I shouldn’t bother making any claims, because during that night I had to be calling them and waiting for their APPROVAL before doing anything and, thus, after “analyzing” they have our “file” closed. Well, I haven’t been asking to open any “file” yet – just informed them duly that something happened and formal claim would be following.
Upon returning to Portugal, I did make a claim for reimbursement of cost of our interrupted holidays attaching all relevant documents. The answer was more-or-less: listen, we told you that your file is closed because you didn’t telephone and didn’t get our approval whether you can save your wife’s life by calling her an ambulance.
So, in the 3rd decade of 21st century, information sent by E-mail isn’t valid. And, yes, they supposedly sell travel/holidays insurance. And going on holidays many people go to seas on cruises, climb or hike in the mountains, go wild- or birdlife watching to African plains or South America, all in all to places where there is no phone reception in principle. So, none of these people can be covered by any travel insurance in principle – at least not by one sold by Allianz Assistance. And, yes, while one is traveling there must happen something really extraordinary for one to be needing medical assistance and, thus, have a subject to be making a claim about, doesn't it? With all due respect, being in Central Africa, like we were, no one will call for an ambulance if things aren’t really bad. But, no, instead of calling for an ambulance, praying it will come fast and the local doctors (again, no disrespect, we are very grateful to all medics that were attending to my wife) would be able to help you, you are supposed to be calling to some help-line number in the middle of the night and waiting for “approval”.
All in all, if you are reading this somehow and you think whether to buy an insurance from Allianz Assistance be aware that you are going to pay your money and get in return something – somehow sent to you by mail – that is worth less than used toilet paper.