In June 2025, my husband suffered a serious accident in Barcelona.
In June 2025, my husband suffered a serious accident in Barcelona, rupturing both quadriceps tendons and requiring urgent bilateral surgery to avoid permanent disability. I contacted Zurich's emergency assistance partner, World Travel Protection (WTP), before surgery to seek guidance and authorisation — they did not return my call for three days, by which time surgery had already taken place. Left without any guidance, repatriation offer, or authorisation decision from Zurich or WTP, my husband underwent medically necessary surgery in Barcelona. We paid an upfront €65,000 hospital deposit out of our own savings and credit cards. WTP then told us Zurich would pay the hospital directly and to seek a refund of our deposit once a guarantee of payment was issued — but that guarantee was never provided. After months of poor communication and repeated requests for documents, Zurich reimbursed only one third, capping our claim at the cost of a hypothetical air ambulance that was never once offered or arranged in real time. We are now pursuing the Financial Ombudsman Service, with little hope given they have a TrustPilot rating of 1.3. I would not wish this experience on anyone — at the moment we needed our insurer most, they were absent.








