Dragged out claim, ignored additional information

In February myself and friends travelled to South Korea, we got caught in a town right as the Covid-19 cases in Korea spiked, after being bombarded by emergency warnings telling us to stay indoors and avoid unnecessary travel, we made the decision to contact our insurer (budget direct) who let us know if we decided to cut our trip short that we would be able to make a claim.
We rebooked flights and cut our trip short. Immediately after returning home I put in a claim – I gave as much information as was available to me. After requesting more information I called up to inform I was unable to provide a lot of it, as it wasn’t provided to me – after a gruelling 2 months of fighting with booking companies and other parties involved I sent through the additional information. I then proceeded to wait the 10 days for them to make a decision as per their email. After not receiving any confirmation I called up to be informed that as it had taken me so long to get back that “it had been missed and most likely left in an inbox as the claims person dealing with my claim had left the company”. Obviously a part of their tactic to delay the claim as long as possible to deter customers. A week later they emailed me asking for even more additional information. I provided it and again waited the ten days only to call up and be informed that again, the additional information was sat in an inbox…. Another week passed and they then sent a new email, disregarding the existing chain, asking for the same information again.. when I called I was informed that airlines had retrospectively refunded customers, despite this having nothing to do with what I was claiming. Finally fed up, I decided to have a look at other customer reviews and found I wasn’t the only one experiencing this, so I raised a claim with their IDR department. Miraculously my claim was moved into the review stage, and within 4 days was told it was rejected due to our claim being made “too early” as travel warnings changed just days after we were in Korea. Very odd given many people who have made complaints were given almost the exact opposite response…
Typical though – this company is doing everything within it’s power to delay claims and detest customers until they give up, or finding every reason to deny claims. Very disappointing that despite being well within the VAGUE PDS, I was ultimately declinded a refund. Once international travel starts to open up again will definitely not be returning as a customer to budget direct, have left me immensely out of pocket and wasted months of my time. Surley there will be a class action against them in the near future. Will definitely be lodging a dispute and raising with AFCA.

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