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Europ Assistance has been making strange demands of its customers before agreeing to pay out on travel insurance claims.

One woman experienced this first hand when she was rushed to hospital during her holiday with suspected thrombosis. There was no time to call her insurer beforehand, so she contacted them the following day.

She was told that the best thing to do was to pay for her treatment on the spot and then claim the money back from Europ Assistance upon her return to England.

As soon as she arrived home after a three day stay in hospital, she submitted a claim for £500 and sent it off with all the required documents, including a three page medical report.

Europ said that the claim would be settled within five days. However, after five days, she still had not heard anything from her insurer. After much delay, the company finally contacted her and said that they could only process the claim if she paid to have her medical report translated from Finnish into English.

“Nowhere in their policy was it mentioned that if I required medical attention abroad, the records must be translated into English at my own expense” said the shocked customer.

When asked company if this was usual company policy, Europ Assistance replied that they were unsure. All the spokesman could confirm was that “certain languages couldn’t be handled in-house, as the company use staff with foreign language skills rather than professional translators.”

“This case is frustrating because the doctor’s report needn’t have been written in Finnish had the client requested otherwise, but she didn’t so we found ourselves in a stalemate situation,” he continued.

Eventually, Europ Assistance paid the claim, but not without much deliberation and distress caused to their customer.