Great-West Life Travel Insurance Reviews

I recently was really sick on a trip to Cuba, I am from Canada. My workplace has "travel assistance" coverage through Great West Life. I read through their benefit booklet before I left and felt assured that they would have the resources to help in an emergency. This is a quote from our benefits booklet. "This program provides medical assistance through a worldwide communications network that operates 24Hours a day. The Network Locates medical services and obtains Great West Life's approval of covered services, when required as a result of a medical emergency" They talk a good game, sounds pretty sophisticated, and sounds like they have resources to help. Unfortunately, I was violently ill in Cuba. We are all given an emergency travel assistance card, so I tried calling the number on the card. It didn't work. And they had a special number just for when you are in Cuba. There was also some fine print that mentioned you may need to dial "00" instead of 1 if you are in another country. I tried this, this also didn't work. So then I tried dialling "00" plus "1". And it worked! I got through. Now I will certainly get some help....not so. They had absolutely no medical assistance for me at all. I had to go and find my own...in Cuba....while violently ill. The customer service rep was like a cold robot. They didn't seem interested at all in providing help. I'm asking for help and all the guy wants is my address, my phone number and postal code. Another thing is, you need to call the number they give you first or they may not pay your claim. They then give improper instructions for dialling outside the country. So your claim can be denied. Highly unethical company, to the point of straight-up fraudulent in my opinion. We need stronger laws in Canada for this type of behaviour.