Advice - Petplan - Refusing Claim

[Guest]

I have 2 horror stories about pet plan, they have had your money, they dont care, we use to show our dogs, and while pet plan sponsor many dog shows, it is common knowledge in the show world they are not the best at paying out

Dog 1, had a cancerous tumour on her front leg, they went all they went all the way back to a op to remove a extra bit of bone at the top of her leg as a puppy, cost me just over £10 K in ops and treatment, it then grew back, so we had the leg removed

Dog 2, He always has a itchy ear, it would come and go, every few months ( maybe 6 )we would get some ear drops, at about 6 years old, he had a ear infection that caused a burst ear drum, Vet said it was nothing to do with the " itchy ear " ( which some Dalli's get ) , pet plan went back over notes, wouldnt pay out a penny, another £2500

we then decided insurance was a waste of time

[mitch84]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Tigger

Sorry to hear about your problem, keep at them. I really believe in pet insurance, Petplan paid out over £11000 in the last year for our dog, we’d have been lost without them.

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I'm glad insurance has worked out well for you. My point is more whether your dog needed £11k of treatment, or whether this was vastly inflated as the insurance would pay.

I want my dog to have as little treatment as possible, only what is strictly necessary. He wasn't himself for a few days after being sedated for his x-rays, and they wanted to MRI him too separately.

I'll pay for what he needs, no question, but I will question and research everything

[Emmie2016]

Definitely go to the ombudsmen, as they will probably act in your favour 🙂

I have had a great service with petplan as they have paid over 6k this month due to my cat developing a rare condition. It was a very complicated claim with 3 different vets, over two policy years and still ongoing. Only thing that slowed my claims was the vets bot provided all the information in a timely fashion or mission bits.

I would say to make sure that the information your vet has provided supports your claim. So request all your notes. Fingers crossed it gets sorted for you!

[Dinglebert]

Originally Posted by mitch84

I'm glad insurance has worked out well for you. My point is more whether your dog needed £11k of treatment, or whether this was vastly inflated as the insurance would pay.

I want my dog to have as little treatment as possible, only what is strictly necessary. He wasn't himself for a few days after being sedated for his x-rays, and they wanted to MRI him too separately.

I'll pay for what he needs, no question, but I will question and research everything

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Our dog in the last two years of life had a number of issues. There was an error from the insurance where it looked like we were coming to the maximum allowed. The vet offered to sell us the medicine at a vastly cheaper rate than the insurance company were paying.

[catlady]

The main issue with pet insurance is that unlike other types of insurance. If you visit your vet with ANY issue then CHANGE your insurer, good luck on claiming for anything that happens to be in that area! Whether you have made a claim or not for the first issue!

My dog's paw cut = antibiotics paid myself as only £50+. I then changed insurer because they raised their price so much despite no claims. Then my dog had a dew claw injury = operation + aftercare etc £200+. Insurers ask for pets history see injury to paw then dont pay out, regardless of whether it's connected, they claim pre existing condition (for a cut 😤! ).

Once you have seen a vet for ANYTHING other than routine health checks you are stuck with that insurer. It's this I have a real problem with! 😤

[Guest]

Originally Posted by Bats

You hit the nail on the head when you say the underwriter is not a qualified vet.

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If the underwriter that said there were exclusions, then this would have been done before the policy was taken out not at claim time. In which case the policy holder should have been aware up front? I have a lot of insurance sector experience, including pet insurance with my most recent employer, and if veterinary opinion is required then it will be obtained. But obviously the insurance company is not run by vets, this does not mean there are no knowledgeable people there.

I am on the fence over pet insurance, whilst I can see from my business experience that the majority of claims are paid out without quibble, my personal experience as a pet owner leaves me with some doubts about the value of it. Somebody made a good point about the third party liability for dog owners but other than that, I am tempted to start to self insure myself.

[sarah4dogs]

Having multiple dogs I decided to stop paying insurances and save the money. As luck would have it we then had 3 separate incidents in 2 months which totalled over £3k. Accident prone dogs?! Not having insurance didn’t work out that great for us!

We’ve just lost our old girl this week and in 13 years I can only remember her going to the vets once for a cut. She was never insured. If only all my dogs were like her.

OP sorry to hear you’re having a hard time with Petplan. I must say that I’ve never had to quibble with any pet insurance company but I would certainly be going the ombudsman route. When I worked in insurance (people not pets) it used to cost our company £500 every time the financial ombudsman was involved so we did take this into account when dealing with disputes.

[ziggyzag]

Originally Posted by Mazbar

Pet insurance isn’t just about vets bills you also get third party cover. We where grateful when our dog was hit by a car ( our dogs fault so our responsibility) it caused £2000 worth of damage to the car we only payed the excess.

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Our dogs are covered for 3rd party through house insurance