Pruhealth scrapping its free/discounted gym loophole in November. Discussion

hasil

Hey i was getin a bit confused with reagards to one thing...........


I started in april/may. Was a frequest user for the 1st Quarter, is my premium now going to be £15/month for virgin active (tier2).

aliharris

I'm back :P

Can anyone explain how you can earn points buying fresh fruit & veg using your nectar card in Sainsburys? It's really badly worded on the website.. the example is rubbish:

***Each week we’ll add up the total spend on fresh fruit and veg and calculate how many Vitality points you’ll be awarded. For example, if there are two Nectar cards on a policy and the weekly spend for both is £1.99 and £3.99, the weekly total would be £5.98. This would give you 2 Vitality points. You can earn up to 10 Vitality points per week as an individual with an annual limit of 520 points and 20 points for families per week with an annual limit of 1040 points.***

So, do you get 1 point each time you use your card? Is there a minimum spend? Can I go and buy a carrot for 4p 10 times in a week to get 10 points? Can I queue up at the checkout and pay for each individual carrot separately with my nectar card and get my 10 points?!

Very confused... I think monkeys have written what's on pru's website, nothing is clear.

Cheers, Ali

aliharris

a quick go on google, and i've found the answer...;)

"Policyholders will get one Vitality point for every £2 they spent on fresh fruit and vegetables but benefits will be capped at 10 points per week. Families will be limited to 20 points per week per family policy." http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?d=pnd2&f=pndf2&h=pndh2&id=149041

Now I understand. Why can't pru make things clearer on their own website? The example they give means nothing, all they need to say is 'We will add up what you spend on fruit and veg over each week, and give you 1 point per £2 spent, up to a maximum of 10 points'

Why oh why are they so incompetant :mad:

So to get the maximum points, people, you need to spend £20/week on fresh fruit & veg.. I feel that vegetarians and people doing big family shops are at somewhat of an advantage! Meh..

whowants2brich

Isn't it 1 point for every £2 spent on fruit and veg at Sainsburys? If you by a 4p carrot 10 times in one week, that's only 40p so no points. But 5 lots of 40p worth of fruit and veg in one week = £2 = 1 point.

You don't get 1 point for spending anything on fruit and veg, there is a minimum spend of £2 for each point, and £2 for each additional point.

whowants2brich

aliharris wrote: »

I feel that vegetarians and people doing big family shops are at somewhat of an advantage! Meh..

Yep, but is there a correlation between being a veggie and being healthier? More fruit and veg apparently helps people to fight loads of medical issues. At least, that's what Pru Health would like us to believe!

stellastar_2

Can anyone help me understand the costs? I cant get any sense out of the website and the pages are taking forever to load, needing to hit refresh over and over before I might maybe if I'm lucky get to read one page...

I joined in June and joined Cannons in July so for the gym I've only paid two months at £25 each (July and August) as it's £25 for three months and £25 to register I still have 2 months of paying £25, which covers September and October.
According to Pru my gym membership with be £45 from November 1st

Does that mean as of November 1st I'm paying my £24 premium and £45 for the gym? so £70 a month for gym membership really (only reason I joined)?

What happens when I improve my vitality status? I worked out I can reach silver by November but not quite gold until another month or two - does that mean my gym membership will go down a bit but I'll still pay the £24 on top of it?

I cant find anything on the site (or the page wont load) to tell me how much I'll pay in total, premium and gym membership. They emailed me a link to a new website which was supposed to make the costs clear, but apparently the website does not exist so i cant acces it!

If I can't get my gym membership down below £25 a month, which it doesn't look like I can, I'm wasting my time with pru (and wasted a fair amount of cash ) and better off just joining a gym direct.

aliharris

Hey Stella,

I'm by no means a pro on this.. i've had to ask a load of questions and contact pru loads... but this is my take on it:

Year 1 (June-June in your case) you pay £24/month health insurance. The gym you say is £45... once you get your vitality points up this will drop. I would assume that as soon as you get to the next tier, it would drop but I think up until now this has only been possible after each block of 3 months (where they averaged out gym visits, which is how it's been worked out in the past). Once you've done a year, you will hopefully be on platinum status. This will make your £24 health insurance drop, and you're £45 gym membership will be lower too from the vitality points.

Someone made a good point earlier: The first year will work out a bit pricey (probably still cheaper than the gym without pru - I think mine is meant to be £70/month or something stupid) It's years 2,3 and onwards that will get really cheap, given that you don't claim on the insurance.

My insurance is £20.13/month, my last 3 payments have been £25 for gym.. I don't know what the next one will be, i'm about 10 gym visits shy of silver and hope to be platinum by Jan..

Hope this helps a bit.. i've digressed a little..

Ali

Bargain_Rzl

aliharris wrote: »

Someone made a good point earlier: The first year will work out a bit pricey (probably still cheaper than the gym without pru - I think mine is meant to be £70/month or something stupid) It's years 2,3 and onwards that will get really cheap, given that you don't claim on the insurance.

Absolutely. The way I decided to go with PruHealth was to work out roughly how cheap it was going to be in the long run, then work out where the money was going to come from for the initial higher outlay (the Quidco cashback, which was £110 at the time, covered the £25 set-up fee and the initial 3 months of higher fees, so effectively cost me nothing). I'm now paying £25 for the gym as I'm a frequent user of the highest-tier Cannons membership (including City club which is my usual branch) and £33.53 for the insurance premium, so OK I'm paying £58.33 a month in total at the moment, but the standard fees for Cannons City club are getting on for £100 a month, so it's still a very good deal. I'm now on Platinum with my policy anniversary coming up at the end of September, so with the premium going down to a few pounds and the gym fee remaining the same for me as a Platinum member, it should be costing me only a shade over £30 a month in total thereafter. £30 a month for use of Cannons lovely flagship club and spa... it's these longer-term figures that mattered most to me when I was trying to work out whether or not to sign up, and for me it was a no-brainer.

brownbabygirl

I agree that especially with the changes, you need to look at things from a LONG TERM perspective.

stellastar_2

aliharris wrote: »

Hey Stella,

I'm by no means a pro on this.. i've had to ask a load of questions and contact pru loads... but this is my take on it:

Hope this helps a bit.. i've digressed a little..

Ali

Thank you! I think I'm getting somewhere with this now!

I've managed to get onto the bit of the site that tells me what the gym costs for each status, I'm with Cannons outside of London so
Bronze £42
Silver £30
Gold £14
Platinum £0

i think I'm going to have to get a Fitbug to get th points up quick enough, but by the time I get it I'll be a month down... anyway if all goes to plan By the time November comes I should be silver anf able to get to Gold for December and Platinum by Jan or Feb
Which means only one month, November I'll be paying £55ish in total which is what the gym charge anyway, before and after November I'll still be cheaper than any of the gyms around here

So overall if I sort out the points I'm only worse off under the new rules for 2 months and the £15 for a fit bug - assuming that if I get to say gold by the end of November I get charged Gold rates for December under the new rules?

What happens to my premium next July if I am at platinum status? I'm not quite sure how the first year discount and the status discounts work out - it kind of looks like platinum status gives you the gym at £0 and 100% discount on premiums... which cant be right!


I've done hardly any work all today trying to work this out! Have to say It's looking better than what I initally thought whe I got the email - £70 a month!

If I just join a gym normally I'd be paying about £50 a month but my work would pay half so maybe I'm just as well doing that and saving the complications of meeting vitality points deadlines