Pet insurance not paying out!

sheramber

 The  vet treating the animal on holiday would request permission to contact the owners vet. If refused he could refuse to treat except for first aid or pain  relief in an emergency.

Jumblebumble

sheramber said:

 The  vet treating the animal on holiday would request permission to contact the owners vet. If refused he could refuse to treat except for first aid or pain  relief in an emergency.

I advise the OP to  complain and then go to the ombudsman
I am going to bow out  as all of this is speculation with no basis in fact  which does not help the OP and therefore we will have to agree to disagree

ZaSa1418

Definitely put in a complaint if there isn't anything in the wording that backs them up. 
Please please double check your wording though. 

lowla

I want to say thank you again for everyone's support with this. 

Vet called me yesterday and were as surprised as I am that the claim was rejected just because my cat wasn't registered with a vet for two years. They said they'd never heard of such a thing and have had their admin call up to query it (above and beyond their role!)

Spoken with insurance this morning. Different assessor than the one who emailed me to say the claim had been rejected. They were so apologetic and confirmed that there was no obligation for my cat to be permanently registered with a vet surgery in order for the insurance to be valid. Otherwise, they would have advised me of this and and specifically asked me this question when signing up for the policy. Email now received to say they have paid the claim to the vet. 

No idea what has happened or if the first assessor will be given more training because of this! The other person today was completely surprised by the decision and had no explanation. 

Issue now resolved and I don't have to hunt down the back of the sofa for 3K. Thanks again. 

Soot2006

Well done for following up.

My horse's insurance company has tried all sorts to get out of paying claims but so far they've backed down when confronted with reality. Now they're just trying to price me out ...

Sandtree

lowla said:

No idea what has happened or if the first assessor will be given more training because of this! The other person today was completely surprised by the decision and had no explanation. 

Glad you managed to get it sorted.

I dont think you ever mentioned the insurer but one of the potential challenges is that many insurance companies outsource their claims handling to third parties, particularly if its a relatively small book of business for them etc. In theory they then leverage that outsourcers experience, number of employees and bulk buying ability.

One downside is that a claims agent/loss adjuster etc may be dealing with 50 different insurance companies and each insurance company could easily have a dozen different policy wordings. Its not an excuse as they shouldn't make mistakes but trying to remember 600 different policy wordings/assumptions when you don't realistically have time to re-read the policybook each and every time means occasionally people get mixed up.  This can go two ways... seen plenty of claims settled that shouldn't have been due to a mistake and seen claims reject that shouldn't be... from a consumer perspective you have the protection of the complaints process and the FOS if the later happens (oddly we don't see many complaints when something is paid out that shouldnt be). 

CRISPIANNE3

I gave up with animal insurance a few years ago. I honestly do not trust them to pay out. However I put so much by each month into a saving account. If I get a large bill then so be it will just pay it. 

Sandtree

CRISPIANNE3 said:

I gave up with animal insurance a few years ago. I honestly do not trust them to pay out. However I put so much by each month into a saving account. If I get a large bill then so be it will just pay it. 

And as with any other insurance, the odds are that overall you will be better off... but you can be unlucky and your pet gets a long term condition that a lifetime policy would have continued to pay out on and you find that on top of the £20 a month you are putting aside for accidents etc you have to pay out £5,000 a year for ongoing treatments.

ZaSa1418

Glad you got it sorted.