Or, you could just pile up your cash and burn it. At least you'd be warmer. (Equine and Livestock Pet Insurance)

Member Name: k4ssie

Product:	Equine and Livestock Pet Insurance
Date:	03/06/09 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Illusory sense of security when paying premiums; work hard and you might get a payout

Disadvantages: Dreadful customer service, habit of excluding any illness my cat gets

I've been paying the delightful people at E&L something in the vicinity of £10 per month for most of the years since i got my moggy- coming up ten now. You do the math, that's a lot of money. Oh all right I'll do it for you - best part of £1,200.

Until last year, i never claimed. As my girl is a house cat (before i get mails accusing me of cruelty, she was a rescue and had been inside her whole life until i got her. Opening the door to anything other than the hottest of sunny days gets met with an "are you trying to kill me?" look and rapid disappearance) she was never likely to get into the sort of accidents that tend to run up big medical bills, but I wanted the reassurance in case she developed a serious illness.

I can't really remember now why we chose E&L. Over the years, my policy cost seemed to keep creeping up, although they did send me a nice shiny booklet every year full of small discounts off of things that were overpriced to start with (5% off a stay at a Hilton, for example).

Then, last autumn, my cat needed a minor operation for a small lump which turned out to be benign. The op went fine, but seemed to trigger some other illness which we never got to the bottom of, suffice to say most of my salary seemed to be going straight to the vets.

I called E&L. Several times, due to the fact that it takes forever to get through to them. Oddly enough, if you try the "sales" line rather than the "claims" line, it's magically answered quite quickly! Eventually I managed to get a claim form sent out to me, filled out my part, and left it with my vet practice who - very generously, i thought - filled the rest out and let me know within a day that they'd sent it off.

For a few weeks, nothing happened. Then i got what was clearly a standard letter from E&L acknowledging my claim, but in the least user-friendly terms possible - a "we're sorry to hear your pet's been ill, but we'll try and get the money to you as soon as we can" would've been nice. What i actually got was something along the lines of "we are assessing the validity of your claim" which i translated as "and don't trust you as far as we can throw you, so we hope we don't have to pay".

More weeks went by. Another letter arrived, kindly informing me that they had now placed an exclusion on my policy which meant that i wouldn't be able to claim for any recurrance of my cat's current condition after the following November. Nice! Especially since at that point, i'd not had a penny from them.

I called E&L (again, trouble getting through, etc etc). Spoke to someone who said my claim was "in progress". When might I expect some cash? "in the next couple of weeks". I waited three, before firing off a letter to their customer services department with the words "formal complaint" in big letters at the top. I suggested that if i didn't find myself in possession of a cheque p darn q, the Insurance Ombudsman (their regulator) would be hearing from me. At about the same time, i submitted another claim for some followup treatment.

A week later, a plain envelope arrives containing two cheques. The policy isn't that generous anyway (£75 excess comes off first, and then they pay you about 65% of the remaining bill) but the numbers weren't exactly what i expected. Since an explanatory covering letter (let alone maybe a little apology for their crap service, let's not get too ambitious!) was apparently too much to expect, i had to call up again to ask what the cheques covered. BOTH claims, it turned out - the second one must have been turned around in about two days. I remarked on this to the lady I spoke with, and she said, not the least bit apologetically, "oh yes, well a complaint was made" !!

So, for my £1,200 investment, i got around £300 in vet fee reimbursement so far, endless delays, rubbish customer service, and a number of letters putting exclusions on anything at all related to my cat's recent illness. The latter i think is particularly sneaky - slapping an exclusion on the policy as soon as you claim for anything, to limit their future potential costs.

In summary, avoid this outfit like the plague - they're happy to take your money, but god forbid you end up needing anything in return.

Summary: Even my Vets' receptionist says "oooh no, we don't recommend E&L" !!