Petplan's new trick for excluding some chronic conditions (Pet Plan)

Member Name: Marmite's owner

Product:	Pet Plan
Date:	20/10/08 (118 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pays out promptly if claim accepted

Disadvantages: Expensive, and with new tricks for wriggling out of claims

I have been with Petplan for 7 years and had been very happy with them until this year (2008), when an unofficial change of policy seems to have been implemented (though they will not admit to any such change), as a result of which I have now left. My cat has had a problem with serious cystitis flare-ups all his life, for which he has been twice hospitalised and for which he needs a daily dose of Cystaid to keep it under control. Until this year, Petplan were happy to pay claims for his periods of hospitalisation as well as for his Cystaid medicine, minus the annual excess. The annual claim for this medicine came to less than £40 a year, considerably less than the several hundred pounds his hospitalisations cost before we got the condition under control. This year, however, my annual Cystaid claim was refused. When first my veterinary practice and then I rang Petplan to query this, they insisted that medication for a permanent cystitis problem was classified as 'preventative medicine' and therefore ineligible. Furthermore, we could no longer claim for any future hospitalisations for cystitis since this condition is held to be 'preventable'. Catch-22! And a grim warning for owners of other pets with chronic conditions which can be controlled by medication. As Petplan's unpleasantly smug telephone claims clerk explained, unless your pet is visibly suffering from the chronic condition when the medicine is purchased, it is regarded as a 'preventable condition'. Does my cat have cystitis _right now_? Well no, because he is on Cystaid. 'Well it is a preventable condition and our policy clearly states that such things are not covered'. You can imagine how this logic could also be applied to successfully controlled asthma ('Is your pet wheezing _right now_? No?) or any number of other illnesses which can be controlled by Petplan's excluded category of 'preventative medicines'. Petplan have paid every identical claim for treatment of my cat's cystitis up till this year, but they refuse to acknowledge either their own unofficial change in policy or their own wilful misinterpretation of the role of preventative medicine. My vet and I are singularly unimpressed.

Summary: Misleading advertising and poor value for money for pets with controllable chronic conditions