Many pets insurance

[maddog1996]

Bern with many pets for 2 years for my dog Winnie . She's a staffie x Jack Russell bought from a dogs home 6 years ago when she was 3 months old .
She has thyroid medication and we claim on the insurance and I currently pay £41 a month . Back in sept she had cruciate ligament surgery £3500 . A claim went into many pets who started sending emails asking if she is s cross breed or a mongrel . I said I wasn't aware of the difference . They said xbreed is 2 breeds a mongrel can be 3/4/5 breeds . I advised as far as we know she's a crossbreed staffie and jack . Next email I had asked which breed is dominant ? I advised she's more like a staffie .
This evening I've received another email saying my oremijms gone up from £41 to £72 a month as I've been underpaying . I've never been asked any questions before until this large claim . My premiums renew in august but they want this increase straight away . I feel the only reason this has now come up is due to the large claim . They say if I cancel they will still pay the amount to the vet but I will still owe them 6 months at £31 from august to Jan .
I object to this as at no point has this been mentioned for previous claims for thyroid treatment and I have escalated . I also intend going to the ombudsman next week for advice .
Has anyone else come across anything similar ?

yes I think @BiteyShark is right and it might be a case of the dominant breed being more expensive

like Bitey, I have a WCS who has only ever claimed for eating food he should not have scoffed and his premiums (also with Many Pets) are a lot more than yours (and he's only 2). But they are susceptible to a whole load of conditions that push up the premium.

I complained this year because we got a 32% hike in our premiums to be told it's just the general increase and not even related to him (we had not claimed in the last 12 months so I was particularly aggrieved!).

There was one year I claimed over £10,000 from ManyPets and the following renewal date my premiums went down a little bit - so I don't think it can be that they want to get more money following a claim?

It has to be the difference in breed, I think?

The problem is that your vet has called the breed different to you.

You do not need a DNA test as they will not be counted as a legal result.

Not sure how you unravel it now though as different breeds etc have been discussed.

Not sure how this wasn’t picked up on then when the OP claimed for the thyroid .

Is cruciate ligament unusual in one breed than the other? Could that have triggered something by the insurance company to clarify dominant breed especially if there was a discrepancy between the original information and what the vet filled in?

Possibly it's a different vet that filled in the claim form?
Or even the same vet who put slightly different thing to last time which lead to this?

I think that Many Pets has a great reputation but since their rebrand (they used to be Bought By Many) the consensus is that the service has really deteriorated.
I had something similar. My dog had an accident while out walking. I think he jumped into brambles or branches and was bruised and bleeding. In the end he needed sedating to clean his wounds properly and have a proper check to make sure there were no injuries to organs etc. It cost about £1200.
Many Pets took forever and I chased after 6 weeks (was previously with Waggel who were brilliant) and I could see they had obtained his entire history with the vet. DoggoLongLegs is a lurcher but my vet had him down as a greyhound. I was quizzed about this but fortunately had a saliva dna analysis to prove that he is a mongrel with 4 breeds identified. They seemed desperate to find something in his history which they could use to reject the claim. Apparently having a dog that can run fast is a pre existing condition.
Personally I would complain. If you have a cross breed then it doesn't matter whether it looks more A or B. Maybe its behaviour is more B than A. What the hell does Staffie dominant even mean? If I look more like my dad than my mum it changes nothing about my genetic make up. Fight it OP!

Jeez your the first person I've ever known where insurance renewal has gone down ... that never happens 😂

Exactly ... no mention of it then ! I suspect the difference between thyroid tablets each month and a £3500 bill might be the answer 🙄

It has to be something to do with you selected something different here to what your vet has said during the claim.

It’s not to do with your claim, it’s due to the fact you haven’t paid the correct premium for the year based on the answers you gave.

We have a full breed dog (classed as pedigree for insurance but he’s a rescue so we have no paperwork), our premiums would be cheaper if we had selected crossbreed as the breed is very prone to illness.

Thanks for this ... it seems like it's a common occurrence to nitpick on the breed issue to obtain more cash .
I will try my best to fight it don't worry 😉

As a PP linked to on the quote form it says

'Breed information needs to match what is on file with your vet.'

This appears to be the issue as your vet answer didn't match that on your records hence the questioning. Looking at the insurance ombudsman site they do list examples of complaints for pet insurance and whether they upheld or rejected the complaint so you might want to have a read there to see if it looks reasonable or not regarding a price increase when new/different information is obtained.

Jeez your the first person I've ever known where insurance renewal has gone down ... that never happens 😂

It's pretty common when the dog reaches 2. Before that, the puppy years can be expensive because puppies do foolish things. By 2 they have normally matured a bit but are not yet old enough for many age-linked medical issues.

We’re also with Many Pets. Our Lab pup had double elbow dysplasia surgery and CT scans, £6,900. (Our pot is £7000 so he can’t get ill again this year!)

Our payments went from £35 to £40.

Thanks for this ... very interesting 🤔

I had exactly this when I put a claim in for my Heinz 57 mixed breed. They had my dog down as a mongrel where my vet had her as a crossbreed. I said I didn’t know what breeds she was, she came from abroad. They wanted to hike up my premium for recording her as a crossbreed instead of a mongrel so I rang the vet instead and asked them to change their records to match what many pets had. It appears to have gone away, but the vets still couldn’t match the exact description so I don’t really know what’s going on. Just keep getting lots of texts saying they’re dealing with the claim

id ring back and try to get through to someone else, insist there’s been a misunderstanding and your dog should be recorded as a small mongrel

I think it will be a difference between your vet’s records and what you put down for breed when you took out the insurance. It could be as simple as a different vet completing their side of the claim, than the vet that usually does the claims for the thyroid meds.

When I took out insurance for my Lurchers I had a battle and ended up speaking directly with the underwriters. The quote was very high compared to previous rescue dogs I’d had insured with the same company and when queried it was because they had Lurcher as a breed. I pointed out that Lurchers can either be crossbreeds or mongrels, but are never a single breed and therefore they should be insured as crossbreeds or mongrels. I knew the heritage of one of my dogs, which consisted of four known breeds, as both parents were known crosses. The other was a Heinz 57, most likely result of multiple Lurcher to Lurcher crosses, so heaven knows how many breeds he had in his mix. I was asked which breeds were dominant and I simply said it was impossible to say as they were such a mix. Eventually the underwriter agreed to register them both as mongrels and the premiums dropped significantly. I was advised to speak to my vets and make sure they had them both recorded as mongrels as well. I ended up making lots of claims for the unknown mix and when he became very old, regular claims for the known mix dog and the issue was never raised again.

Insurance can be a nightmare to navigate, as it’s all about risk algorithms. I just went from a 2 litre large, luxury estate car to a tiny 1.2 litre micro-mini type car mid-cover and my premiums went up significantly, despite both cars being the same age. I was gobsmacked, but apparently it was down to risk. Large luxury estates tend to do a lot of long/motorway driving, whereas cars like my new one get driven by young people who have just passed their test, elderly people and mums on the school run, so have a higher risk of claims, as those categories are more likely to have a bump. So much for saving myself money by downsizing my car!

Ours was more expensive in the puppy year, then went down for a year, but then went up rather a lot

Which I assume was because of the orthopaedic issue. I reckon that's increased our premiums by as much as £20+ per month, so £240 a year. But if she ever needs that operation, it could easily cost £4000, so it would take over 16 years before the increased premiums became greater than the (now known) risk they are offsetting - yes premiums will rise further, esp after the age of 8ish, but so do the costs of vet procedures

Thanks everyone for your replies . I've raised a complaint with many pets and await a callback ( watch this space ) !!