John Lewis pet insurance increase

[latetrain]

I was notified a while back that John Lewis were changing their underwriters from AXA to Royal and Sun but there would be no significant changes to the policies. As I recently moved house I contacted JL to inform them about my change of address and was informed that pet insurance was based on post code and on top of that the renewal which is due soon will increase by over 30%. I asked how this can be when my older dog is cheaper to insure than my younger dog (who by now was the same age as the older dog as he had just had a birthday). I was fobbed of with the excuse that it is all to do with statistics and that one of the reasons could be, 5 year old dogs were more prone to illness .... yeah likely story.

 

I have just looked up AXA insurance and note that in July 2013, AXA announced they will no longer be offering pet insurance.

[hightail]

Pet insurance was seen as a lucrative bandwagon to jump on and underwriters have been jumping back off at quite a rate in recent years. It's almost impossible to keep any sort of check on payouts and it costs insurers dear. The odd rogue vet claiming for ghost animals is rare. Vets running numerous unnecessary tests is not. As long as they actually do what's claimed for it isn't insurance fraud. I have recently helped a friend get their vet bill for an uninsured cat reduced by over £300. An in house test was repeated daily at nearly £70 a time while the cat was an in patient. The result was negative the first time and could not have changed from one day to the next. It's a known money maker as most owners don't know what it is to question it. I can quite see how underwriters have got their fingers burned.