Petplan - how long does it take for them to pay out?

i've never had a dog insured before so am rather clueless. poppy is insured with pet plan & has recently had surgery to remove a lump. the bill has come to £210 which i've had to pay then i have to try to get all but £75 back from pet plan. being on benefits having to pay out £210 well put it this way if i weren't still living with my mum i would be rather hungry! i do have £100 rent a week to pay though & have to pay our of disability benefits because if you live with a parent you don't qualify for housing benefit. now i know my mum isn't going to kick me out the house if i can't pay my rent for a few weeks but i hate owing anyone money so i'm just wondering how long i can expect to be waiting to get the money back. typically everything happens at once i need new batteries for my powerchair soon & my pre payment prescription card which costs just over £100 but means i don't need to pay for prescriptions for a year then & works out much cheaper for me runs out soon so i need to buy a new one of those soon so this is about the worst time i could have had a vet bill to pay so sooner i can get that money back the better

I can't answer the question but couldn't you contact them and ask Petplan themselves?

http://www.petplan.co.uk/therightcover/anyquestions.asp

Can't resist saying if your own mum is charging you £100 a week for just rent for living with her - maybe she would be in a position to lend you the money until the insurance pays out!

That's more rent than I pay to my landlord here! And it's a tenner a week more than my daughter pays for her shared house in Reading (including all bills!)

ah but my rent includes all bills & food & i'm gluten intolerant so some food is more expensive like gluten free bread. also my mum is my main carer but because she works full time she doesn't get paid a penny for looking after me so me giving her £100 a week makes me feel slightly less of a burden. i am on housing list though so i can finally have independence & my poor mum can finally have a holiday or even go away for a day without worrying about me

will try contacting petplan tomorrow see if i can get an idea how long it will take. of course it would help if the vet had actually found time to complete the part of the form he needs to fill in! will need to contact him again in a few days if i don't hear anything

I see. Well, if my daughter's rent had to include her food - it would have to at least double lol! I should know! She is her with me right now! And for the past 4 years whilst at Uni she has lived at home rent free for half the year with me. Fortunately I'm in a position to support her. However am delighted to report that she starts her first full time SALARIED job as a teacher in September! I will be rich beyond my wildest dreams lol!

Good luck with contacting them about this. It seems from googling your question that some have been paid out very quickly (within a couple of weeks) and others waited months.

I've never used pet insurance - only recently found out about this - that they only pay out after YOU have paid the bills yourself. When someone on here was concerned that they could not 'afford' to use their pet insurance. That seemed wrong to me - paying out for it then worrying you cannot afford to use it when needed?

yeah i didn't realise until it got to looking at the form & then asking my mum to explain it to me that yes i have to pay out first.

congratulations to your daughter on getting a job

i am lucky that my mum doesn't ask for more money. i think if she thought i were wasting the rest of the money i get she probably would but because i only buy things i need except for with the dogs, they do have rather a lot of toys & what money i don't need to spend i save up ready for buying things like a manual wheelchair light enough that i can self propel it without damaging my dodgy shoulders, a ramp so i can get out the house by myself, replacement batteries for the powerchair etc she doesn't mind because she knows i'm spending it on things i need. she also knows how ridiculously expensive these things are so knows once i decide i need something like when i decided a self propel wheelchair that i could actually self propel myself in would give me more independence i had to save up £2800 for it so it took quite some time, in the meantime i bought an old wheelchair off a friend that i could self propel a short way so i could at least move around a little by myself. my new wheelchair although painfully expensive is great though, if we go to a shopping centre i can go around whichever shops i want to & arrange to meet up with mum later. that probably doesn't sound like much but when you've been unable to move around by yourself at all for quite some time it's incredible. moving around outside i still want someone with me because slopes or uneven ground can be too much for my shoulders & i do worry about crossing roads if the dropped kerb is as is quite common still an inch or so for me to get the wheelchair up i'm paranoid i'll end up stuck in the road unable to get up onto the path although i am getting better at wheelies now

Toobendy you sound such a 'positive' person - I like you! Congratulations on managing to find the cost of that wheelchair. It's a shame there isn't more financial help available to you for such essentials.

And I am sure your dogs and the cost of them are seen by your mum as a very essential expense. I know I would and I know I would want to have my daughter very close to me if she were in your situation and I am sure your mum feels the same.

I suppose it would be a stupid question to ask if you have a credit card you could pay it with in the short term and then pay it off when the insurance co. coughs up?

i always try to stay positive but i do have my moments where i will have a good whinge usually when i seem to be getting nowhere when i'm trying to improve my life like at the moment with housing association who were meant to assess my needs several months ago but keep making excuses. in the meantime i am able to register my interest in properties but not adapted properties which is what i need so i'm beginning to get a little frustrated with that!

my mum is almost as daft with my dogs especially poppy as i am. poppy even tells mum when it's bedtime & mum listens! mum has to then let poppy & tiger out then come upstairs to put poppy to bed actually tucking her up in bed with her blanket, giving her several squeaky toys that she can't have in the day when tigers loose because tiger would eat them although i guess then poppy could have a squeaky tiger to play with! poppy also needs a chewie (rawhide chew) & a biscuit. this all happens at 10pm if mums at home, its amazing poppy knows when its 10pm seen as if mums working on a night she's usually not back until midnight. so you see poppy has mum well trained

i haven't got a credit card, have only ever had a debit card. i may just have to wait a little longer for new batteries for the powerchair, as long as it will do at least our 2 mile walk that'll do. of course the day the batteries die on me it'll probably suddenly start raining really hard & the road will be even quieter than usual so i'll be sat that waiting for hours for someone to come by that i can flag down. hopefully i'll manage to get them replaced before that happens!

anyone who needs a wheelchair is meant to be able to get a suitable wheelchair from wheelchair services. unfortunately in reality they often don't help much. with me they gave me a very heavy attendant wheelchair. an attendant wheelchair is one of those with only small wheels at the back so the wheelchair user cannot move the wheelchair themselves at all. they reckoned this was suitable for me & suitable for my mum to be able to lift in & out of the car even though she has back problems likely from a milder case of the condition i have. so not only were they providing me with something that wouldn't help my independence at all & they were saying it was suitable but they were also providing something too heavy that would have crippled my mum! we did have to have it for awhile until i bought a self propel & in the few months we had it we had 2 incidents of parts falling off. one was before we even got out of the house, several small parts fell off & we didn't know where from. once i sat in the wheelchair & put my feet on the footrests i found out the parts were from the footrest which fell off as soon as i put my foot on it. the other incident was whilst we were out just going along a path & a tyre fell off so i had to sit on the ground whilst mum put it back on & she had trouble getting it back on but thankfully did manage it. so we quickly decided that wheelchair services idea of a suitable wheelchair was very different to ours

A little late now but have you asked your vet if they do direct claims? Mine never mentioned it to me but when I had Kiki's blood tests done I asked and they said they do, though they prefer to have had something called a proforma/pre-authorisation form, basically paperwork from the insurance company approving the treatment. Axa only do this for bills over £500 though so I gave my vet permission to speak to Axa re. my policy and once the vets were satisfied there were no exclusions or anything on the policy they were happy to deal with the smaller claim direct. I have just had to pay the excess.
I have been with the same vet for nearly 10 years now so that's probably worked in my favour but there's no harm in asking. Some vets don't but the fact that you use Petplan puts you in a good position as they're a well-known company with a good reputation, many vets are happy to deal directly with them even if they don't with any other insurers.