E&L Pet Insurance

I took out the best insurance on offer with this company (Pet-Insurance .co.uk underwritten by E & L) which also covered death benefit of the price of my puppy.

Ruby became ill at 8 months old. She was, of course, taken to the vet who carried out xrays and then an exploratory operation where they took biopsies of all her organs. Two days later she died on 25th August 2011 before the vets even had the pathology report back.

When the report came through she had numerous things wrong, swollen spleen and liver, enteritis and probable leukaemia. She had no chance of surviving.

The insurance company (still haven't paid the vets to date) refused to pay out for her death because the vet did not give a conclusive cause of death. This was because the vet said that any one of her ailments could have caused death so they were unable to specify. Even if they had done a post mortem, they still would not have been able to say for definite. Even though the vets contacted the insurance company to explain, they would not change their minds.

Even at post-mortem, cause of death cannot always be established and a very good example of this was on the TV quite recently where they were carrying out a post mortem on a turtle which had been killed by a speedboat. The lung had been sliced through but they could not tell at post mortem whether it died of blood loss or suffocation.

The loss of our puppy was very traumatic for us, losing our puppy so young and in pain - the insurance company just made matters so much worse.

I would definitely not recommend this company. You only know a good company when you make a claim, so don't make the same mistake.

Perhaps they are right in the letter of the law but certainly not morally.