1
out of 5
POSTED: | BY: Robert Kahn
Pets Best is untrustowrthy
This is an update to a review I published several weeks ago. I hope that it appears as prominently on this Web site as so many of the positive reviews do.
I've just completed an appeal with Pets Best on a claim that was denied the first time around. The first appeal itself has now been declined. What's exceptionally frustrating about the experience with Pets Best is that I'm not an uneducated consumer. I knew exactly what my policy bought, and what it didn't, and how my deductibles worked.
At the beginning of this year, my dog had arthritis treatment, for which Pets Best reimbursed me about $1,000. This was satisfactory and within the terms of the policy.
A couple of months later, I learned my dog needed two cruciate ligament surgeries, one on each knee -- one for a fully ruptured ligament, the other for a partial tear. I called Pets Best twice in April, prior to the surgeries, and twice was told the surgeries were "separate incidents with a cap of $2,500 reimbursement each."
Thus, I approached these two surgeries (they would eventually total $18,000) knowing I should only expect back a maximum of $5,000, and not more. Good enough, and I'd have to live with it--in fact, Pets Best didn't always provide any support for cruciate ligament injuries, because they are so common in large dogs such as labradors, but in the last couple of years they advertise that they have made their policies more attractive by offering that "$2,500" per incident coverage for the specific injury.
The first surgery came with an initial bill for $7,500, and Pets Best reimbursed me for $2,500. That was exactly what I'd been told to expect. After the second surgery, though, they only reimbursed $1,500, claiming that I'd already "dipped into the cap by $1,000 earlier in the year with the arthritis treatment."
Huh?
As noted, my dog was treated for arthritis earlier in the year, but the arthritis was unrelated to his ligament surgery. In some cases, arthritis can be related to damage in cruciate ligaments - this just wasn't one of those cases, as my vet attested, in writing.
A Pets Best "Customer rep" named Jesse Park said that it would help my appeal to provide a letter from my vet stating that my lab was being treated for "arthritis as a fully separate condition from the two ligament issues," and that the "arthritis is not connected in any way causally to Griffin's cruciate ligament injuries."Also that my dog's "arthritis treatment was delayed due to the cruciat