https://www.choice.com.au/shonky-awards/hall-of-shame/shonky…
Category winners are:
AMP superannuation for putting profit before customer returns
Kogan for creating the returns system from hell
Freedom Foods XO Crunch for gaming the Health Stars system to sell a kids' cereal
Ikea for spoiling your food, expensively
Medibank for selling ‘cover’ that leaves you exposed
Pet insurance for catch-22 pet insurance whose conditions make it worthless
What are the nominations for the OzBargain shonkies?
Not sure if I negged you because you called JV a guy or because nominated her for an OzBargain shonkie award.
That's cool. Negged you cause you negged without really knowing why you negged.
Shung.
Freedom Foods XO Crunch for gaming the Health Stars system
not milo ?
They said they could not recommend any of the pet insurance co's because of the list of exclusions they have.
The Medibank one was funny… heard it on the radio.. pay for cover and it just about excludes everything LOL.
We have Medibank cover for our dog since she was a pup. Shes 10 now and have claimed most years (staffie), not once had an issue or claim refused.
From what I can gather their big issues seems to be about pre existing conditions and not being able to move between funds once a pre existing illness is known. Given the cost of pet care I can see why funds would be wary of this. I think most of the funds are like the girl with the curl, when they are good they are very very good and when they are not they are rotten.
Yeah the biggest issues with Pet Insurance these days are:
1) can not move between funds easily, have to restart waiting periods etc
2) The increased premiums every year, especially once they turn 10. increases of 30%-50% have been reported as after 10 you can not start a new policy anywhere.
3) The limitations placed on policies well after you sign up, for example most policies now have a $300 consultation fee yearly limit (some do not even pay for consultation fees)
We had pet insurance for years and when recently changed to saving our premium amount in a savings account every month rather than pay for a policy full of exclusions. There is really only 2 insurers in Australia and they are both terrible, while they will usually pay claims quite quickly the amount of return you get on a policy is no where near what it was 3 years ago when they were pushing hard to get new customers. (we had our policy for 9 years)
The reality is pet insurance is dead money until they regulate the sector. they need to introduce rules to allow quick change between policy providers with waiting periods recognised like they do with Health Insurance, their needs to be a limitation on premium increase to a max of say 10% per year among other changes.
You are literally better off saving money every month for that "rainy day" than paying for PI. In fact the former head of PetSure came out last year and said "only a foolish pet owner would take out pet insurance, their is no policy in the current market which is worth the money the consumer pays for it, they are all written to be a windfall for the insurers only. Its a product they can sell as an extra policy when you have home or health insurance already"
Look at the RSPCA's annual report, they cashed in last year from Pet Insurance premiums… its literally a cash cow for them.
/Rant Over
I agree with you on the regulation bit and cost increases. We’ve been a winner with pet insurance, and my niece is paying crazy money on her dog because she doesn’t have it. The real problem is people can lose perspective when faced with a sick/injured animal; particularly a young one. We will, probably, review our pet insurance when we get the next set of premiums. I don’t consider anything you dais is a rant. If they don’t clean up the industry they will lose out.
Like try2bhelpful, I don’t think that anything you said in your post is a rant.
Before I read their comment, I was going to say much the same as I have. I was going to add that I was surprised to see your bit about rant over at the end of the post.
@Lawrage brace yourself for your next renewal.. our renewal for the year our staffie turned 11 was a 48% increase over the previous year.
I rang to try and negotiate the premium, the insurer said that after 10 years they wont negotiate or haggle. That the "risk of claims" is too high
Translation: We have literally set the premium price high so you cancel your policy.
Its been ok so far, just like private (people) insurance it goes up year by year, nothing too crazy yet. Will post back when the next one comes in.
We claim back ~ $1000 every year or two since she was a puppy so my take on it may be different to most, just nice having when those big bills come in.
I laughed when Kogan came out in response and said they had some of "the most satisfied customers" in Australian Retail.
Returns system from hell is an understatement at best