Pet insurance advice is the focus of this month’s column by Sara Barnes of Grantham’s Who Lets Your Dog Out?. She writes:
As many of us are beginning to look forward to a belated Easter break or summer vacation, take the time to check out what your pet travel and care insurance will cover when it comes to pet care. your pets.
After investigating myself recently, I was interested to find that many travel insurance companies will not cover the cost of caring for your pet if your vacation is canceled and you lose your deposit. I only managed to find a couple that would cover this, but it was an additional top-up that had to be requested – it was not part of the standard cover. Most wouldn’t even cover that at all.
So what, you might be thinking, I have pet insurance! Again, after talking to several pet insurance companies; they would only pay for canceled pet accommodation, if the reason for cancellation was related to the health of the dog and in many cases they would only cover you if the dog was to travel with you as well.
You may want to argue that the pet care provider, I am thinking here of a boarding house or kennel, should return your deposit to you. In many cases, these are non-refundable. The reason for this is that these establishments have a limited number that they can accommodate, and if they had to return every deposit every time a holiday was cancelled, they could not afford to operate and therefore would not be there for customers and future customers. to use when they go on vacation.
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Depending on the case, some can refund part of the deposit if they manage to fill the places or can, depending on the case, carry over to a future reservation. This is at the discretion of the pet care provider and what they state in their terms and conditions.
So why am I writing an article about it? I just want to point out where there seems to be a gap in insurance coverage for most pet owners in regards to canceled vacations and cost recovery of any pet care lost due to cancellation .
It can also be useful for most people to check what holiday or travel insurance will cover if they are delayed on their return from holiday due to strikes, canceled flights, Covid or any other number of natural disasters or of human origin.
A quick call to both insurance companies (travel/vacation and pet) should clarify your position going forward.