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12th JULY UPDATE - AFI COURT VICTORY TAKES HASSLE AWAY FROM CUSTOMERS

We are delighted to report that Animal Friends got an injunction against E&L yesterday in the High Court in London.

This will immediately make our customers' lives easier in 2 ways:-

(1) E&L are not allowed to further contact our customers to try to sell pet insurance or other products directly to them, at least at present until 11th August, so you will get no more confusing letters from them about this.

Of course they are allowed to correspond with customers over claims as they are still legally liable to pay valid claims for treatment undertaken up until the date your policy is renewed with our new underwriters.

(2)  For our customers who want to stay with Animal Friends we simply notify E&L of their details and E&L are now obliged by Court Order not to collect any further premiums by direct debit or otherwise.

So this makes it even easier to stay with Animal Friends. As we said in our very first letter to you you don't have to do anything at all!

The Judge confirmed that we were entitled to renew your policies into our new underwriters without you having to do anything. Unless we have been advised you don't want to stay with Animal Friends we shall set up a new direct debit for you and renew your policy with our new underwriters; your direct debit will show up in your account as "Animal Friends".  You will get postal notification from us shortly that the direct debit has been set up for you; you will not need to sign anything.

We shall send a list of customers staying with Animal Friends to E&L well in time for them to cancel the E&L direct debit so there is no chance of your being double charged.

So at last things can be nice and simple. Your cover will continue on the same terms and premium as before and with no danger of any break in cover. For those customers who have lifetime cover with us and who have made a claim for an ongoing condition our underwriters shall of course honour those ongoing conditions.

Although it is always unfortunate to have to take legal proceedings we are delighted that our proceedings have made matters so much easier for you  - and for us!.

Best wishes

The Animal Friends Team

We understand that our customers have received further letters from E&L, often in duplicate or more. When we wrote to you about our change in underwriters we did not involve you in our commercial disputes with E&L and it is unfortunate that their correspondence has now done so. This has caused a lot of confusion amongst our customers prompting a huge volume of calls to us. We apologise if we have been unable to answer you directly straight away but rest assured we shall certainly be getting back to all who have rung us!  

In the meanwhile, we have issued legal proceedings against E&L in the High Court and we have an emergency application to be heard on Friday 11th July. 

As a customer it is entirely up to you who you insure with. We would certainly like to continue looking after you as an Animal Friends customer and we have been touched by the very many customers who have called to give their support and tell us they wish to stay with us. Thank you.     

And there is really no cause to be confused! If you want to stay with Animal Friends it’s very simple indeed. Just ignore the letters you are receiving from E&L. For your peace of mind however and to make quite sure there is no chance of two direct debits being taken, you may wish to tell your bank to cancel your direct debit with E&L and drop us an email to say you have done that for our records. We shall be setting you up with your new direct debit and policy on the same terms as before so your pet will continue to be covered and looked after by Animal Friends as if nothing had happened.

Just from a timing point of view for those of you whose direct debits are due to be collected between today (10th July) to 15th July inclusive (the date your direct debit is collected is the day of the month your policy started) then let that one go through and cancel it afterwards just to be sure there is no break in cover. 

Thank you again for your patience and support. 

Best wishes
 

The Animal Friends Team

ARCHIVE - BACKGROUND 

As an existing customer of Animal Friends we were delighted to announce to you recently that we have sourced a new underwriter for our pet insurance, Red Sands (Europe) Limited. To date we have been underwritten by E&L but our arrangement with them comes to an end on 11^th August next. So we have already invited you to renew your policies with Red Sands and we are delighted to say that all but a tiny minority - mostly E&L employees who are insured with us - wish to do so.

However, it has come to our attention that some of you may have recently received a letter from E&L which we are advised was written in breach of their contract with us. In that letter they offered our customers to renew their policies directly with E&L instead of with Animal Friends. We have received lots of calls from our customers who have been confused and annoyed by that letter and have asked us what to do. So we are posting a letter to all our customers to help them a copy of which you will find at this Link . It explains the facts and what you should do. Needless to say, if you have any queries please do not hesitate to call our friendly team on 0844 55 70 300.

If you want more information about our new underwriters then please follow this Link . They are an underwriter which is part of an international insurance group with assets of £700 million. The group has been providing insurance for pets for more than 17 years.

For the full protection of UK insurance customers RSL are members of the ABI, The Financial Ombudsman Scheme and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, so you are protected on all fronts.

This is a very exciting development for Animal Friends as well as for our customers as we shall now be able to handle all aspects of your policy including claims. E&L would not permit us to handle claims. We are afraid that recently we have been receiving escalating complaints about E&L's claims service for which we must apologise to you and ask you to let us know if you are having any problems with your claim as we shall do all we can to help you. We will obviously be delighted to be able to handle claims ourselves in the future.

Our claims department will be assisted by an expert staff of veterinary nurses and an eminent consultant vet to provide you with the very best service possible. You will be able to download a claims form from our website and we can even pay claims directly into your bank account or to your vet if you like. So no waiting for cheques to clear!   Neither will we ask you to sign a settlement form so no delays there either!

Not only will you benefit from our new claims service but we have been able to tap into Red Sands' group's international pet insurance experience to develop some new and exciting pet insurance products which we shall bring you in the coming months and which we believe will be unique to the UK, so watch this space!

We shall shortly be putting our new insurance schemes onto our website which will be available to you as our existing customers as well as to our new customers.

Thank you for your continued support.

Best wishes

The Animal Friends Team