Embrace Pet Insurance reviews: Annual price increases

Hi guys, this is Ilaria and welcome to Fizz Consumer Channel. In today's video, we'll talk about pets, pet insurance, and hear back from our users about Embrace Pet Insurance. But first, let's recollect what kind of company it is. Here is their short commercial. With Embrace Pet Insurance, get reimbursed up to 90% on your vet bills. Plans start at less than a dollar a day, so visit GetEmbraced.com to get your free quote. Insurance starts a dollar a day. Sounds good. Let's ask our user how it works in practice. I have a lot of cats, but we have a big house. This cat, he's 19 pounds. He's just an American short hair. He just turned nine years old and he's a polydactyl, so he has seven toes on each front paw. But I just figured he's getting up there in the age and I dread the fact that I would have to bring him into the vet and not be able to cover something like surgery or something, which is why you take out pet insurance. Are all of your pets insured with Embrace Pet Insurance? No, just him because he's the oldest one. All the other cats, they're like two years old. I think three years old is the oldest one and they're all in perfectly good health. We have some other pets as well, but they're exotic pets and that's really hard to get coverage for. What happened between you and Embrace Pet Insurance? They unreasonably raise their premiums every year. This wasn't something that they had explained to me when I first took out the policy. It's for my cat. Of course, I paid my premium every month on time and never had to file a claim. My cat's in perfect health. But all of a sudden, after a year went by, I noticed that my premiums went up by like $20. I sent them an email saying, hey, I think there might be an error here. They replied and said, no, every year our rates increase by 25% to 35%, which is alarming. I mean, that's pretty exorbitant. She said, there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, that's the underwriters and the Illinois insurance. It's calculated out based on a particular equation in the setting. I said, okay, well, it's too much. I was like, if they do this every year, I mean, they're going to basically make it unaffordable. By next year, it's going to be over $100. And then after that, 25% to 35%, $135. Who can afford this? So she stuck to her guns, said there's nothing we can do about it. It's calculated like this for everybody. I just thought there was something fishy about that. So I went on their website and made out like I was registering a new pet, right? With the exact same age as the same cat, male, same breed, everything like that. And it generates a amount that was much less than what they had raised my rate to. So I actually spoke with the same person on the phone and she said, oh, well, so if you want, then yeah, you could just cancel this policy and start a new one. But then it would actually take a year before you can file a claim. And it's just this mishmash where you absolutely just end up feeling like it's a huge scam. I would advise anybody that's considering embrace to look at other agencies. She also said every other pet insurance agency does the same thing, which I found out to be patently false when I called around. Yeah, it's one of those things where I think it's just a mad cash grab. Were you satisfied with the initially price to quality ratio? I never had to use them, but it offered a huge amount of coverage. It was like $30,000. They covered 90% of the bills. And so, I mean, if you thought about that, I mean, God forbid I would have to get a $30,000 operation on my cat, but they pay 90% of that. And the other option is like, you got to put your pet down. I mean, I would easily come out of pocket $3,000 and he would be okay. So their coverage is fantastic. It looks really good on paper. It's just, I would have really, really been happy with them if they either kept their rates or at least were transparent. Look, this is what you should expect. Every year we raise it this much. And if they would have told me that, I mean, to be completely honest, I would have just Nicholas, why did you decide to share this story? I wrote him a letter and it wasn't, I just said, hey, I want to arbitrate this somehow. I've been a loyal customer of yours for a year. I would like to continue to be a loyal customer. If we're not able to come to some sort of conclusion, I'm going to report you to the consumer reporting agencies, which includes bizconsumer.com. She did get back to me and she said, well, if we reduce your coverage to a lower amount of coverage, then we can reduce your rates. And it was still a reduction to something that was more than I was initially paying. So yeah, I just figured that other people should be aware. Save yourself a year's worth of premiums. I think mine ended up being like close to a thousand bucks, you know, so for absolutely no services rendered. Do you plan to continue use in Bryce Pat insurance? I'm not going to, um, I'm already actively trying to find a different carrier so that, you know, my, my cat can be covered. It seems like a small thing, but I mean, it's important to me. I mean, it's my family pet and you know, I just, I just feel like they were dishonest with me. Uh, they could have been much more truthful, much more transparent. And, um, you know, you live and learn hindsight's 2020, but I sure wish I would have done a little bit more research before I What services do you currently using? Apparently ASPCA has a good one. Um, actually I can tell you right now, the ones that I'm looking at, there's one called spot pet insurance. They look pretty good, uh, reasonably priced. Um, ASPCA is ranked way up there. There's pets best. Um, I've reached out to them. I haven't heard anything back, but yeah, I'm probably going to go with one of them and probably ASPCA just because you know, they have a reputation. So they've been around for a very long time. What reaction from the company are you expecting after this interview? Well, I just hope that, you know, other, uh, consumers would be more informed if they get to see this, then maybe, you know, they'll have a warning. Like, you know, you should expect that this is going to happen. This is embraces corporate policy. So, you know, it does seem really, really good right off the get go, but nobody from the company is going to tell you they raised their prices that much until the year goes by and you get shocked by this new bill. So yeah, buyer beware. What can embraced pet insurance do to keep you as a client? They maintained their, their, uh, rates or, I mean, I also understand that with inflation and everything like that, um, rates do increase a little bit or they decrease, you know, every year, depending. I would say, you know, if you have a pet that has never had a claim or anything like that, either keep the rates the same or, you know, raise them in a reasonable amount. I mean, 25 to 35% a year is, like I said, it's exorbitant. We do hope that embraced pet insurance will hear its users' feedback. Um, that's all for today. Thank you so much for watching. Please remember to like this video, subscribe to our channel and write a few words in the comments. Also, you can donate to our team. The link you'll find in the description. Check it out. See you next time. Bye.