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My dog lost a leg in a freak car accident but Waggel won’t pay the £13,500 vet’s bill

QOnepitch black evening in January I was at my art studio in rural Sussex finishing work for the day and packing up the car to go home. It was around 6pm and my Jaguar E-Pace was parked outside my studio door. I put my dog, Tashi, into the boot and pressed the close button. Unbeknown to me, without making a sound, in the split second I turned around to lock the studio door she jumped out.

I pulled away thinking Tashi was still in the car and drove very slowly along a single-track road for around half a mile before turning off on to a main road where I reached much higher speeds and travelled a further 18 miles. What I couldn’t see behind me was that my dog, who was still attached to her lead which was secured within the boot, was running behind the car desperately trying to keep up.

When I got home and opened my boot I was stricken with panic as I discovered Tashi was gone. Her flexi lead was trailing behind the car with no collar attached. The next couple of hours were a blur as I raced around trying to find her. I posted her picture on Facebook saying she was missing and someone responded saying she had been taken to an emergency vet. She had been found near the main road I had turned on to. She must have been running behind the car before the lead snapped as I turned off and built up speed.

One of Tashi’s legs was so badly broken that it had to be amputated. So far the vets’ bills have amounted to around £13,500 and she is supposed to be insured for £6,000.

I contacted my pet insurer, Waggel, straight away. It let me shell out thousands of pounds for treatments over the course of a month before telling me it was not going to pay a penny. First its underwriter, Red Sands, tried to claim my car boot was broken, which it isn’t. Then it appeared to accuse me of endangering my dog’s life while getting her into the car. I feel so hurt by this accusation. I am a responsible dog owner and I love all my animals dearly. I would never knowingly hurt them.

I feel Red Sands has misunderstood what happened here. It was simply a freak accident.

– GH, via email

A For weeks you have been replaying this awful incident in your mind and beating yourself up over it. What’s happened is all the more upsetting because you rescued this dog two years ago to help you get over the tragic death of Mr Bean, your beloved

Cavapoo, who died of meningitis. You cried as you told me what a special soul he was and how Tashi had been the light at the end of a very dark tunnel. She kept you going through lockdown and the pain of losing her as well would have been overwhelming, you told me.

This apparent accusation of endangering her life by Waggel and Red Sands has rubbed salt into the wound during an already difficult time. A clause in its contract states that it will not cover incidents where pet owners endanger them when loading them into a car. But surely this can only be reasonably taken to mean incidents where people are obviously – and knowingly – reckless?

Did the insurer really think you knowingly endangered your own animal, or was it simply relying on this clause to avoid paying? It is hard to say. Either way, my dear reader, there isn’t a bone in my body that thinks you did any of this consciously. It was, as you rightly described it, a freak accident and nothing more. When I asked Waggel and Red Sands to cough up they agreed to pay you the full £6,000, although they refused to admit liability for the claim. However, there was a catch: you were asked to sign a contract preventing you from talking about the claim.

Included in it was a clause asking that you also impose this on me, effectively trying to kill this article. I asked for the confidentiality clauses to be removed, but the insurer refused. If you didn’t sign, the £6,000 offer would be withdrawn and you would have to go to the Financial Ombudsman Service to get your money. As it knows only too well, this process is lengthy and there would be no guarantees.

Red Sands thought you would take the money and go quietly, but it severely underestimated you. Outraged that you would be banned from telling your story, you rejected the £6,000. You told

Red Sands that if it insisted on paying you hush money, it would take more than £6,000 to buy your silence. The price would be £ 10,000, you told it. With just hours to go before the deadline of 5pm on the day the offer expired, it was now a battle of nerves. Would Red Sands raise its offer or did it think you’d cave in at the last minute and sign for your £6,000? Possibly. The deadline came and you refused to sign.

Against my advice to take the money, you felt you would rather take your chances with the ombudsman so you could remain free to tell your story. The attempt to gag you has therefore backfired spectacularly. This was a brave decision that I believe was driven largely by the deep sense of injustice you have felt over this claim, as well as how much Tashi means to you.

The good news is that Tashi is recovering well and is adapting to her new three-legged life in great spirits. As a result of your story I hope Waggel revisits its policy wording around when an accident is an accident, improves the way it handles claims and thinks carefully in future before it tries to buy customers’ silence. Hopefully this tale will also encourage other dog owners to exercise caution over electric boots. I hope you finally get the right result when the ombudsman makes its decision. Do keep me posted.

I’ve been forced to take Amazon to court over £30 monthly fee

QA

couple of years ago I opened an Amazon seller account through which I sold a few portable rotisserie barbecue sets I designed and made to make some extra cash. I used the account only briefly and tried to cancel, but wasn’t able to. It continued to charge me a monthly fee of £30.

I tried to get it cancelled by emailing and phoning Amazon, but to no avail. It just kept telling me to go into my account and cancel it from there. But I couldn’t access my account because the system said my account didn’t exist. Talk about a catch-22 situation.

Last December I sent a recorded delivery letter to Amazon asking it to stop, but still the charges continued. Eventually I decided the only way to get its attention was via the small claims court, so I lodged a claim. Now it is communicating with me via a major corporate law firm. I’m struggling to believe the matter has escalated to this point. I feel like a guest at the Amazon version of the mad hatter’s tea party. – KC, Cheshire

AYou’re

75 and retired and your only income other than selling a few rotisserie sets is your state pension, so you really couldn’t afford to keep paying £30 a month for nothing. As far as I can see, despite being unable to log into your account and cancel it in the usual way, you made every reasonable effort to contact Amazon through other means to sort this out.

Yet still it wasn’t able to stop the charges. Instead, it allowed this situation, which could easily have been resolved in the space of five minutes, to progress to the small claims court. What an utterly ludicrous waste of everyone’s time and money this was – a mad hatter’s tea party indeed. It is also a disgraceful indictment of Amazon’s customer services operation, hinting at what a shambolic mess may well be going on behind the scenes there.

Following my involvement, Amazon has stood down its team of lawyers and finally cancelled your account. It has refunded £185 in payments and paid you a £50 goodwill gesture on top. This really was the least it could do, all things considered. It still hasn’t fully explained why your calls, emails and the recorded delivery letter fell on deaf ears. Amazon has some serious improving to do.