It must feel awful to still be paying for your pet’s health plan after the pet has died. Yet there’s a difference between pet health insurance and the wellness plans that some vets market. While both are designed to help pet owners spread the cost of medical care throughout the year, wellness plans are for a fixed period of time, whether the pet is actually alive during that whole time or not.

A woman brought her complaint about still having to pay for a wellness plan after her 21-year-old cat died to the consumer team at CBS Sacramento. This is a common problem, and one that’s been around for a while: in fact, we wrote about the exact same problem eight years ago, also with a cat.

In this case, the plan was at a Banfield hospital, the chain of vet offices in Petsmart stores. Wellness plans include a set of services according to how much you want to pay per month and your pet’s age and health needs.

While a Banfield representative told CBS Sacramento that customers sign an agreement explaining these terms when they sign up for a year of the wellness plan, they still helped this customer, waiving the fees for the rest of the year. She said that she plans to get standard pet insurance for the new kitten she has adopted.

Call Kurtis: Why Am I Still Paying For My Dead Cat’s Wellness Plan? [CBS Sacramento]

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