Methodology
How we research and why you can trust it
Source rules
- 1.Primary source only. Every fact about a carrier's appeal procedure is sourced to that carrier's own page (their /claims, /appeal, /faq URLs, or their published policy doc PDF). Every fact about a state insurance commissioner is sourced to that state's own DOI website.
- 2.No third-party scrapers. Bankrate, NerdWallet, Money.com, Pawlicy, Forbes, U.S. News — these are downstream summaries. We do not cite them as primary sources for any factual claim about a carrier or a state DOI.
- 3.Verbatim quotes. Where we quote carrier policy language (e.g., the pre-existing condition definition), the quote is verbatim — and the source URL is published in the citation list. Where the quote is provisional (extracted from a search-engine snippet, awaiting browser-render verification), the page is flagged with a “verification pending” pin.
- 4.Honest gap-flagging. Where a carrier doesn't publish a fact (e.g., Lemonade doesn't state an appeal-window day-count, Healthy Paws doesn't publish a multi-level appeal structure), we mark the field “verification pending” rather than fabricating a number. What is still unverified is marked in the page's citation list.
- 5.No fabricated win-rates. We do not publish “X% of appeals on this ground succeed” statistics. Carrier-level appeal-success data is not published at sufficient granularity to support such a claim. Our denial-reason pillars list documented procedural moves; outcomes are case-specific.
Update cadence
Carrier appeal procedures change. Mailing addresses move. State commissioners are appointed and replaced. Every page carries a “Last verified” date.
We re-verify each carrier's appeal procedure on a quarterly cadence (or sooner if a reader reports a stale fact). State DOI commissioner data is reviewed annually around state-insurance- department leadership cycles.
Privacy contract for the Appeal Letter Generator
The Appeal Letter Generator is the AIO-defense wedge of this site — and it's also the place where a careless implementation could collect protected vet-record data. So we wrote a hard contract:
- •The generator runs entirely in your browser. The PDF is built client-side via the jsPDF library; the bundle ships only when you reach the download step.
- •The pet name, diagnosis, policy section, vet-record filenames, claim number, and your name and address are stored in browser memory only. Closing the tab clears them.
- •We do NOT persist them to localStorage. We do NOT POST them. We do NOT serialize them over the network in any form.
- •The two analytics events fired by the generator are
generator_step(step number only) andgenerator_outcome(carrier slug + denial-reason slug only — no free text). Both can be checked in the analytics code included in every page of this site. - •The PDF download uses an in-browser
blob:URL — your appeal letter never traverses our servers in any form.
If the contract above ever weakens — for any reason — theprivacy promiseelsewhere on this site becomes a lie. Anyone modifying the generator should leave a note here documenting the change.
No referral or affiliate payments
We receive no referral fee, commission or other payment from any pet insurance carrier, financing platform or other third party, so nothing we earn depends on which carrier you choose or on how your appeal ends. The appeal path is what we recommend first.