Permission to forward granted.


I was very distressed to learn this morning that the Home Again recovery data
base has been changed. T he lifetime membership I thought I had for each dog
with each dog having its own secondary contact will no longer be available.
I¢ll still have the lifetime data there but no secondary contact information.

If you or your group, like me, registered the chips to you and then put the new
owner as the secondary contact, that secondary contact information will all be
consolidated into one secondary contact. T his means the last
 secondary contact
you put in there will suddenly be the secondary contact for all the dogs under
your name and email address.

Previously I had my name as primary and each owner of the dog as the secondary
contact. T his allowed me to know that even if the owner decided not to reclaim
the dog (and I really don¢t think any of my owners would do that but just in
case) it wouldn¢t matter as I would be the first one notified and could be
there for my dog if the owner couldn¢t or wouldn¢t be. T he reason I did
this is that the company is very clear that if the primary contact says they
don¢t want the dog back they never contact the secondary on the recovery
record. 

Now with their data base changes you are allowed only one secondary contact per
¡household¢, which is to say all dogs with chips registered to you will have
only one secondary contact and that will be which ever one you last entered.
 

I found this out when I changed a phone contact for a dog owner and discovered
his name was now the secondary contact on every single one of the dogs I have
registered with them. When I discovered that I called them and was told the
correct data would be put back. T hen today I got a call from the company
telling me that while they would put that information in ¡notes¢ that the
recovery reps were supposed to look at my secondary contact info would all be
either blank or the same across all the dogs. T hey included information that
there was a program in place to ¡sweep¢ the data base and consolidate all
¡like records¢ into one leaving as secondary contact the last person you put
in there for every single dog. 

I was told this was the way it was going to be and the service they sold me was
no longer going to be available in the way it was at the time I was sold on it.
I was also told if I had
 any complaints I could take it up with my
Schering-Plough representative (I don¢t have one my dogs are chipped at vets
or clinics). 

But I felt everyone should be warned that if they use Home Again that they no
longer have the option of more than one secondary contact. 

I suspect this is because they are offering an annual service with useless
insurance and a possibly useful poster distribution service for an annual fee
rather than lifetime registration. You can now still have your info listed
lifetime but they are offering ¡extras¢ for an annual fee. 

Nancy 

FMK Affens