AVID Chip & HomeAgain

[Jane, Rooney & Stuart]

When we got Rooney from his breeder he had been micro-chipped with an AVID chip, end of story.  When we adopted Stuart from the Adopt A Golden Rescue in Atlanta they had him chipped with HomeAgain.  Imagine my surprise when I got a billing from HomeAlone saying that it was time to renew.  Renew?  For what - the chip is still in there so what am I paying for.  Well - it appears that for a yearly fee they will notify area shelters and vets if your pet goes missing and some other stuff, equally something I'd be doing myself if Stuart went missing.  Now that I know that vets don't routinely scan new patients - the chance of a micro chip being responsible for the return of a pet is very low.  It seems like a big waste of money to me, is anyone else paying the yearly fee and do you feel that it is worth the cost? 

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

I paid the yearly fee for both dogs, so I will be following this discussion closely.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I am paying it and we also have Home Again.  The Vet gets notification of all missing dogs in the area so she can be on the look out.  She actually does print and display these copies in her office as well.  I also get email notifications of all missing Home Again chipped dogs.  I forget what I pay annually, but I didn't think it was very much.  For me it is worth it although the likelihood of ever using it is fairly minimal.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Jack had been AVID chipped when I adopted him in 2006, and I had to pay $15 dollars to transfer the chip registration from the shelter's info to mine. I've never had to pay anything since.

If Jack was missing, I would not want to rely on some company who is not local to me to contact shelters, vets, etc. As you said, I'd be doing that myself.  I know what's within doodle walking distance better than they would by consulting a map or punching in a zip code. Also, I know very well that you must notify all jurisdictions separately, not just your own town's animal control, but that of each adjacent town, as there is no information sharing between them.   

To my knowledge, all shelters and vets are supposed to be scanning any animal who is found or picked up as a stray; but of course, if someone found your dog and decided to keep him, a vet would not routinely scan for a chip if he thought it was that person's dog. I do know of several cases where an owner of a chipped dog was contacted by police or AC when the dog was found, though.

There are also independent companies that will send out alerts, automated calls, etc. within your area, etc., if you pay for their services. I have gotten calls from these companies when there has been a missing dog in my area. How much good this does, I don't know. You can Google "find my pet" to see these various programs.

Personally, I wouldn't subscribe to that service, but i don't know what it costs, so I can't say if it's a good value. Peace of mind is worth a lot, though.

[Jane, Rooney & Stuart]

Karen - I agree with you.  It sounds like a waste of money, the chip is there and a shelter could call home again and get our info.  What you are paying for is all the other stuff.  The chances of Rooney or Stuart just getting lost are very low - it would be slightly more possible for them to be stolen and in that case you are correct.  Someone coming into the vet's office would claim that they were their dogs, mom died I took them in yadda yadda.  Most vets would never check the chip - a fact told to me by our vet.  So I don't plan to keep paying them, save the $200 or $300 over their lifetime and then IF something where to happen I'd pay for ads or fliers myself.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Ned and my Springer are Avid chipped, but Clancy is Home Again Chipped because animal control out her uses Home Again. Perhaps it is cheaper for them and puts the responsibility on the dog owner for address changes etc.  I found out that the companies can tell their chips by the numbers so when I first called Avid to register Clancy, I was told that Clancy's chip was Home Again.

What we did was re-register Clancy with the Avid company and pay the one time fee.  They registered him using his Home Again chip number. I paid the one time fee.   However, paranoid person that I am, I also paid the yearly fee to Home Again.  We have had Clancy two years now and I called Avid and double checked that they had Clancy registered with them using his Home Again chip.  They do, so the next time the Home Again dues come around, I will drop them.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

ARGH!!! Now I am having to sign in to edit my reply and it won't let me edit it.  With Avid there are two possible fees.  One notifies the vet only and the other notifies whomever you designate to be notified - multiple people.  We paid that fee (was it $25?) for all of our dogs.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Nancy, I'm going to have to call Avid and find out about this, because they have never contacted me and i don't remember having to pay any fee other than the one to transfer the chip registration from the shelter's info to mine.

Is that a one-time fee, or do you have to pay it every year?

[F, Calla & Luca]

There was only one fee, ?15, when I registered my doodles.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Avid is a one time fee.  Home again is an annual fee.  Avid doesn't send out e-mails etc.  I think all they would do is contact you.  I know when I was at the vet recently someone brought in a found dog and after checking the chip, the vet gave her a piece of paper with who she needed to contact - I would guess it was the owner, but I don't know that for sure.

[Jane, Rooney & Stuart]

Nancy - this was VERY useful.  I'm going to call Avid and get Stuart registered there using his HomeAgain chip number  and I can pick which notification fee at that time.  Home Again (in my opinion) has a great thing going for THEM and it is alot of money.  People keep paying the yearly fee because hey - it is really low but if you add that up over the dogs lifetime - a real rip off and for what - to fax out some fliers?  I'm suspecting that some Rescues and Animal Control places use the HomeAgain Chips because they are getting them free as the adoptive parents will most likely pay the yearly fee.  Sneaky! 

[Lucy & AnnaBelle's Mom]

We have Home Again chips in the girls and I opted not to pay the fees.  Like you I was shocked when I got them and they were pretty persistent for the first year or so and then they stopped sending them to me.

[Tina, Clover, Plus 5 More]

There was a study done of more than 7,700 stray animals at shelters that showed dogs without microchips were returned to their owners 21.9% of the time, whereas microchipped dogs were returned to their owners 52.2% of the time.  For cats it was 1.8% without microchips and 38.5% with microchips.

Because the ISO standards for identification codes have not been adopted in the U.S., the microchip's must be registered with their individual registries.  Fortunately, microchip scanners display the name of the microchip's manufacturer when the microchip is read.  Therefore, the likelihood that an animal cannot be identified from its microchip number is very low that is, unless the pet's microchip has not been registered or the information is not accurate.

As of September 2009, there are two Internet-based search engines that allow users to enter a microchip code.  The American Animal Hospital Associations Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool (www.petmicrochiplookup.org) provides a listing of the manufacturer with which the microchip's code is associated as well as if the chip information is found in participating registries.  Chloe Standard's database (www.checkthechip.com) displays the manufacturer of that microchip.  Neither database provides owner information for the microchip, the user must then contact the manufacturer/database associated with that microchip. 

This is only helpful or useful if the chip has initially been registered.  Since each chip manufacturer manages their own database.  Depending on the manufacturer of the microchip once the chip is registered if there is a yearly fee, who knows how long a company would keep inactive accounts in their databases before purging the information.  This is just my opinion though. 

RFID-USA registry (http://registermicrochip.com/rfid_usa_registry) is a national search engine database for multiple microchip manufacturers.   There is a one time fee of $21 per microchip.  But if anyone is planning on not continuing with the yearly fee for the manufacturer it may be worth it. 

Since I personally have tried to locate information for unregistered microchips before with no luck.  Even with the manufacturers assistance the best outcome was tracking down the distributor of the batch the microchip number was located in.  Once making contact with the distributor it was a crap shoot.  The distributors Reps have several accounts and it could have been sold to anyone of them.  Since microchips are not just sold to vets and shelters, but can be sold to breeders and rescue organizations.  Then it depends on how organized these individuals are.  I have had dogs with paperwork showing one microchip number, but once scanned the microchip was a different number.  Since having this experience I have had all my pets scanned to double check the microchip number.  I do have my dogs registered with the mircochip company and a central database registry. 

Sorry for rambling and such a long response.