The Defra pet database system is broken

Complaining about how much of a pain it was to get my cats registered on England's pet database system.

England legally requires you to microchip and register cats and dogs, but the law has created perfect conditions for regulatory capture.

I currently keep two cats. Ollie is a middle-aged cat who I took in for a friend who couldn't keep him any longer. The other, Napoli, I adopted as a kitten - both his parents were strays, though the mother was adopted by a neighbour.

Transferring keepership

When I took in the first, I was given his microchip number along with his other paperwork. I was sent an email from Petlog.org.uk, telling me that they're a "DEFRA compliant database", and to sign up for a Petlog account to update my details. That same email says I'll have to pay either £6 or £19.95 for their basic or premium account options respectively.

If you search for "uk pet database search", you get dozens of sites offering this lookup service. From there I learnt this DEFRA database thing is part of the legal requirements surrounding pet registration.

Essentially, if you live in England:

• you must microchip your cats and dogs
• you must register that microchip on one of a list of approved databases
• and you must keep that information up to date

That same page says

You might be charged a fee for updating your pet's microchip information.

Problem is, I'm a software engineer. I know a thing or two about databases, and especially that it should cost a lot less than £6 or £19.95 a year for the privilege of being able to update a database record.

But there's more providers than just Petlog. So surely the Great Market has granted us some competitor which charges a reasonable fee for registration, and doesn't make you pay to update your details?

Thankfully, yes. I found MyPet, which charged me £1 to register my new cat, and promised unrestricted ability to update my personal details. Great! Problem solved, right?

Nope. Now if you search his microchip number, you get hits on two databases - one for me on MyPet, the other being my friend on Petlog.

I replied directly to the email from Petlog, telling them to delete Ollie's records since he's now registered on a new database, with zero response. Their contact page only lists phone numbers, promising a webchat which doesn't materialise, even after disabling my adblocker entirely.

Petlog's pricing

Petlog initial email at least had the courtesy to tell include their pricing.

The email links to this page to buy their product and register my keepership. Naturally, the more expensive option is selected for me. Hilariously, if you select "Basic" on that page, it now costs £10. Apparently they've inflated their price by 66% since early 2023, when they sent me that email.

If you're browsing their site as a prospective customer, the best pricing information I can find is here, which only says to "Sign up to Premium today for £19.95". No indication of how much Basic costs at all.

For those not familiar with .org.uk domains, these are typically used by non-profits and charities, which makes it particularly egregious to see such predatory pricing and behaviour on this site.

Registering my kitten

After thinking I'd gotten wise to the tricks, when going to get my new kitten chipped, I explicitly asked them how the microchip registration would work. The receptionist told me I'd have to register it. Great, I thought, I'll just register him on MyPet.

But then after picking him back up, I'm told I'll get an email. And so I did. From yet another database provider, this time Identibase.

"Thank you for registering with identibase".

Fuck.

As a reminder, you chose to not activate your pet’s Digital ID. This means that your data will continue to remain accessible on your pet's microchip, but should you wish to change any information on your pet's Digital ID in the future, you will need to activate the ID with one of our protection plans

Wonderful. Just like Petlog, Identibase requires you to pay if you want to update your database record.

This time, when I went to register the new microchip on MyPet, it blocked due to the microchip already being registered on another database, Identibase. Apparently they've added some validation since I last tried this with Ollie.

Seeing no other option at the time, I went through their signup process, with the mind to immediately transfer the record to MyPet. Should be free and easy, right?

Wrong. I sent them an email to admin@identibase.co.uk, requesting the transfer and giving the microchip and contact details.

To their credit over Petlog, I at least got a response on this one. However, the next day, I received an email from PETtrac, yet another database provider, telling me Identibase have requested a transfer to them. If I'm feeling generous, I'd guess the support person from Identibase selected the wrong drop-down on a form. However, I got no further response on that ticket, despite informing them of the mistake.

A good while later I try again, emailing admin@identibase.co.uk with the same message. This time, again quite promptly, I get an email from MyPet! From Conor, the same guy when I registered Ollie. Maybe it's a one-man show over there.

Unfortunately, Conor informs me that they get a lot of transfer requests, and since it's a time-consuming manual process, they're only accepting transfers for "MyPet Premium" customers. Wonderful. The email contained a coupon code for 50%, bringing the price down to £6/year.

I believe Conor when he says he has to deal with a ton of these requests. I sympathise with the manual effort needed, especially so if this is a one-man show. If things had gone as planned, I would've taken my kitten home, entered his new microchip number and details into MyPet myself, and that would have been that.

But no. Now I have to sign up for a 7-day trial of a yearly subscription I don't want or need, all to create a bloody database record.

So I paid that £6. At least it went to a tiny company rather than one of the big ones with absurd subscription fees. Thankfully that's all sorted now. Given MyPet's premium £6/year subscription didn't actually offer anything I was interested in, I don't intend to renew it.

Next chance I got, I asked a Vet from my practice what happened. She explained Identibase provides the practice's microchips, and by default they register implanted chips with them out of convenience. She was sympathetic about it being a nuisance to unify all of your pet records onto a single database. It's not her fault of course, and I held back mentioning my contempt for Identibase and their fees.

I don't believe the Vets get any kickbacks from Identibase, but I suppose it's possible that the price of the chips is somehow subsidised by Identibase's pet database business.

Sounds like the practice would've had no problem with leaving the registration to me, which is how I understood it would work. In hindsight, either the receptionist meant I would have to register (on Identibase), or they weren't fully informed on how the process worked. Perhaps if I'd explicitly requested they leave it to me when organising the procedure, this whole mess would've been avoided.

Identibase's prices

So, why do I complain about Identibase so much?

The signup is free, but in order to update your details (once again, a legal requirement), you'll have to pay for a subscription.

If you already have an account, here's the page they direct you to https://www.identibase.co.uk/account/account-type. Naturally, you can't see their pricing unless you've already made an account, which requires going through their microchip registration process (or that being done for you, more on that later). So here's a screenshot.

£10/year gives you the ability to update your details as often as you like for all your pets registered on their service. You also get access to a "Missing Pet Helpline", which sounds like a generic advice service, and a "keeper certificate", which I imagine is an autogenerated PDF you can print if you like.

If you fork out £30/year, if your pet goes missing, they'll make a post on their social media for you, it sounds like they'll send out SMS messages to nearby members. There's also some generic-sounding advice material.

Should you want a service which actually may help you recover a lost pet, you can pay a one-time £119 for a GPS tracker. This is apparently a cloud-based GPS tracker, which currently promises no subscription fees. The tracker's shop is currently selling the tracker for £129 with a coupon code, so hey, at least your £30/year saves you that tenner.

Where did the law go so wrong?

So, what caused this whole mess? Obviously, if I didn't have to register a microchip, there wouldn't be any problem. But I do think that the microchip system is an obviously good idea. The problem is that chip only contains a number: your details have to live elsewhere.

A database is the obvious solution, but who runs the database? In this age of neoliberalism, obviously a private company should run that database! With strict regulations on uptime and data integrity and so forth, of course. But that would make a monopoly, right? Even an idiot can recognise that Monopoly Bad, so let's open it up to more than one company, as long as they pass our standards. Boom, state-enforced oligopoly!

Apparently 23 competitors aren't enough to prevent predatory pricing like I've seen.

In this particular case, we have

1. a legal requirement for keeping a microchip registered, and your details up to date
2. no regulations against Vets registering a microchip for you
3. no automated, standard process for transferring between databases

And you have a nasty recipe for an incredibly simple service being marked up incredibly high, and customer lock-in. All enabled by regulatory capture.

In the end I'm complaining about not spending £10 a year, which (for me) isn't a lot of money. But it's the principle of thing - if lawmakers hadn't bodged this in the first place, a lot of headache would've been avoided.

Cat pictures in return for your time