Your pet's microchip may now be useless after chip company goes out of business

[tomyedwab]

The title is misleading: the chip isn't useless, it is basically NFC and can be read just fine. The number on it can be looked up in a registry to notify the owner of a lost pet. I believe there is nothing preventing you from registering the same number with multiple registries. Hope that helps.

[darth_avocado]

> I believe there is nothing preventing you from registering the same number with multiple registries

Most cities require you to register your pet and get a license. Part of that process is to share the microchip number, vaccine records, vet info etc. Our local animal shelter usually checks with the city if a microchip is found but no ownership is established.

[ggm]

This has happened before. I think given the legalisms around pets, ownership, responsibility, all of the chip registry companies should have been required to put the data into escrow, with a recovery plan and a handler of last resort in the form of a CSV file or something.

[sigwinch]

DNS would be fine, too. At minimum, a LOC record for a helpful neighbor.

[burnt-resistor]

In the US, there are something like 40+ pet chip registration companies. The problem of fragmentation is that the portable NFC chip ID number needs to be associated with each of them. This is dubious in the age of private equity and a total market failure. This is something that should be run as a single nonprofit to avoid this useless and unnecessary confusion.

[benabbott]

NFC chips can store a fair amount of data (think QR code). Why bother with the database? Why is the standard not just saving one's email and phone number to the chip?

[vrighter]

Because how else can they make someone depend on them after the sell?

I see this also with QR codes. I see tons in for, example, restaurants which contain a link to some private company which automatically redirects to the restaurant's own page. They can get it for free if they just put their own url in the qr code directly (if they knew it was possible, of course. They're nontechnical). But then the other company keeps charging you money just to serve pointless 301s

[treesknees]

Is it safe to get multiple chips? They’re about the size of a grain of rice, so it shouldn’t be too unwieldy to get chipped from a couple of different vendors at the same time. With a chip, GPS collar, maybe an AirTag, that’s about all you can do besides lots of training.

[yftsui]

The chip will still be working after 24PetWatch is gone, you can enroll the same serial to more providers i.e. AKC Reunite.

[didntknowyou]

there's no point in getting another chip. the existing chip will still work, you can just register the data with another database.

[yftsui]

The microchip stores nothing but a serial number. I don’t quite understand the design that you would need a vendor to maintain a database between the serial and owner information, why not just store owner phone number like a traditional dog tag?

[burnt-resistor]

It's a permanent primary key into "an" owner database. Unfortunately, there are 40+ databases as there are that many registration companies. I don't even know if there's a unified interface to query all of them simultaneously. Does anyone know how the queries work if a pet be registered in some small or obscure registry that's not supported by every shelter/agency?

[gizmo686]

Dog tags are easy to replace. Microchips are not. Having a level of indirection allows the meaningful contact information to be updated as needed.

[sigwinch]

You don't want the chip to be reprogrammable or wipeable.

[didntknowyou]

it's not useless. it just produces a number that is stored on a database. you can register it with another database if needed, although it would have been good if someone could transfer the records from the ailing company.