Pet Insurance Cost Cutting System/MoneySavingExpert.com Discussion

CopperPlate_2

Just did a re-quote for my dog - it's come back about £20 cheaper for the annual policy than it was for this year. Renewal is November so will wait and see what they offer me this time around.

griff.

We started insuring our cat Vienna in January of this year. She was 14, and M&S charged £12 per month. In May she was diagnosed with a tumour, and despite surgery, she died on 5 June. M&S paid the vet's bill, and were efficient and courteous throughout the claim. I wish we were in the position of being able to renew a policy for her.

jaxxy00

Sorry to hear about your cat griff. Im sure she had a great life with you.

Well not only has my dog had procedures done since having insurance which has found the hip dysplasia but there are ongoing costs that will be forever. Im wondering what effect this will have on the renewal. Each month he has £62.50 worth of claims (swimming session each week £12.50 and Synoquin tablets one a day, pot of 120 are £49.60) and that will always be so and is only going to increase as time goes on. I claim for the swimming sessions every 8 so its a round figure of £100 and the tablets are claimed for by the vet direct.

So for me personally even if it went up to about £700 for the year it is still worth it to me as i would have to pay this out anyway.

I do wonder when they have such a young dog as mine (3 years old) with a costly life long problem if they have any way of putting you off insuring or whatever. I have to say (i know some may have comments about this) that i do feel a bit guilty about claiming as i hadnt had the policy that long before i needed to use it.

Guinea_2

ArchieB wrote:

Should have added I am with M and S as well. Probably the best policy on the market and for most it is (still) competitive.

Is it really? We're getting a puppy next week, it's a pedigree and I have so many quotes that really vary in price from being cheap to overly expensive! If they are the best though, I would go for them. They charged around £16 a month for the puppy whereas I think it was Argos or Tesco and they said £6 something!:o

jaxxy00

I think its the same with anything and if you have to pay a bit more (as seems to be the case now for some people although for a lot they were one of the cheapest) to get a better service then it has to be worth it. Especially if you take the no excess option (in my case only about £7 more expensive for the whole year) and needed to claim you save lots that way, if you see what i mean.
With a lot of the other insurers, if your animal develops a lifelong condition then they only cover you for that particular year of cover and then on renewal they will not cover you for that exising condition and exclude it. Thats what ive been told by a few people which i think is just crazy as thats why youre paying insurance.

clark1982

Currently with M&S paying £9 per month for My Bullmastiff !!!!!. She's 14 months old. Just completed online quote, as up for renewal soon, and its now £20 month. Why such a higher quote? Also I've not claimed in the past year, so when I get the actual quote will this be taken in to consideration ?

Bossyboots

I thought M&S would eventually have to up their premiums. They had never really seemed sustainable.

Although Petplan are pricey, at least we always got an explanation of why premiums increased. My only quibble with them was over the issue of diet food but aside from that, they paid out rapidly on claims and their customer service staff are extremely helpful.

My dog died in July, not long after I had renewed my policy and within a week I had received a refund of almost all the premium.

Esmerelda

I have a 10 year old Labrador with severe hip dysplasia that has not really cost me anything but after recently speding the better part of £3k on having a tumour removed from his mouth I realise that while insurance isn't worth it for him now but I should consider it for my 5 year old Lurcher. I was going to look seriously at M&S as the quote was for £117pa. I've seen the comments about PetPlan so any advice as to which insurers should I definately ignore and which I should look at?

pboae

Griff, I'm sorry about your cat :-(

clark1982: up to now claiming has had no effect on premiums, they neither increased after claims, or decreased for no claims. Whether this will change now, I don't know. I have been playing around with the online quote though, and it seems a chunk of the increase (over £50) is due to location. I'm in Yorkshire and I am quite surprised that carries such a high weighting. If I was still living in Merseyside it would be £50 a year cheaper.

Esmerelda, sorry if you already know this, but there is an oddity with M&S and lurchers, they class them as a pedigree/pure breed, whereas most insurers class them as cross breeds. Unfortunately being classed as a pure breed really ups the premiums.

As to whether PetPlan is better than M&S, I suppose at the end of the day there's nothing stopping PP hiking their prices as well, so in that sense it doesn't make any difference. I still think M&S provide better cover though, but the prices definitley aren't as competitive as they were.

Rockhag

regularsaver1 wrote:

This makes me said - I walked in from work yesterday and found my cat dead

Awwww I'm sorry.