Who insures their animals?

Westielife

KxMx wrote: »

Peace of mind for my cat comes in at £8.41 a month. Can understand the horses would cost alot to insure, but not the dogs surely? Some places even give you a discount if you insure more than one pet!

Depends what you consider a lot. I have 2 11 year old Westies with Petplan. In the first year the premium was £15 a month; now it's £83 a month with a £120 +20% excess. And that's with a discount for 2 dogs.Over the last 5 years the premium has increased by 15-20% per year. I doubt I could get another insurer, but then they wouldn't cover me for much anyway. I am either tied to petplan's 20% pa increases or I opt out and take my chances. Petplan know they have me by the short and curlies.

What would you do?

orlao

Westielife wrote: »

Depends what you consider a lot. I have 2 11 year old Westies with Petplan. In the first year the premium was £15 a month; now it's £83 a month with a £120 +20% excess. And that's with a discount for 2 dogs.Over the last 5 years the premium has increased by 15-20% per year. I doubt I could get another insurer, but then they wouldn't cover me for much anyway. I am either tied to petplan's 20% pa increases or I opt out and take my chances. Petplan know they have me by the short and curlies.

What would you do?

What I'd do - assuming both dogs are heathly at the moment - is cancel the insurance and put £100 a month in a savings account. But that does depend on access to a 0% credit card deal to cover the first year before you have a decent sized fund built up if you need to spend on vets bills.

In saying that, I don't insure my animals so maybe I'm not the best to give advice:o

lowis

Westielife wrote: »

Depends what you consider a lot. I have 2 11 year old Westies with Petplan. In the first year the premium was £15 a month; now it's £83 a month with a £120 +20% excess. And that's with a discount for 2 dogs.Over the last 5 years the premium has increased by 15-20% per year. I doubt I could get another insurer, but then they wouldn't cover me for much anyway. I am either tied to petplan's 20% pa increases or I opt out and take my chances. Petplan know they have me by the short and curlies.

What would you do?

It's a tricky one...your dogs are at an age where things are going to start going wrong (hence the increases in your premiums). If you have not made any claims in the past then it might be worth getting a quote from another insurer. AXA insure older pets (I insured a 14yo cat I adopted, with no medical history, with them last year).

However, as you are aware, anything you have claimed for in the past, or reported to the vet will now be excluded from a new policy.

If you have ready access to money you wouldn't miss (a couple of grand at least) then perhaps you might be better stopping the insurance and saving the money instead. If you do not have any significant savings then I would carry on with the insurance. I personally would hate to be put in the position of not being able to have the vet treat my animal properly or worse putting my animal to sleep because I did not have the money to treat them.

cheekycheekymonkey_2

I too insure for peace of mind, my dog got got scratched in the eye and had to have an operation on Xmas eve, the insurance company dealtdirct with the vets and we only had to pay £50 excess, definately worth it.

simontheiceman

Hintza wrote: »

Seem to be a hell of a lot of accident prone people/animals on here.

I can quite understand if you have only one or two animals then the cost of insurance is probably easy to justify. But once you get into multiple animals then you are into a different ball game.

Thats the clincher of course - OK to self insure if you have enough animals to justify it - four or more would be about right.

I'm Just about to roll out an "insurance"-like scheme for my practice where clients will pay £10 per month and get access to all the treatment they require from the practice but no access to specialists (thats where the money really racks up) and some limits on medications but nothing that would be considered unusual.

lowis

simontheiceman wrote: »

Thats the clincher of course - OK to self insure if you have enough animals to justify it - four or more would be about right.

I'm Just about to roll out an "insurance"-like scheme for my practice where clients will pay £10 per month and get access to all the treatment they require from the practice but no access to specialists (thats where the money really racks up) and some limits on medications but nothing that would be considered unusual.

simontheniceman strikes again!