Harley's insurance has just jumped up by £100

zebidee1

Was shocked to get the renewal in this year. It's gone from £170 to £270 and also now has an added clause...

If your pet is 6 years or older, after deduction of the standard policy excess for each illness or injury you must pay a further 20% of the remaining cost of the treatment.

It's really annoying that you can't shop around for pet insurance like you can other types, because of the 'can't insure pre exisiting conditions' thing. Once they've got you, they've got you.

Edit: Sorry, just saw the pet insurance sticky, think I should have posted this there?

sarabe

This is common practice.

They are hoping you won't renew as your dog gets older.

I have spent a lot of money over the years on vet's bills but not half as much as an insurance policy on each dog would have cost.

Griizelda

I remember reading advise from Which? which basically advised to insure for the first year. If nothing untoward happened during that year, cancel the policy and put the money saved into an account each month (for potential future vets bills). This will obviously work for some, but not others, but has the potential to save a considerable amount of money over the lifetime of a pet (or the other way around if your pet is unlucky).

hethmar

Who is the insurer zeb?

elsien

6 is quite young though to have the extra 20%. It may have changed but when I took out my petplan policy they didn't start loading the extra 20% until the dog hit 10.
And it'll be difficult for you to change now with all the problems Harley had with his colitis etc, you'd probably get a load of exclusions. I think they call it being between a rock and a hard place. I had the same with mutt, as she had a lot of illnesses at a young age. Although I've had more than my money's worth over the years, so for me even with the huge premiums it's still worth paying up.

zebidee1

Hethmar, it's the Halifax.

The small print says 6 for dogs and 9 for cats elsien. Since I got the renewal notice I've been doing some digging and the average age seems to be around 9 for dogs so I daresay they've loaded Harley's policy earlier because they're expecting us to be costing them money.

I can't change insurer obviously and I can't risk just saving and not having insurance as Harley is a law unto himself with regards to whether he stays stable and problem free or comes up with some other costly condition.

Damned dog is costing me a fortune, he's lucky I love the bones of him!

hethmar

Oh, I changed one of mine from Halifax because I saw they had added on the extra % for dogs when they sent the renewal in July but I thought it was 9. This pet insurance business is becoming a worse nightmare all the time now.

catlou

hethmar wrote: »

This pet insurance business is becoming a worse nightmare all the time now.

Completely agree :mad:

I have even heard bad things about AXA (who I changed too) now!

Other than Petplan who are just too expensive there doesn't seem to many other options. Ive lost faith in them all from what's happened to me and the stories we hear on this thread!