morethan pet insurance

scotty1971

what are people thoughts on their pet insurance and is it good value for money.

also the pup i have just bought is three quarters miniature dachshund and 1 quarter standard dachshund what would he come under for insurance purposes? pedigree/cross breed as i am unsure

thanks

scott

krlyr

I would say a crossbreed, but why not phone the insurers to clarify? They're the only ones who could say for certain what it would count as in their policy. They list Dachshund and Miniature Dachshund seperately on their drop-down of breeds.
Not used Morethan myself but I would say check out Axa, Petplan, Argos.
One thing that flags up looking at their policy is that they have a £70 excess PLUS 10% of treatment. Not too bad if you're claiming for £100 of treatment, but if it's a £3000 vet bill, you're having to fork out £370. After age 9, this jumped up to £70 + 20%, so even higher.

scotty1971

think i will need to phone to be sure,it works out about £14 a month with more than

jenhug

its a crossbreed.
I was with more than. i didn't have any complaints.

con1888

I have just ordered Kias with More than, works out at £18 pcm

Bromley86

I wouldn't choose MoreThan. They limit cover to a set amount per condition, "Up to £7,000 vets fees cover for each and every new accident and illness."

So if you need to claim more than (ooh, a pun!) £7k for a condition, you're out of luck. For context, a single hip op is ~£5k.

I've just switched to AXA with one of mine. £7k limit per year, but that renews each year. Premium was £17/month, which was the same as MoreThan's.

(£75 excess with AXA, but no 10% (yet!). But I wouldn't worry too much about the excess as insurance should be to cover the risk of big & unlikely risks.)

marvellousaunt

Is it worth putting £20 PCM into a savings account to accrue to pay for any unexpected treatment instead?

con1888

In my oppinion no as vet bills can be in the thousands and if something was to happen to Kia in the next 6 months, say a road accident requiring an op, I wouldn't have saved much atall.

marvellousaunt

con1888 wrote: »

In my oppinion no as vet bills can be in the thousands and if something was to happen to Kia in the next 6 months, say a road accident requiring an op, I wouldn't have saved much atall.

Good point well made.

It seems a LOT of companies limit claims up to a set amount (time unlimited), with only a few renewing this amount per year... is that correct? I can only deduce that AXA and Pet Plan renew per year... are there any others? Oo just checked Argos - as per post above thanks! - I can't find any others. Churchill, Sainsburys, Direct Line... they all seem to be up to a maximum of £7500 odd. Not much use if you reach that goal within a year and then you're stuck!

krlyr

marvellousaunt wrote: »

Good point well made.

It seems a LOT of companies limit claims up to a set amount (time unlimited), with only a few renewing this amount per year... is that correct? I can only deduce that AXA and Pet Plan renew per year... are there any others? Oo just checked Argos - as per post above thanks! - I can't find any others. Churchill, Sainsburys, Direct Line... they all seem to be up to a maximum of £7500 odd. Not much use if you reach that goal within a year and then you're stuck!

You get various policies, the main three being
12 month policies - normally any and all conditions lumped into one, for a 12 month period only (some might do "per condition" policies though, so £4000 for x condition, another £4000 for y, etc.). If your dog develops an ongoing condition, you're stuffed, because once the 12 months are up you won't be covered for that condition anywhere else as it's pre-existing. Better than no insurance at all though I suppose!
"Per year" lifetime policies - a set amount (e.g. £7000) for the whole year to cover every illness/condition. So if your dog needs a hip replacement at £3000, a life-saving operation for bloat at £2000, a 5 day hospitalisation at £1000 - you've got £1000 left in your pot for the rest of that year. Come renewal date, that amount pings back up to £7000.
"Per condition" lifetime policies don't get renewed but you usually have an unlimited about of claims, you're just restricted by how much you can claim for each particular condition. So as above, the dog gets a hip replacement at £3000, if they needed a second one and the insurance company deem it related to the first, you're £6000 into your £7000 limit for that condition. If one of the hip replacements failed or the dog needed further treatment that was relating to the same condition, you've only got a further £1000 to cover that for the rest of the dog's life. However, the £2000 for the bloat episode is a whole new condition so it doesn't matter that you've already claimed £6000. Then if the 5 day hospitalisation was for an unrelated issue, e.g. suspected canine meningitis, that £1000 is taken from a brand new pot for a brand new condition.

Pros and cons to the latter two, I would look into the breed(s) of your dog and work out the chances of it needing lots of operations/treatment for one particularly expensive treatment, or whether it's more likely to develop several conditions that may be expensive initially but not likely to be on-going/require more than that £7000 over the course of the dog's life.

marvellousaunt

Thank you for the input.

Both Pet Plan and AXA seem to be a set amount - say £7000 - per year that renews each year. PP is £30 a month and AXA £20 a month.

Seems like we have a winner in AXA?!

They're kittens, not puppies - I was searching threads by insurer and amount of cover/ease of claims - and I have no idea what they'd be susceptible to. Non-pedigree.