Pet Insurance -- Help with picking policy few questions for you!!!

SprocketBully

Hello All,

This is my first post however I use the site often and browse whenever in doubt of anything but now just want some feedback.

We have just purchased our new addition to our family (puppy english bull terrior) however I am wanting to buy the appropriate pet insurance for him.
My friend who is a vet has drilled it into me to get a lifelong policy (not one what only covers for 12months) which is deffo a must!!!

After hours of looking through anything I'm stuck between a few.

My vet recommends petplans which sadly works out at £55 per month. It seems really good cover 12k per year limit on anything but the only thing that really concerns me (apart from being by far the most expensive to begin with) is that it will rise. She told me hers had risen by £5 after the first year and she didnt even claim.

Obviously the problem is that once you have a condition you're pretty much locked in with them arent you? and you have to pay whatever renewal price they want you to pay unless you move but then that condition wont be covered with new insurer as its pre existing! grrr

The over option is Tesco at moment is £28 per month but that has a limit of 7k per condition. So obviously the worst thing that could happen would be something major like cancer and once theyve spent 7k in total on that condition they wont pay out anymore.
OR say a skin condition (which this breed can be prone to) she said you could spend £1-2k at the dermotoligist and then worst case scenario £40/50 per month on meds. But 7k would cover alot of years before that limit is reached.
Was wondering if I should go with Tesco and also put away money every week in a savings (even if just £5 per week) just incase for future.

Now the last thing is there is a new ish company name vedsmedicover they offer 10k per year limit on anything for £28 per month. The reviews are good the bad ones are explainable.
However ppl bought into that policy last year at £18 a month (far too cheap I guess) and now complaining that its gone to £28.

So my questions are

Petplan --- too expensive to begin with and premiums will go up and up and reviews online are very mixed some really good and some really bad where they try get out of paying and then exclude certain conditions for rest of your policy. Just worried if I visited vet for a minor skin thing and then they say on renawal next year heres your renawal but where exlcuding anymore skin related conditions. As then its pre existing for any other insurer! So anyone any feedback on this?
(so expensive it should be so fuss free and hassle free i.e premium service but it doesnt seem that way)

Tesco --- seems good just limit is per condition but 7k is reasonable. In small print it says "we have the right to cancel your policy with 7 days notice" can they just randomly do that?
i.e if they think I'm going end up making a claim for something costly can they just try get rid of me? what secuirty do I have?
Im a tesco employee so Ill get abit of discount. And if prices rise at least theyve started off significantly lower than petplan?

vetsmedicover --- seem good really good reviews however what security do you have we a newish company if they go bust etc I'll be stuck wont I? and also they could keep doing high price rises to cover themselves.

Im only lookin at certain companies as my vet has told me/warned me which are nightmares for paying etc however she personally hasnt heard or dealt with vetsmedicover.

Any help really really appreciated as I really need to buy asap so he's covered as there is still a 14day exlusion obviously after its bought.

I feel like I'm driving an uninsured car around:rotfl:

On the plus side he is a lovely addition to our family

Many thanks

Kelly

BenTiffin

Hi Kelly,

Congratulations on the new addition to your family! :j

The biggest thing you need to look for in a pet insurance policy is to make sure that they will continue to pay for the lifetime of any conditions.

One of my cats was diagnosed with diabetes and unfortunately the insurance company will only pay up to £12,000 for that one condition. Whereas some other companies will insure for the life of the condition.

Our other cat who we got after is insured with Vetsmedicover. So far I have no complaints and when I took out the policy, they did offer lifetime cover. This was last year so I would recommend on checking with them that it is still the case.

SprocketBully

BenTiffin thankyou for your reply. Yeh all the covers I mentioned in first post are lifetime covers the difference is Pet Plan give you a 12k allowance per year.
Tesco is lifetime cover but once theyve spent 7k on that certain condition in the lifetime the treatment for that condition stops.
Vetsmedicover is lifetime cover similair to pet plan with a 10k allowance per year and includes dental.

But my concerns are am I safe with a relatively unknown new ish company (vetsmedicover) they are underwritten by white horse.

They all can hike their prices which is scary coz if you have a condition you need stay with them because nobody else will then touch you (that condition) but petplan starts off so expensive to begin with and will rise.

So could this new company to cover costs. Its already gone from 18 to 28 in a year.

Was 12k not enough cover for diabetes?

hugonellie

have you looked at m & s premier plan?

Buzby

Because of the imposition of lower limits on claims from the 'lifetime' policies, alonG with an increase in the excesses - we switched to self-insurance for our Old English Sheepdog for the last 10 years of his life. This means you need to have the resolve to pay the usual fixed amount (£35 in our case) into an interest-bearing savings account.

We were able to pay for ALL vet's bills, even under the excess limit (where you would have been unable to claim) and - when 14, the final vet's service and cremation. On death, we still had £2,800 left over.

david39

We were with Petplan with our last dog.

The problem we found was, not only did the premiums increase as he became older, but also the excess was increased.

What started as a £30 excess when he was 2 years old, ended up as £80 excess plus 10% of the remaining value of the claim when he was 10.

When we looked back at it, most of the dog's visits to the vet were not covered by the insurance policy because the visit to the vet never reached the value of the excess. It was only if he had anything serious, or repeated visits for the same problem, that a claim became payable.

For our current dog, we have adopted the policy explained by buzby, above.
We pay £30 per month into an account. The dog is just over 4 years old and the account stands at £800 at the moment. So far he has had two bills for about £70 each but the fund has also paid our for all his injections and a couple of other minor visits - the injections and minor visits would not have resulted in a pay-out from the policy.

So having saved £30 per month by not paying premiums for three and a half years we are £1260 better off, plus we have £800 readily available. To me, that means we have saved well over £2,200 when you take into account the payments our fund has made that would not have been covered by an insurance policy.

hugonellie

self insurance would of resulted in one of my dogs having to be put down. he broke his hock bone as a puppy which resulted in a 2.5k vets bill, then about 8 month after he suffered a rare viral infection on his liver through no fault of his own. ended up costing 7.5k - and hes lucky to be with us today!

thats 10k in the first 18 months of his life. i would NEVER of been able to afford the second bill, especially after paying the 2.5k bill not long before. unfortunately all you need is one slightly larger than normal issue, and if it happens on a weekend were your paying emergency vet prices you are screwed.

suppose if your happy to take that chance, or have that kind of money lying around then thats not too much of an issue.

id certainly not bet on either of my pets lives in this way after the issues with hugo as a puppy

rs65

Self insurance can work but as hugonellie says it can be huge risk.

Pet insurance also provides liability cover - I wouldn't fancy self insuring that. There are other elements too, it's not all about vets bills.

david39

Liability cover will also be provided in your home contents insurance.

Although damage by pets is stipulated as not being covered, that refers to damage to your own property. Damage by pets to third parties, or their property, is covered as standard by most home insurers.

*Scarlett

Maybe have a look here

http://www.which.co.uk/money/insurance/reviews-ns/pet-insurance/

http://www.defaqto.com/guides/insurance/pet-insurance-guide/

JaneMB

I am looking to start pet insurance for my new puppy and am finding it's a minefield. I already have a 5 year old dog insured through M&S (Premier) but cost is just under £40pm - paying the same again for the pup seems an awful lot. We've never claimed on the policy. Previous experience has been however that from now on is the time that problems may start and I may need to claim. That said I've always found that insurance companies manage to limit the amount they pay out and you never get as much back as you expect/hope

I am keen to get a whole of life policy which will give decent cover (approx £5k) per annum. In my experience it doesn't take much to rake up huge vet fees and limits of £1k are easily exceeded particularly if the amount isn't renewed annually. I am sure that many people must now be finding themselves pretty much uninsured as they have policies for a condition for which the limit is already reached and will have to pay out for the remainder of the treatment for as long as the animal lives. Of course, no way to transfer to another company as any existing condition will be excluded.

I am amazed at the number of combinations and small print details which have to be checked