Worth claiming on insurance?

nicolula87

We had to take our dog to the out of hours vets on Friday, costing us £110. We have pet insurance with an excess of £60. I'm just wondering is it worth claiming the extra £50 back or will our premium go up and make it not worth it? Our dog is 2 and a half and we have never had to take him for anything before. He had a high fever so nothing particularly recurring.

Appreciate any advice.

Thanks

tuttifruiti20

In my experience I would say that you're better off not claiming for just £50.

Once your premiums are pushed up, even just a couple of pounds a month, you've lost that £50 already.

_Andy_

yep - no way would I claim that. £200+ perhaps but not that amount.

chris_n_tj

You need to claim. Should this condition/illness crop up again and you havnt informed the company they can and do void your insurance.

krlyr

chris_n_tj wrote: »

You need to claim. Should this condition/illness crop up again and you havnt informed the company they can and do void your insurance.

You don't have to claim, but you should ideally inform them of the condition. Some policies nowadays put a limit on how long after first symptoms you can claim, so by not informing them you may be excluding any conditions that relate to this issue (either actually relate to it, or are close enough that the insurers will make the link once looking at your dog's notes) in the future.

Kiki had a problem with her leg last year, the bill came to £5 under my excess so obviously wasn't going to claim for it then, but there was the possibility that rest and anti-inflammatories might not do the trick. Since Rottweilers are prone to bone cancer, we were giving it a few days before deciding whether to x-ray, or possibly MRI, blood tests, etc. to rule in/out cancer (and then assess what stage it was at if that was the issue) - obviously expensive things so to ensure I would remain covered I phoned the insurance company and asked them to just log that there might be a future claim for this condition, though not as yet. Thankfully it just seemed to be a pulled muscle and she was fine after the course of anti-inflammatories, but I wouldn't have forgiven myself if I'd not been able to afford to treat something more serious because I'd tried to save a couple of quid a month next year by gambling on not telling the insurance.

I think the problem with the health issue in your case, the fever, is that it's so broad the insurers could link it to lots of things - if he happens to get ill in a few week's time they may say the fever was the initial symptom when they saw the vet notes (my insurers want a year's notes with every new claim). Another option could be to get your vet to write to state that in their medical opinion it was a one-off and then to say it's not related to any future condition they diagnose, but there's still a gamble on whether the insurers would accept this and allow the claim or not.