Pet insurance - your experience appreciated

PhilTerrett

Hi all, we are going to get our 7 year old Cairn Terrier (in good health) insured. I can look at the comparison sites until I'm blue in the face but they don't tell me if the insurers are nice (helpful, on your side, easy to work with) or not!

Who have you used that you would recommend?

We'll make our own minds up of course but are just trying to get a feel for this.

Thank you in advance

Phil

pawsies

Petplan are expensive but worth it

chris_n_tj

Pet Plan all the way for me. Best by far. Yes its a bit more expensive but the others soon catch up and end up costing more. x

UKTigerlily

Pet Plan are costly but the best by miles, many vets will do a direct claim too as they pay up quickly and don't quibble! Plus I believe they don't raise premiums a huge amount each year and are just pet insurance unlike other places that stop doing it (axa etc)

I'd avoid E&L like the plague

gettingready

I have 5 cats insured with PetPlan plus 1 dog and 1 cat with Argos Platinum - both accepted by most vets for direct claims which is very important when you have a massive bill to pay.

Argos paid around 5k for Gorges luxating patella operation few years back without any issues and for Zara's hip replacement total about 15k without any issues.

PetPlan I claimed for last year when Macius decided to drug himslf - went to 2 different vets to get sorted, PetPlan paid around 1500 in total.

All above was paid directly to vets as vets accepted both PetPlan and Argos Platinum with no problems.

Both covers are for life and up to 7 k per year.

rustyboy21

Petplan here too. Was with them with Rusty all of his life and now with Tibsey the cat.


Expensive, but never had one ounce of trouble off them. Tibsey is a 2 year old cat, chipped, neutered etc and she is £15 a month, so it wont be cheap, but well worth the extra cost. Just don't try and move around each year with insurance. You are getting to the age now ( dog, not you , lol) that it will be harder to get a good price, without massive excess.


Love Cairns, one of the only smaller dogs that I would have. Had one when we were growing up, called Smokey and he lived to the ripe old age of 19. Lovely temperament, but the postie and paper boy didn't like him ! lol

krlyr

Petplan won't cover my GSD for life now he's over 5. I was with AXA, but with them withdrawing from the insurance market, I decided to switch him while I could. I've gone with Co Op - they're a bit cheaper as the cover is £5000 rather than th £7000 we previously had, but with having to keep my other dog's policy (which jumped a bit with AXA) due to pre-existing conditions, it was helpful to save a little with Casper's.

Co Op use the same underwriters as Petplan, so service is supposedly as good. They don't have a big % excess for him at his age like many of the other policies I looked at did, and they don't have big exclusions like cruciate conditions like some policies do. You can lower the policy cost by removing non-essential bits, like travel cover and so on, should you wish too - I didn't bother with this as we rarely holiday, and have enough family who would step in to help should we need it (so no need for emergency kennels or anything)

http://www.pet-insurance-surveys.co.uk/ was a good website I found - it won't compare prices (they vary so much due to so many factors anyway, the best thing to do is do your own quotes rather than rely on other's) but will show you policy features, ratings, etc.

Shoshannah

+1 Petplan.

hmc

Thanks krlyr that website was helpful, I'm looking at Argos seemed to score highly but do they hike up every yr?

rising_from_the_ashes

hmc wrote: »

Thanks krlyr that website was helpful, I'm looking at Argos seemed to score highly but do they hike up every yr?

Have you done a quote with them?

I've tried them several times over the years and their quotes have always come out hugely more expensive than everywhere else (incl pet plan) for some odd reason

They quoted over £60 / month when I got Maisie - John Lewis were £25 and PetPlan under £30!

hmc

They have coome out ££10 cheaper than petplan,£16 cheaper than axa and £8 cheaper than more than but it's just if they hike it up every yr more than petplan would, petplan does come in cheaper than my axa renewal