Renewing pet insurance

RobbieD1506

Hi,

We have a 15 month lab and we currently have lifetime cover with the kennel club. Last year, shortly after we got him, we made a claim as he swallowed some ibuprofen �� He’s been fine ever since and we’ve made no claims.

We’ve just had our renewal through and it has gone up quite a way. I'm confused with whether I can change to another provider or not? (Just a bit confused with the whole lifetime thing altogether!)

Any help would be appreciated.

sheramber

If you change then anything in later life that can be related to the ingesting of ibuprofen will be excluded.

Any other condition will be covered.

Remember that a new policy will have an exclusion period at the start, normally 14 or 21 days.

You may want to overlap policies if there is time.

If something happens during the initial period that you needed to claim on the old policy ( illness as opposed to accident) then you may have to stay with them to get ongoing cover as it would be a pre existing condition for the new policy. You would then cancel the new policy.

Most policies give you a discount for the first year so the second year tends to be a good bit more as you have the normal increase plus the lost discount.

sp1920

It’s easy to change, especially while your dog is young. I find some of the comparison sites don’t include some of the best options - for instance I’ve changed to LV because the cover was better than what I was getting from Petplan, but nearly £40 a month less. It didn’t appear on the comparison sites. It is essential to check the policy has the terms and conditions you want though - for me covered for life is important, also it’s worth comparing excesses. (By covered for life I mean if your dog gets a permanent condition, they can’t exclude it on renewal). Hope this helps. Sheramber's reply is spot on.

sheramber

You could look at Bought by Many who have a policy which accepts pre existing conditions in a dog under 2 years.

I don't know the cost or if it would be suitable for you

Glad

There is a Cheap Pet Insurance article on the main site

GrahamJo

Hi there - I would also recommend Bought by Many as sheramber says they have a policy which I understand accepts pre existing conditions in dogs under 2. We recently switched to them for our 3 year old Golden retriever who has never had any problems but the renewal quote with Tesco went up by 53% (from £29/month to £45/month) - which seemed steep. We went with Bought by Many as I had seen good reviews and their claims process looks better than most. We got the same level of cover for £22.60/month but switched to a co-pay option (ie the excess was £69 plus 20% of the cost) which I am happy with as it keeps annual premiums down, but covers the worst of any issues. They would still have been cheaper had I not opted for the co-pay. They are relatively new to pet insurance so its probably too early to see how they are for paying out and renewal hikes, but everything I have heard so far looks positive and the website is the best that I have seen for doing a quote and then clearly presenting your options. I have a referral code for a £10 Amazon voucher mention-me.com/m/ol/yw8ux-graham-jones which I am hope I am allowed to post here. (copy and paste it into your server).

melbury

As posted previously, I have found Bought by Many brilliant. We had to put in a claim for our 1 year old dog for x-rays as he was intermittently limping. Such an easy process doing it all online and they contact the vet direct.

I have now switched to their cash back policy, whereby if you don't make a claim you get 20% of the annual premium refunded.

I was told that with all of their policies if no claim is made for two years then anything claimed before that is ignored and not classed as pre-existing.