Pet Insurance

Dasiesmum

We have two dogs and a cat - Petplan reduce the fee for each subesquent pet - and so overall they came out the cheapest with the budget plan of £4k vets fees - so in the end we stayed with them this year. They do ongoing, year on year healthcare, and also cover for the duration of the pets life. I found that a number of policies are underwritten by the same people anyway, but cost cuts usually meant forfeiting either the year on year or became too specific with the claims. If you have a pedigree dog then the premiums are higher, and breed specific, I think. Having lost a dog tragically last year, she was in the vet's hosp overnight the bill was over £900. The other factor was that our vets are used to dealing with petplan and so do all the claim forms from there if a claim is necessary.

Bromley86

Has it been 3 1/2 years already?

Lillibet_2

I work for a vet & handle the insurance claims. Petplan is the only one I would ever consider for my dogs and most veterinary staff think the same, they offer quite a few different plans so you can pick one that suits your budget. Even working in the industry with access to much cheaper care & drugs, all our pets are still insured.

The others are, quite honestly, very hit & miss, and speaking from personal experience specifically with Tesco, to be avoided! Generally you get what you pay for with pet insurance & if it is a cheap policy don't expect to get much back when you really need it. Many of the general insurers (i.e supermarkets, car insurance companies etc) who also offer pet insurance exclude essential treatments including ; emergency call outs; hospitalisation fees; some tests (which they can deem "non-essential" regardless of what a vet thinks); 3rd party claims at your place of works or outside a 50 mile radius of your home; any injury occurring whilst "in the care of someone other than the named policyholder" (i.e your partner!); specialist referral (which you may need for something as simple as a broken bone as most small animal vets are not qualified for this!); alternative therapies (acupuncture & hydrotherapy are very effective for certain conditions but expensive) etc. At the very least look for an animal specific insurer such as Animal Lifeline or Kennel Club if you don't want to use Petplan.

HTH;)

kiwifruit_2

We have our pooch insurance with Norwich Union and to date things have been ok with them - decent premium with £70 excess.

Bromley86

I don't think NU are doing pet insurance directly anymore - at least I can't find a link on the web for new customers. I did see that they underwrite that PetPartners one by the KC.

Lillibet. Likewise, I couldn't find any Animal Lifeline insurance policy. If you mean Animal Friends, then that's not a good policy (underwritten by E&L, 35% excess when >8 years old).

The KC policy is a good one, cover-wise. It is limited to a maximum lifetime claim of £10k, but that is per condition. Is that worse than the usual £6k-£7k p.a.? I'd guess not in the vast majority of cases, even those where people are claiming for surgery.

Bean_Counter

I've been looking at pet insurance recently and couldn't believe how complicated it was to get the right policy. In the end I went with Axa.

Jummy

We went with Argos for our 7 month old springer.
Costs us £10.44 a month.

Bromley86

If that's Gold or Silver, you're only covered for the first 12 months = v. bad news. The Platinum one is lifetime but limited to £7k per condition.

On the plus side it is underwitten by AXA and administered by BDML, which is the same setup as Halifax have and I've had no trouble claiming.

You may find one of the cheaper proper lifetime policies (i.e. AXA) comes in at ~£13 p.m.

Lillibet_2

Jummy wrote: »

We went with Argos for our 7 month old springer.
Costs us £10.44 a month.

I'm with Petplan & am paying £19.88 for our 5 month old Springer but I still stand by my earlier statement : you get what you pay for!

kiwifruit_2

Bromley86 wrote: »

I don't think NU are doing pet insurance directly anymore - at least I can't find a link on the web for new customers. I did see that they underwrite that PetPartners one by the KC.

quote]

omg you just frightened me saying that lol till I went and checked and its not Norwich its More Than
Sorry if ive confused anyone but as you can see im also confused