Hi All Not sure if this is in the right place. I have been going round in circles looking at pet insurance. Marley is 12 weeks old, and my budget is around £20 per month for insurance. The best one I seem to have found is Pet Protect with Lifetime cover for £18.66 per month. Currently I have one month free with Pet Plan via my vet. Could you please advise me as to what is a good plan to have ? Thanks Susan
Re: Pet Insurance Be sure, whatever provider, that you get 'lifetime' cover. Some renew year by year and don't cover any 'existing' condition (ie anything they had that year or before). They are much cheaper but stay clear of them.
Re: Pet Insurance It's not really possible to say what is a good plan to have - it really depends on your priorities, and what kind of risk you are trying to reduce. For me, when I took out insurance, I decided I was really only worried about something that would be hard to afford but I'd manage to pay more moderate bills. So I took a rather "gold plated" policy with very high lifetime vet's bills cover, and cover for alternative treatments and so on. I selected to pay a very high excess on each claim to make the policy affordable, I think £500 (so I'm not covered for any bill below that). When my dog ruptured his cruciate I thanked my lucky stars I had done this and claimed thousands. If though, your priorities would be say to cover more moderate bills, and you want to take the risk that something very serious will happen (even though it happened to me, it is still very unlikely to happen to most people) then you would chose a lower excess, and lower amount of cover. So a "good" policy is very specific to you. What's good for someone else may not suit you at all. It also depends where you live - vet's bills in London (where I live) are eye wateringly high, and it is astonishingly easy to get into thousands of pounds for things very quickly.
Re: Pet Insurance [quote author=Boogie link=topic=9465.msg136356#msg136356 date=1420996199] Be sure, whatever provider, that you get 'lifetime' cover. Some renew year by year and don't cover any 'existing' condition (ie anything they had that year or before). They are much cheaper but stay clear of them. [/quote] Definitely this. Going for the high excess but getting fuller/better coverage is good advice too. Read the product disclosure forms - cover to cover (boring but important). And take out the insurance before your current one elapses - though I'm sure you're onto that
Re: Pet Insurance We have just cancelled one insurance policy with one of our cats...it just doesn't cover anything any more...and plus we would have to pay 20% of any bills plus excess. He is an older cat with ongoing problems that we know the insurance just won't cover. We have just also insured our older dog Casper( 6 years old)...costing us £40 per month ,with I think a £90 excess but EVERYTHING is covered for the remainder of his life or policy. So in any given month if the worst happens we could afford it with peace of mind. It also helps that our vet surgery accepts direct payment from this particular insurer (no others no idea why.....) without the worry of paying hundreds of pounds up front then claiming it all back, have done that and boy it was painful, especially when we had to fork out 20% of a total bill that was around £2,000 all told...
Re: Pet Insurance I'm with Direct Line and they have been brilliant. I have lifetime cover and they have paid out very quickly every time Harley has needed costly treatment. I pay about £20 per month with an £80 excess. Ours has just been renewed and no increase and no changes in cover
Re: Pet Insurance We had the same problem as Beanwood when our two dogs got older, our insurance would never pay out the full amount we had to pay the excess of well over £100 before we could start to claim then we also had to meet 20% of the bill! I got really fed up with this and ended up cancelling, but, I did open a Bank Account and put the amount that I would have paid in premiums each month into this account, this account not only paid for their yearly check-ups and innoculations but also flea treatment and when we had to have them put to sleep it covered this too (even the home visit for one of the dogs) with money left over, none of this would have been covered by the insurance. However, having said all that, I think that it is important to have a young dog covered as you never know what problems might arise, but just remember that the insurance doesn't cover the check-ups, innoculations or flea treatment which can mount up to quite a sum.
Re: Pet Insurance If we were in the UK, we'd have taken out pet insurance without thinking about it, but there's no such thing here, so I just make sure we have enough in a bank account and/or on credit cards to cover any emergencies. It made me think about it and realise that, since insurance companies aren't in the business out of the goodness of their hearts, the balance of probability is quite heavily in their favour. So, putting the same amount of money aside each month into a separate account, you should come out on top over the lifetime of your animal. Of course, there is the risk of the worst happening in the short term, before you've saved up any significant funds, but for us, that's a risk we have very little option but to take.
Re: Pet Insurance [quote author=snowbunny link=topic=9465.msg136750#msg136750 date=1421163844] So, putting the same amount of money aside each month into a separate account, you should come out on top over the lifetime of your animal. [/quote] You pay to remove a risk - this costs money. So I pay £x a year to remove the risk that something will happen to Charlie that I can't afford to fix. The premiums are based on the risk spread across the population of dogs. If you get lucky (yes, lucky) insurance costs you more than you claim. In Charlie's first year, I claimed the cost of my insurance policies for the next 11.6 years (not adjusted for inflation).
Re: Pet Insurance My boyfriend is an insurance agent and he told me that pet insurance (if it is for a decent level of cover) is one of the few policies that insurance companies make very little money on. For him it's a loss leader and not business that he would actively pursue. That was enough to convince me it was worthwhile
Re: Pet Insurance [quote author=Susan link=topic=9465.msg136355#msg136355 date=1420995969] Hi All Not sure if this is in the right place. I have been going round in circles looking at pet insurance. Marley is 12 weeks old, and my budget is around £20 per month for insurance. The best one I seem to have found is Pet Protect with Lifetime cover for £18.66 per month. Currently I have one month free with Pet Plan via my vet. Could you please advise me as to what is a good plan to have ? Thanks Susan [/quote] I went with this option recently too and it's lifetime cover
Re: Pet Insurance Thank you all for taking the time to answer to my post. I went with the Pet Protect one, will see how it goes and over the year look aroundabit more to see if there is a better one. I asked my vet for his advice and although he couldn't recomend one hedid tellme he had a lot of people who had opted for the Pet Protection policy :-X
Re: Pet Insurance [quote author=Incastinker link=topic=9465.msg136791#msg136791 date=1421173858] My boyfriend is an insurance agent and he told me that pet insurance (if it is for a decent level of cover) is one of the few policies that insurance companies make very little money on. For him it's a loss leader and not business that he would actively pursue. That was enough to convince me it was worthwhile [/quote] THIS is very interesting! Yes, that sorta sways me as well! Thank you 8)
