Does anyone have pet insurance and if so who with? We are currently with the kennel club and just had my renewal through at it's an extra 5 per month and also we have an additional 10 added to the excess, we have never claimed and the policy has been running for 1 year I have just got a quote for a similar policy which is £10 per month cheaper but the excess is £99 and not £75 on a claim it is with animal friends feel good insurance it isn't a company I have heard of however the policy is for lifetime cover which is one of the better policies..
We are with Petplan. £23 a month for lifetime cover for a Jack russell who is 5 £50 excess. She came with a free month (rescue dog) and I just carried on. I looked around when it came up for renewal but was a bit cautious with the quotes that came from insurer's where it isn't their main income stream. I do know someone who was left paying the (hefty) bills when the company she was with withdraw from the market. When she looked around at renewal time no one would cover the pre existing condition. The few pounds she saved moving from her original insurer was a very false economy. Of course I also know people who have never had to claim therefore they could argue wasted money.
The problem with insurance is that statistically you will lose. Vets seem to have two price lists, one for those with insurance and one for those without. Guess which is cheaper ? Except for house insurance and gas central heating (where the premium is the same as and includes an annual service), I have no voluntary insurance of any kind, but then I have never bought a lottery ticket either.
I have the Prestige policy with Animal Friends for my 2 elderly (14 year old) cats. Animal Friends were one of the few companies happy to cover animals that age - quite a few (including Petplan) had a cut off of e.g. 8 or 10 years. We hadn't previously bothered with pet insurance until last year when one of our cats managed to run up £1500 bills in a week (falling ill on a Sunday evening meant out of hours vet appointments, umpteen diagnostic tests, overnighters in the animal hospital)! I think we worked out that up until then we had been quids in by not paying for insurance, but when the bills start mounting up that rapidly, it gets financially quite scary. So far my experience with Animal Friends has been good - we've made a couple of claims (one for eye infections, and now the same cat has been diagnosed with kidney failure for more tests, consultations pills etc). Claim form is simple (1 page for you to fill in, 1 for the vet) and they've paid reasonably quickly by BACS transfer into my bank account (within about 2-3 weeks of our leaving the forms at the vets for them to complete their sections and forward the forms). We have the £99 excess and also a 35% co-payment so it doesn't mean you'll escape all non-routine vet bills but it does take the sting out of potentially expensive weeks like we had last year. Animal Friends seemed like a good compromise in terms of premium levels and the possibility of continuing payments for ongoing lifetime conditions.
Take a look at John Lewis they were quite good last year. Although I have just had a row with them about renewal. The problem is trying to compare like with like. Some companies have a set excess, some make you pay a percentage of the costs. Some will only pay the first £1000 or £1500 of any claim, and some will only cover an illness for 12 months. ( Our dog developed a skin condition costing a fortune each year , but Tesco would only pay for the first year! - not much use to me for the next 10 years of his life!)
