UKC

Hi,
Tesco, in all their infinite wisdom has decided to reward me for being a loyal customer by significantly increasing my premium. So my question is: Can anyone recommend a cheap pet insurance provider? A bog standard policy covering accident and illness for our lurcher would be grand.
Thanks
Frank

In reply to Frankie boy:

Personally I can't praise Sainsbury's Pet Insurance highly enough. My poor Ben got diagnosed with Leukaemia and not once did they quibble with any part of the treatment which got referred to Liverpool Small Animal Teaching Hospital. Ben lasted 7 months of treatment before he died.

Not nice.

But I would and will be using Sainsbury's Pet Insurance again for our Little Bailey.

In reply to The Lemming:

That sounds like a glowing report. Will get a quote from them now.

In reply to Frankie boy:

Got to admit as Ben got older, his premiums went up. I can't remember how much all this was as She Who Must be Obeyed paid the policy.

In reply to Frankie boy:

Co-operative Insurance

In reply to Frankie boy: Use moneysupermarket for a comparison, but I use Purely Pets for the big lad. Never had to use it yet but they are the cheapest around for lifetime illness cover (about £18 a month)

In reply to Frankie boy:

NFU.
Always insured my horses through them, claimed quite a few times, always no quibble, nice and cheap. No idea about dogs, other than, yes, they do insure them.

In reply to Frankie boy:

whatever you get check the level of cover carefully, Its pretty easy to run up a £3-6 k bill for many conditions, and we ( in veterinary referral hospital) on occasion get above the £10 k mark.

In reply to Frankie boy:

Put the dog down on the form as a cross breed rather than a Lurcher. That will help for a start. We ended up paying £42 a month for one of our Lurchers. He's 12ish. We haven't bothered insuring him for 2 years now. We'll just pay the bill if we have to treat him.

In reply to Frankie boy:

Whatever you do, go for lifetime, rather than annual, cover. Before you cancel your current policy, have a very serious think about any issues you may have: you won't be covered for them if you change insurers. This includes stuff which has been mentioned, but which isn't yet an expensive clinical problem - skin rashes, a propensity to get the shits, a heart murmur.

Then, understand that you get what you pay for. Cheap may be useless to you in a pinch.

We (vets) have our favourite insurers, but we're not allowed to name them in public. Ditto the really awful ones. In public.

In reply to Martin not maisie:
so for example, and without prejudice, can I really not say that E and L are dreadful?
Pity that.

In reply to Martin not maisie:

Yep - I work in an out of hours clinic and echo what's been said above. Bills can quickly mount into the thousands and can be ongoing for long term conditions like arthritis, diabetes etc etc.

DON'T just go for cheapest, look for lifetime cover with a large cover per condition per year.

DON'T change policy for the sake of a few quid if there is anything in your dog's past that could be viewed as a pre-existing problem. The new company will want to see all past vet history if you have to claim. For example a small bout of diarrhoea last year that seems like nothing might mean the new insurer excludes ANY claim for a gastrointestinal problem (whilst if you continue your current policy there wouldn't be a problem)

and remember the adage "you get what you pay for" - if an insurer seems cheap ask yourself why. There are some companies that really don't like paying out if they can avoid it. Some only pay for 'out of hours' treatment if the condition is actually life threatening, and will refuse payment for, e.g. a non-life-threatening broken leg!!

In reply to Dr.S at work:
That is correct. Unless you are FSA registered none of us that work in the veterinary profession can say (to use YOUR example) that E&L (or their other trading names!) are dreadful, even if that's what we really feel.

*other dreadful insurers are available.

And for completeness it's worth mentioning that some vets do have the necessary accreditation to advise on insurance, so speak to your vet before changing!

In reply to Frankie boy:

Of the vet chaps who have commented so far, would one of you be willing to enter into correspondence, away from a public forum, on which are the better Insurance providers to take a policy with?

In reply to Frankie boy:

We're with Insure and Go at the moment for the dog and Sainsbury's for the cat. Waiting on a payment from I&G now. They're not quick.........

In reply to The Lemming:


That's unavoidable really. A fit young dog probably only needs accidental injury cover, put a few miles on the clock and that's when stuff wears out and all the expensive nasty stuff starts to emerge. A bit like humans : "Why should I pay into the NHS when I'm a really fit 20 something climber and I can get fantastic cover from BUPA for £20 a month?" and similar posts rear their heads occasionally on here, the posters having difficulty understanding that being fit and 20 doesn't last indefinitely.

In reply to Frankie boy:

Insure and go paid out today - fairly weighty excess, but within tolerance

In reply to Frankie boy:
look at the level of cover you get for your money. I know some companies can give cover for as little as £500 per condition, which will not cover much if your animal needs out of hours surgery and hospitalisation or referral.
Coop insurance is underwritten by the same people as petplan but is cheaper. Petplan is advertised by many veterinary practices. The things below are facts, not opinions
Tesco and several others are underwritten by Royal Sun Alliance. They have a vetfone system whereby you can ring and speak to someone even out of hours who may then advise you to attend the vet: this means your claim is less likely to be refused as "not paying for OOH as it was not an emergency".
My older pets are insured with Animal friends. They are cheap. Although I have had no problem with them, it does state in the policy that OOH treatment will only be paid for if the animal is in a life threatening condition. If my animal is injured, it may well be in pain and require immediate treatment even if it's not life threatening. I will be going to the vet, but my insurance may not pay out.
Sainsburys (unlike many others) do not differentiate between small medium and large crossbreeds, so if you have a large crossbreed they may well be cheaper than others: our large crossbreed puppy is therefore insured with them

In reply to Dr.S at work:


Yes, but only to me in private conversation. If anyone else overheard it, they might draw certain conclusions which, clearly, we wouldn't be ALLOWED to disabuse them of, no matter how much we wanted to.

I don't want to be in a position to recommend insurers, but I wouldn't mind being able to talk frankly about the bad ones. I once had an altercation about a sudden-onset blindness in a horse, with a certain insurance company who clearly specialised in insuring that species. First they refused - bizarrely - to believe that it was blind, after which they changed tack to imply that it must have been blind prior to the clients taking out the policy several months before. This was a horse which had been ridden round the lanes on a daily basis, during that time. In the end, they just refused to pay anyway. Useless.

In reply to Ridge:


Don't entirely rely on that: if you have a pedigree breed, have a quick Google at all the congenital and inherited stuff which inevitably shows itself at a young age. By definition, they then tend to be lifelong issues.

A mate bought a certain breed of puppy, against specific advice. I told him that its knees would blow out in the first two years, so it was imperative to get lifetime insurance (when one side goes, the other unusually follows at some point and on annual policies it becomes an excluded condition if the next premium becomes due before it happens). This time he listened, the knees duly exploded and he saved about four grand on vet fees.

That reminds me, he owes me a pint.

In reply to Martin not maisie:

Our fit young dog turned out to have a shoulder cartilage problem that cost us, or rather MoreThan, about £2 grand to fix. I met someone the other day whose Lab puppy was diagnosed with displaced elbows at 12 weeks. Fortunately she'd just taken out proper insurance at the end of a free month, because with stem cell treatment the bill came to somewhere around £8 grand - but now her year old dog is right as rain.

My dad's wife 'can't afford' insurance for their four miniature dachshunds - then managed to find £5,000 when one slipped a disc as a young dog.

I hope our insurance choice will work out in the longer term - for now, I'm very glad we have it.

In reply to Frankie boy:

Mine's insured with petplan because they offered the cover we wanted, the price was secondary and the decision has already paid off big time. In the first year they paid out more than they'll make from me in two lurcher lifetimes.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

Not the standard lurcher “headbutt something solid on the chase?" type injury I hope?

In reply to Ridge:

Pretty much, he crashed into a stick we were playing with which went through his tongue and throat before snapping off under his shoulder blade. Messy but thankfully it missed his arteries and after a couple of operations the only lasting damage is a perfectly rational fear of trees and playing with me.

Running into trees while chasing rabbits is an occupational hazard when you're fast, daft and really really have to kill that pesky wabbit!

jk

In reply to Frankie boy:

My hound is insured through the Kennel Club. I can only say that they are very good at collecting their direct debit because, touch wood, we haven't required their insurance yet. It's expensive (£50 a month), but seemed to be the most comprehensive when I looked.

In reply to Frankie boy:

Tbf Tesco pet insurance was very good with us.

Definitely get illness for life cover the small price each month is worth every penny as the bills soon mount up for conditions like epilepsy etc and can save a heart breaking decision if you are hit with a potentially huge bill.

We had a king charles cavalier, for those that don't know the bread can have a long list of genetic and hereditary conditions. Amazing gentle and affectionate dogs, and such a shame their health can be so bad.

By the time she was 4 years old she had epilepsy ( £70 a month for medicine for life ) plus all the testing beforehand

Acute severe pancreatic episode ( £4k bill plus £30 a month for medicine for life )

Hemorrhagic gastroenteritis when she was 2 ( £1800 bill ).

Early signs of syringomyelia testing included a £1500 MRI

She passed away form heart failure before she was 5 years old.

We would not have hesitated to pay any of the above bills our-self but was very grateful for having good insurance which was only £50 ish a month for her last year.....a very small price to pay for something that brought some much love and happiness into our life's