Our current free cover is coming to an end and we need to choose one for him, vets we know have suggested PetPlan and that’s who they use. But what about the likes of John Lewis, Kennel Club etc? Or are there others? Not insuring him isn’t an option. TIA

Pet plan for us. Molly had a sick incident and had to go to vets out of hours on a Sunday night (very expensive). They paid up promptly with no problem at all.

Annual renewal isn’t until Feb so will see if cost goes up accordingly!

Not insuring him isn’t an option.

I’ve given up insuring one of ours now that the tax has increased to 9.5%.

This cropped up recently and the consensus was PetPlan or bust.

Me, as much as I love animals, they’re not people and I think my insurance plan would be a visit to a rescue centre for a replacement.

I’ve given up insuring one of ours now that the tax has increased to 9.5%.

10% now rising to 12% in 2017.

I use more than but then I get a ridiculous discount through work. Their cover is very good though.

I use petplan and now Ziva has skin allergies I have no option but to stick where I am, hoping the renewal isn’t too scary. As I’m sure you’re all aware with pet insurance once you make a claim against that condition, if you swap insurance that condition will NOT be covered…. swines!

Me, as much as I love animals, they’re not people and I think my insurance plan would be a visit to a rescue centre for a replacement.

it’s a good job that there’s other much more caring and considerate people out there than you then, otherwise this world and all its inhabitants are f**ked!!

cancelled mine over 1 year ago. increases just got too much and the fact you cant claim for same ailment again led to this. 1 claim in 6 years covered no problem though.

I’m with Cougar on this one.

I am able to pay for general vets bills out of savings, I put aside some each month, but I know that I would have a practical cut off level. Both financially and in respect to what I would put my dogs through.

I have yet to find out if these two constraints would coincide, or what i’ll do if they don’t.

How many miles will you be doing on it?

I am able to pay for general vets bills out of savings, I put aside some each month, but I know that I would have a practical cut off level. Both financially and in respect to what I would put my dogs through.

Cheap insurance – £60ish per year to cover 3rd party and accidents.

Savings a/c to build fund for expensive bills. Up to £1300 at moment for a 3yr old dog.

Routine bills paid as they come.

Given the 10% tax on pet insurance and whatever percentage the insurance co takes for costs and profits the odds are with me. No pet insurance for previous 3 cats and 3 dogs. No big bills. So well ahead of the game.

I’m glad we went with Petplan. Cost circa 3.5k over the 8 years we’ve had him but have claimed nearly 10k from them, due to chronic conditions and a few accidents.
Growing up my Beagle lived 16 years with minimal vet interventions and no insurance.
You just can’t tell & it’s for you to decide if you can afford treatment or make the call to have a pet put to sleep because you can’t. I know which side of that I come down on but then I’m unashamed in my anthropomorphism of my little dude.
Also, if you go for a ‘whole of life’ policy chronic or repeat illness/injury will be covered. You’ll just never get cover anywhere else which is my big bugbear with the pet insurance game.

After his drink driving ban I can’t get coverage for him anymore.

Oh, and PetPlan for them all.

Animal friends

We have ditched more than for petplan after the former kept hiking up our renewals despite not claiming.

OH is a vet and we still insure them all.

My dog is with Pet Plan. Have claimed about £800 in 8 years. All one claim when she was biten by another dog. Costs about £50/month!!! Considering stopping it as I now have some savings I could dip into if needed but then she is getting older.

Apt timing this as we have just added another dog to the family and are now considering insurance.

Have always gone with just paying or considering the big sleep but with two the potential to really hurt the savings is higher.

Had a look on PetPlan amongst others and they seem a lot more expensive than everyone else in most case nearly twice the price and seemed to be quoting per dog whereas the rest where just quoting combined with yearly maxes being similar.

Is that normal for PetPlan? How are those of you with them and more than one pet being covered?

Animal Friends seem the ‘best’ so far on comparison basis. More research to do.

never heard of animal friends so thought id do a quick google. this was the first link i found.

ok, theres bad reviews of any company if you look hard enough, but i didnt really have to try too hard for these to crop up.

I use phone insurance. Going to a bit of an eye opener should I ever make a claim.

Pet Plan have been fantastic. I never used to insure but realise that is no longer an option, as vet fees are so expensive I could never cover them. My pets are members o£f my family.

Our cat was run over and nearly lost his leg. The PDSA night cover service (who cover our vets (out of hours) referred us straight to Bristol University vet school (Langford) as they said the injury was so bad, no local vet could cope with it.

Our cat nearly lost his leg, would have done without Langford. Costs associated with that were covered by Pet Plan and must have been around £4,000-5,000 pounds as he had to have dental work as well and all sorts of scans and Xrays and ultrasounds. To give a clue how ill he was, he could not leave the house on his own for a year. He is out doing his stuff every day now with the slightest of limps.

Our other cat started to walk oddly and his tail went floppy. We pursued it with the local vets who were frankly useless and we insisted on a referral to Bristol Uni again. Our cat was having an emergency spine op within a week – he would have been paralysed if it had not been that fast. The estimate for that was another £3,000 or so. He recovered well, but then became really sick with another disease which made his brain swell up, to back to Bristol Uni as again the locals did not have the knowledge. He was in the intensive care unit for over a week and nearly died. He was given human cancer related drugs. thats added up to another £3,000 +. Some of the medication was over £100 per packet.

Pet Plan have been great. They have paid out flawlessly and have never quibbled over anything. I cannot praise them enough, or the specialists at Langford.

If I never claim again on this insurance (I so hope I do not need to) I know that money I pay in, when not helping me, is helping other to treat and love the pets who are part of thier family. Its not just saving the pets, its stopping owners from crying, children from not understanding why a pet has to die if the parents cant afford to ‘fix’ it.

I neighbour just had to take out a bank loan to help her dog – its going to take her 2 years to pay it back and it was only £1,000 which is chicken feed in pet health terms now.

I have been so lucky to keep my cats, they are my family.
Before anyone says something mean about that last sentence, my human family are mostly dead. I am lucky to feel loved by my pets as pretty much everyone else has died.

I’m with Petplan, watch out for some of these insurers they don’t even pay out the full amount, my friends insurance only pay out half of the total cost of treatment now, not sure what that is about

I used to have my old dog insured with Vets medicover, they paid for his cancer treatment (A couple of grand if I remember rightly), but their premiums kept increasing every year with the new dogs without any claims.

I switched to Petplan – more expensive, but I have had claims on both dogs settled with no issues and personally, wouldn’t go anywhere else now. The vets take direct payment from them, so I only have to fork out the excess which is always a bonus.

We’ve got our dog and cat insured with PetPlan. They’ve been great when we’ve had to deal with them in the past. We had a cat who was on medication for years and it was all covered by PetPlan, we just paid the excess each year.

Ours are with Pet Plan. my lab who died in Sept must have had thousands spent on him over the years, all paid for by Pet Plan.

Only thing I noticed was, as he got older, the premiums increased but the excesses increased big style. It was something like £130 per ailment and 20 % of the total cost.

I never found out if that was just because he hit the 10 year old stage or if it was because we had claimed so much over the years. One bill when he was a pup was £4,500 as he had his back leg rebuilt after a accident.

John Lewis cover my two dogs … Both had treatment for incidents ailments etc and no issues ..

A timely thread; I’m about to return to the UK with a dog (10yr old Jack Russell) and have no concept of UK vet fees, decent insurance looks pricey and a few figures above sound significant!

Please would some one give me some ROM costs for vet visits for, say, illness, minor surgery and checkups? Much appreciated.

I think that Vet costs may vary depending where you live.

In a rural area of Scotland the last bill I had was when one of my dogs ripped a flap of skin off her leg. For full general anesthetic to clean out and then stitch the wound (pick up and drop off same day) was £150 Inc a check up and stitch removal 10 days later.

John Lewis cover my two dogs … Both had treatment for incidents ailments etc and no issues ..

John Lewis=More Than FYI. Like I say. Very good cover and usually no issues with claims.

never heard of animal friends so thought id do a quick google. this was the first link i found.

ok, theres bad reviews of any company if you look hard enough, but i didnt really have to try too hard for these to crop up.

As you say you can find bad reviews of most companies if you look. Particularly insurance! I’ve claimed a few times from them for emergency out of hours treatment of a broken leg and a couple of other more minor surgeries and they have been great. The xs is low and my premiums have increased very little over 7 years. I spent hours researching which product and company to use as so many pet insurance policies have clauses or limitations on what they pay out. I went for gold cover as they pay out for lifetime illness and have no upper limits on amount they pay. I read some of the bad reviews and looks like there’s two sides to the story on the first few. We have no idea what level of cover those complainants selected.

I have found PetPlan very good for few claims made.

Like all insurance though, seems expensive until you need it. Over 10 years my dog’s insurance will be around £4000 (if prices stayed flat!)

I will spend £8000 on house insurance during same time and have never made a single claim on house insurance in 30 years but I am not going to stop house insurance…

If he never needs to use it then great as would rather him not need it.

Out of interest I thought I’d put petplan in to the same review site. It gets 2.6 vs the 2.1 out of 5 that animal friends gets. I believe the premiums for petplan are much higher than animal friends so on balance it may be much of a muchness. For anyone interested it costs me £28 per month to insure my 7 year old lab.

My wife puts aside what we paid in insurance premiums into a savings account – we have two dogs aged 9 and 10 and now have £8k in the bank for emergencies.

kerley – Member
I will spend £8000 on house insurance during same time and have never made a single claim on house insurance in 30 years but I am not going to stop house insurance…

Woah! Must be Kerley Towers. Our house insurance is around £200 per year.

But house and dog insurance are different. House insurance is for low risk high consequence events like fire and flood. Sure it covers theft but I could affors to replace anything that got stolen from savings anyway. Dog insurance is basically an NHS for dogs. Almost all dogs will get illnesses as they get older. As shown by accident/3rd party dog insurance being £60 a year while a Pet Plan quote was around £450 per year and liable to rise as the dog got older.

There are arguments both sides but not having to deal with insurers is a plus for me.

Woah! Must be Kerley Towers. Our house insurance is around £200 per year

Put a thatched roof on it and see your premiums soar through lack of choice of insurers and risk of your house burning down…

My wife puts aside what we paid in insurance premiums into a savings account – we have two dogs aged 9 and 10 and now have £8k in the bank for emergencies.

I was thinking of doing the same. Although could turn out bad if an expensive bill comes in within first few years as won’t have the money saved up.

Thanks for all of your replies, looks like PetPlan is the one to go for. I have heard good things wrt their speed of payment etc. I’d go for John Lewis, but we insure our house through M&S and they’ve changed their underwriters 3 times since we’ve had them and subtle changes occur in the policies when that happens. PetPlan is at least owned by Allianz.

If you’d go for John Lewis then just go for More Than. As per my previous post More Than are the insurer behind JL.