Cancel dog insurance

[Hariboislife]

We have a now 9 year old pug (pure breed) He had every health issue these poor dogs can have when he was younger but luckily we’ve always had the best insurance. The problem is for that insurance they now want £250 a month for £4000 annual cover. We’ve had to drop the cover amount for the top to 7k then 4k over the years to make it manageable.
Now it’s nearly 3k premiums for 4k cover plus we have to pay a £135 excess. Next year we’ll also have to pay 20% of all claims.
AIBU to cancel the cover and just put the 3k in a savings account? He hasn’t had a health issue for couple of years now but nervous to cancel it.

Sorry to say the reason the health insurance is so expensive is because they anticipate your dog having significant and expensive healthcare requirements in the years to come.

It's worth shopping around to see if other providers offer a better deal but a lot will refuse to take an older dog altogether. We have a one-year-old border collie and I was advised by just about everybody from day one to get pet insurance as a lot of providers wouldn't offer it after the dog was eight years old, I think. I can't remember exactly the age. Once you get into regular scans and medication for chronic conditions, the bills can rock up really fast and without insurance the problem is you have no ceiling. My friend has a daughter with an elderly cat and the expenses in any given quarter are absolutely eye watering. Anyway, good luck. Hope you have a lovely dog who's worth it.

With what you're paying for such a low level of cover I would probably cancel and put the money into savings. Paying 3k for 4k of cover is just silly.

I’ve claimed so much on my pet insurance that I’d be very scared to cancel it. I had to claim 6k in the first month of the policy, now at 7 my dogs been diagnosed with glaucoma and the drops are costly. Pugs tend to have a fair amount of health issues. I guess if you can afford a huge bill then cancel, if a 10k vet bill would put you in debt then I’d keep the policy

edited to add just saw you’re paying 3k for 4k cover. 100% cancel that. Really you need 8-12k I’d say per year

Not worth it for the level of cover you are getting.

I cancelled mine when it reached £150 per month. It now goes into a savings account just for the dogs potential vet bills. Dog is now 16 so I think that anything that could now come up medically would not be surgical as doubt we'd spend thousands trying to keep him with us at his age. Harsh maybe but I think unfair on him to put him through much treatment when he's got to this elderly age

Our dog just turned 7, and last year had a snapped ligament which required surgery, at an eye-watering £5000 plus when you added up tthe pain management, surgery and physio. Thank god for insurance. Ours covers up to £8000 i think. We were told her age, size and the fact that it had happened once increased the chance it would happen on the other leg, so there's no way we can afford to cancel her insurance now. It's gone up to £65 a month now too. So I get why you'd consider cancelling if you're paying 3000 for only 4000 of cover. But maybe try
shopping around a bit before you do cancel, there might be better options out there.

We’ve been with petplan since he was born (we got him at 8 weeks) and I spoke to them when we got the renewal letter. Even the lady I spoke to understood they were asking a lot and she gave us 10% discount - which took it to the £250 a month 🤦‍♀️
we used to have 10k cover but had to drop it to 7k then 4k over the years as the premiums went up.

What providers do people recommend? I’ve done a comparison and although we wouldn’t be covered for anything he’s already had (which is a lot!) they’re still around £80 a month for 2k cover plus have to pay 20%.

I cancelled our old dog’s insurance when it hit £100 a month and excluded anything he’d ever had- and he was a very healthy dog.

The issue is that we could easily afford any bills. In fact he did need a minor eye operation which cost £1000 and was among the excluded conditions so that was a win.

I don’t know the expected lifespan of a pug but if you can afford the bills should they arise then go for it.

I think you'll struggle moving a pug with pre-existing health conditions over to a new provider at that age, in all honesty.

The costs will either be insane or the coverage will be so minimal that it's not worth the hassle.

I would put the money in a savings account just for vet bills. The cover is useless as by the time you pay the annual premiums (£3000), the excess (£135) and the 20% (£800 on the maximum amount) there is no scenario where having the cover would be beneficial. The insurance may not cover everything whereas if you save the money you can just use it for any vet bill including dental. You will also still have the money on the chance he doesn't need all of it.

If you put £250 in an account every month you can say least access it at any time if he needs it without worrying if he is covered.

When my dog got old and insurance high I went with a plan that was just for liability and accidents so I was covered for something atleast

I would cancel and put the monthly premium into a savings account. I cancelled my dog's insurance when it went up to £140 a month and 20% excess. I worked out she would need £2800 of yearly treatment to break even. Since cancelling I have spent about £1800 in the last 4 years.

We did the maths when ours was a puppy and decided that for us, dog insurance was a bit of a rip off.
We have third party liability through dogs Trust (£20 a year) just in case he causes a catastrophic accident but health wise we decided we would just use savings.
Ours is almost 17 now. He has literally never needed a vet, except for booster injections, so in our case the gamble definitely paid off.

Petplan were very expensive for our quote when we got our puppy, so before any issues could even arise.

The best price for the best cover I found was with morethan and they get great reviews. Luckily we haven’t needed to use it yet though.

So just so we're clear, you pay £250/mo £3k/yr) for 4k of cover. And you're asking if it's worth it 🤦🏼‍♂️ riiiiight.

We cancelled ours years back. We do as above, put the payment in a high interest account, if you need it you have it, if not when the dog dies you get a windfall.

We are with Petplan for our cats. The premiums have just increased (even with a multi pet discount) as they had reached 10 years old. Given that our last pair of cats both lived to be 16 I will be considering cancelling once they reach about 12 or 13.
We have had our moneys worth from the policy though. One cat had toxoplasmosis and calici virus in a year and the other had an abcess which went right down to the bone and required repeated trips to the vet (as well as us cleaning the wound daily. Cat had gone missing for quite some time before we found her injured ).

My dog had to have an operation and ongoing treatment when she was 10, we far exceeded the £7k per condition amount. Luckily we could afford it but I wouldn't cancel cancel if you don't have savings, you never know what might happen

As long as the £4k is per year, and not per illness, then sadly it seems a no-brainer to cancel. Good luck.🤞

Think lots of people are going to be having this conversation soon. RSA is pulling out of the pet insurance market, so anyone with MoreThan insurance will not have their policy renewed and will get a new quote from new underwriters, I hear - think we can all imagine which direction those quotes will go, sadly.

I do that. With my last two dogs I didn’t use any of the savings really. Just forked out 2k for something for my current one but still cheaper than what they’re asking.

Why buy a dog that is bred to have health issues? It perpetuates cruelty

Agree with PPs - it’s expensive because your dog is from a seriously unhealthy breed.

That being said, £4k wouldn’t even touch the sides of some of the serious issues pugs can have. So insurance is pretty pointless if that’s the cover you’ve got…

edit; oops! It corrected pugs to pigs! Sorry

I cancelled mine once it got to £70/month. I think he was 8 or 9? He's now 15. He did have cancer a couple years ago which cost £1300, but nothing like the insurance I would have paid up til then (from the time I cancelled it). Maybe I've been lucky? I think if he got very ill now he's so old that it wouldn't be fair to put him through surgery or whatever - he's active but he's pretty deaf and his sight is bad so he already seems confused at times.
Your breed does tend towards more health problems, but the cover you are getting is poor for what you are paying. Shop around.

We have had a conversation about cancelling our French Bulldog insurance. She is 10 and we have had to negotiate it down over the last couple of years.

It's £120 a month for £5K a year, lifetime. If we hadn't negotiated it down twice, I think it would be around £200 a month. It's still on the cost effective side at the moment. She has had a couple of large bills over the years that I was grateful we had insurance at the time, but over the six years we have had her, I think we have paid out more in insurance than the total vet bills.

I do understand she is a breed with lots of health issues. We didn't plan to get any dog, let alone a french bulldog, with all their associated issues, but the original owners - extended family - had an unexpected and traumatic event, and we took her in for a couple of weeks to help out. She couldn't return to her home in the end and I didn't have the heart to re-home her again. So here she still is.

But knowing the breed has specific health issues, I keep her weight down and don't over-exercise. Both her expensive episodes have been related to allergies as opposed to physical. She also has longer legs than some frenchies I have seen. Some look very out of proportion to be honest, whereas she looks like she has appropriate sturdy legs to match her sturdy frame. Touch wood 😱

Normally I would not recommend cancelling pet insurance but if you're paying £3000 pa for a £4000 pa limit then that is not worth it. (Assuming that £4000 pa is total claim not £4000 per condition). The most you would get back from insurance is £1000, probably less with excesses. However, I would still look at other policies because even if it's only accident cover it could save you £1000's. But that decision also depends on your own finances and what you could and couldn't cover yourselves.

We cancelled our whippets pet insurance when he turned 10. We just decided it wasn't worth it. He'd already long out-lived our previous whippets by that point, so we thought we'd go out on a high.
He's 12 now, and although he's slower, and not quite as interested in long walks any more, and we think his eyesight might be fading, he's continuing to do well.