Pet Insurance - anyone with Tesco or Sainsburys

[HoneyDragonWearingLederhosen]

They appear to offer the most comprehensive insurance at the best price, with the most reasonable excess. Are those of you who have used them happy? Any nasty surprises on renewal?

We were with DirectLine who were utterly utterly abysmal and rubbish.

we are with Tesco. Premium goes up each year - but our dog is now 12. (Forty something a month I think.) Am in process of making 2 claims this year (arthritis and a lump removal) - excess is £120 for each claim (has been creeping up too). Never sure whether it would have been cheaper to save the insurance money instead and pay when we needed treatment. I'm sure I've paid more in insurance than i have recouped in claims..... Tesco claims dept very helpful and have used their free Vetfone service for advice when our vet was closed.

Yes that vetfone looked good. I am definitely happy to pay insurance, but I thought I'd check people were happy with the service. Pup is only 8 weeks at present so hopefully a while before £40. My mum and dads lab is 13 and pet plan announced they wanted £70pm on the last renewal!

I've had Tesco insurance in the past and been very pleased with it - no very serious conditions though.

I must admit I was very surprised how many good and positive reviews Tesco got on googling them.

Hopefully we'll never have to claim - but directline regularly cocked up. Including cancelling our policy without any authorisation - we only claimed once over 10 years for a minor claim and it took them 6 months to sort it and it was still wrong.

I was with Sainsbury's until last week when they put our premium up by almost 70% (from £19.95 to about £34 a month!)
they were great till then

I was with Sainsburys until they put their premium for my 12 year old mongrel up to £50 pm! We have claimed from them 3 times though without any problems and they paid out thousands on a heart condition another dog of ours had (now dead ). They paid another batch of thousands after an accidental poisoning incident. Never an issue. Apart from massive premium latterly.

We're with Tesco. DD (darling dog [smile) had cruciate repair last year. It was £3500 for the surgery and about another £350.00 for other assorted things. They paid without hassle. And a few months ago, DD was losing a ton of weight and vet thought cancer . He had £350 worth of tests and it ended up being, um, not sure . But insurance paid. No questions asked.

sorry about poorly dogs.

Did they hike up the renewal after you both claimed? Or have increases only been due to age?

My dog has just turned 6 we have not claimed since august 2010 and that was for another dog attacking her.
They couldn't explain the increase apart from to say...well it's the current market and we must have had several incidents involving dogs of the same breed in your area

yeah right, the local papers have been full of stories of savage collie attacks in my tiny village

I think our increases have been due to age and previous claims.

Sounds like they are all the same on that score then

I think Tesco trumps Sainsburys as its a little cheaper and has the vetfone option - which may come in handy whilst she's a puppy

we had Sainsburys cover for our (recently deceased) cat. They were fab- she went missing and they offered a reward, covered advertising costs etc and when she was put to sleep they paid out really really quickly, even refunding our original purchase price (which was the same amount as the excess). Iwas very impressed by their service- a few people told me to avoid Tesco due to their customer service but this was a while ago so they may have improved since then.