could anyone give me some pet insurance advice/recommendations please?

[YoureBeingASillyBilly]

i have a 4 YO male golden retriever, and 3 cats. 2 female aged 5 and 3 both spayed and one male 8 week old kitten who will be spayed. no current or prior health conditions.

I have always saved into an account for medical needs and until now this has always covered their bills which thankfully have been low. however, circumstances have meant I've had to use the pet savings and currently would be unable to pay for any unexpected vet care so have to get insurance, but don't know where to start.

I would really appreciate advice on what I need and where is the best place to get it. and also any pitfalls I need to look out for that might leave me up shit creek if I need insurance but it wont pay for whatever reason.

thanks in advance.

should say that dog is neutered aswell.

We used Sainsburys, they were excellent. make sure you get a policy for full illness, not one that just pays for 12 months for each problem!
x

Thanks landrover.

Ive been having a look at comparison sites and i'm a bit confused by the terms.

I get what accident only is but what are limited time, maximum benefit and lifetime and what are the benefits/pitfalls of each.

Also what does it mean when it says e.g. £1000 per illness per year as opposed to say £3500 (and no other writing)?

Thanks again.

We've gone with petplan. They're a little more expensive but you get full lifetime cover. For example if our dog gets diagnosed with a life long skin condition petplan will cover it for all of her life, without lifetime cover she'd only be covered for the first 12 months and then after that we'd be on our own. We've also got 3rd party liability insurance so god forbid she ever runs into the road and causes and accident we're covered to the tune of around a million pound. DP scoffed at this a bit but say if 3 people sue you for loss of earnings it'll soon add up.

Another good thing about them is that a lot of vets will deal with them directly so once you pay the excess you don't have to do anything else.

I Would recommend John Lewis. We had a puppy that become seriously ill and needed emergency vet admission several times, lots of medication and was being referred for expensive MRI brain scans. Sadly he had to be PTS at not quite 6 months old. John Lewis were brilliant dealing with the claims and even sent us a condolence card when the puppy was PTS.

Limited time...each claim/condition will be paid for until the end of the time limit (usually a year) or it hits the amount of money covered.

Maximum benefit...they'll pay for each claim/condition forever, but only the amount of money stated per claim/condition per year, so if something costs more than that amount in one year you pay the rest.

Lifetime...they'll pay forever for anything as long as it all adds up to less than the full amount of cover.

Limited time just isn't worth bothering with tbh, if you claim for something you need all treatment to be finished within a year and the hope that nothing ever bothers them again that's similar or affects the same thing because they'll usually class it as the same condition.

Lifetime cover is the best really - my dog is insured for £7500 a year, so as long as his total vet's bills within the year of the policy don't add up to that, they pay out. Oh and it's not like car or house insurance where it goes up if you claim either.

Lifetime cover does cost more - but it's invaluable when things like a CT scan and keyhole surgery on an elbow cost about £3000.

Thank you all for this advice, really helpful. I will go and do some comparisons and see how i get on.

Also, is it better to insure them all on one policy or get separate policies for each pet?

Can't recommend who to go with, but I can recommend not to go with MoreThan! They have paid out okay for things but our premium has shot up to the same as pet plan quoted so we may as well have gone with them and got better cover! MoreThan have some odd exclusions.

Ooh thank you for this squidgy. They were actually looking quite good so great to get a heads up about the premiums going up!