Insurance

[Netski100]

Hello, im getting a puppy for the first time on Sunday. I need to get insurance. Is there any companies better than others?
I have been on go compare for insurance. I want life time cover . The price differ a lot. animal friends pet insurance £11 pcm to £16 pcm policy pet silver with £5000 yearly limit . or unlimited number of conditions with spot on £26
Can some anyone give their opionin or experience? thank you

Get the best you can afford.
Pet plan is widely considered the best. I'm with sainsburys who used to have the same underwriters. Not sure if they still do

I would say a 5k limit is nowhere near enough. We're insured with Tesco on their best lifetime policy - 10k a year cover for the cats and then 15k for the dogs.

Look at Manypets insurance. Very competitive and excess only £99 that you would only pay once in that year no matter how many claims. Also, get 20% of your premium back if you don’t claim within the year.

I've got £10k pa cover. Wouldn't consider anything less.

PetPlan and Tesco are very good - Personally I have never had more than £7k per dog per year and one of my dogs has a few chronic conditions and has had a few operations over the years and we've never got through it.

We were with Petplan for 12 years with our boy who we lost last year and they were always prompt to pay out.
Our policy limit, taken out in 2012, was £5000 and we maxed it out a couple of years ago on cataract surgery when he developed diabetes and lost his sight due to diabetes related cataracts. Cataract surgery cost £5500. That was at the start of the policy year and we then had to self fund all of his insulin, vet appointments, blood tests and expensive specialist eye vet appointments for the rest of the year.

Long story short, get as high an annual limit as you can afford.

We’re getting a 4 month old mongrel puppy in two weeks and I’ve actually come on here looking for recommendations as I’ve just got a quote from Petplan and it’s come in at £54 for lifetime cover with a £12000 annual limit and while we’ve found Petplan to be very good, that feels a little expensive for a puppy.

I strongly recommend that you avoid Animal Friends. They will do anything to wriggle out of paying claims.

When we got our DDog the Ver said the last DDog they'd seen had developed a liver problem and they were already up to £6K and counting. He said insurance for £5k was slightly better than completely useless.

100% agree.

Cataracts, which obviously many dog breed suffer with, can cost upwards of £4K an eye these days…

I'd go for the highest cover you can afford. I'm with Napo- up to £16000 lifetime cover for (currently until renewal) £40 a month. My springer broke his leg in the summer & the X-rays/scans/op/metalwork & hydrotherapy have come to just over £8000 so far. I'd never have been able to pay that myself. It all adds up quickly & you don't want to be faced with not being able to afford treatment if needed.

Has anyone else used Napo?
I’m currently with Petplan but it’s nearly £100 per month for my 4 year old dog. Napo is half the price!

PLEASE, OP - ensure you cover the dog BEFORE s/he comes to live with you. Puppies are very accident prone indeed.

We've used Petplan for years and found that despite making costly claims (one of our dogs cost them more than £9k in one year), they did not put the premiums up by more than a few pounds in subsequent years. We're now with Direct Line, but only because we hold all our insurance with them and they gave us a good deal.

No personal experience of Napo but through clients I hear the same thing repeated over and over again. Napo will hike up the prices very quickly. Up to a 40% increase in 2 to 3 years.

Just to update my post from a few days ago.

We’ve decided to go with Petplan. Experience with them tells us that they’re good. We never had an issue with them paying out, they were prompt in doing so and quick to chase up the vet if there was a delay from their end, and while premiums are expensive they don’t increase by much year on year.

Make sure you get a life policy, this is one that renews your allowance each year, then ongoing treatment is covered.

Try and get as big a limit as you can afford, but remember, it starts off cheap, but soon goes up as the furballs age.

Check as well for inner limits on conditions, some companies cap what they will pay for a specialist consult, hospitalisation, MRI, CT, TPLO etc.

Hope that helps :)

Unfortunately my experience of petplan not increasing premiums is the opposite. And we only had very small claim. Year 1 it was approx £50 per month, year 2 £70 and now they’re quoting £95. All we’ve ever claimed is approx £150.

We lost our 12 year old dog in August last year so it’s recent experience.
He was diabetic which meant we claimed into the thousands every year for expensive blood tests, insulin and specialist eye vet appointments which were much more expensive that regular vet appts, and we’d also claimed for cataract surgery for him (which maxed out his insurance one year).
The monthly premium in his last year was £94. It started off at £26 in his first year so only increased by a total of £68 per month in 12 years.

In my experience, Waggel were excellent, Many Pets (used to have a great reputation but have changed recently) were OK but took ages to pay and tried to get out of it. With Napo but haven't yet made a claim.
Pet Plan are generally accepted as the best but I'm not paying £100 a month for a five year old lurcher who sleeps most of the day and hasn't had any claims for a couple of years. As he gets older I will definitely pay more but for now I shop around when it comes to renewal.

@PixieMcGraw Thank you, yes, we’re in the same situation and I think I’m going to go with Napo…..

I have a 12 year old dog with addisons and my experience of petplan has been very similar - lots of claims but the premiums never increased ridiculously. I was amazed they let me renew after claiming £1000's in the first year!

If anybody does try Napo I have a £30 voucher code for Amazon (I think!) when you take out a policy (please delete this if not allowed) they've also been brilliant for my friends dog this last week- paying out £5000 testing on a Monday then another £3/4000 for his op on the Friday directly to the vets.

www.napo.pet/join/NbGv6AJ2