Pet Insurance Novice!

[MrsWonderland]

Wise Mumsnetters, please help me unpick the wonderfully arcane world of pet insurance.

We are getting a kitten and I want to make sure I have decent cover. (I don't want to put an amount away each month which I know some people do)

I've looked on the price comparison sites and got direct quotes from PetPlan and Bought By Many but I'm still not sure what to go for. The latter are obviously much more expensive than the former but it's hard to unpick the major difference when total claims, excess and duration seem to be the same.

Definitely want accident and illness. Definitely want 'for life', looking for a decent but not silly level of cover and obv a provider who wont try to wriggle out of any claim.

The cat will be an indoor cat so you would think that would lower the cost due to lower risk of accident yet none even ask.

Any advice? If I renew with the "for life" providers will they just push the fee up to crazy amounts each outlying year?

What should I be looking for? Bought By Many alone have five quotes but even the top level "fixed for life" quote says that for pets over the age of 9 I'll be liable for 20% of any claim.

Aaaghhhh I'm so confused!!

(It's just a regular moggy btw!)

I've got the top level cover from Tesco. We've had 17k of claims and they've been great.

Co-payments where you pay a percentage of the claim in is now the norm in older animals.

We had this recently. Went with Tesco in the end. They have none of this pay a percentage of the claim thing.

Personally Petplan although our last claim took longer to process but overall they are good at paying up. We have cover up to £7k for our 2 year old who ran up a £2.5k bill in the summer.....

I have PetPlan for my moggy. She got herself in a huge bust up a while back and it cost over £1k in fees (x-rays, specialist treatment). I only had to pay the excess, PetPlan covered the rest and it felt very worth it, especially with the cost of emergency treatment!

She has the lifetime cover up to £14,000.

When I got mine, everywhere said no reduction for indoors, and just about all said they charged more for the boy "because they get into more fights with other cats". Pointing out that as they were indoors that couldn't really happen had no effect.

I'm still happy to pay for the elements that cover if the cat(s) get lost, as however good you are at cat proofing the house there's always a chance one COULD get out. Mine are microchipped - OK mine were done by the rescue but if they hadn't been I'd have had them done. Same with neutering, for health and temperament reasons.

I'm looking into this for an 11 year old cat. It seems everywhere but Tesco want me to pay an excess and 20% of vet fees. Mine is also a neutered male who doesn't go out.

I was with Tesco to start with but after the 1st year the premium jumped up despite no claims. I went with Bought by Many as they were cheaper than PetPlan. They paid out no problem when I claimed for one of my cats. The claim was done online really easily

Another vote for Tesco. Paid out numerous times with zero hassle.

Top customer service

You can still change provider even if you take out a lifetime policy, just means anything you claimed for wouldn't be covered by the new one. As I hadn't claimed with tesco my lifetime policy with Bought by Many covered everything

My cat is insured with Argos and they've been great, the annual cost hasn't gone up despite making a few claims. When one of my cats was seriously ill and eventually had to be PTS they handled it very sensitively.