Dog insurance recommendations

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Discussion

Atlas 12v

Original Poster:

349 posts

215 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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We are collecting a pup in early June. I had planned to go straight to NFU for insurance but as we've got a little time I thought I'd see peoples recommendations?

Particularly those who have had to make a/multiple claims.

Alternative is to gain public liability on the home insurance and pay for whatever may come in the future. Thoughts on this too?

pidsy

8,151 posts

163 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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Pet Plan are the biggest and easiest to deal with in my experience- most vets can deal directly with them on your behalf.

Bought By Many is also increasingly popular.

RowanF

72 posts

166 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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Admittedly wrong animal but our cat insurance through Tesco was faultless on a recent claim that ultimately sadly ended with euthanasia for the poor thing. £1400 claim settled within a week, paid direct to vet. £120 excess taken by vet by way of deposit.

moorx

3,760 posts

120 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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pidsy said:
Pet Plan are the biggest and easiest to deal with in my experience- most vets can deal directly with them on your behalf.
I agree. Two of ours are with Pet Plan and they have dealt with claims efficiently. As above, if them paying the vet direct is important to you, check with the vets you might be using, as they sometimes won't deal direct with certain insurance companies. They're not the cheapest though.

Make sure you get the right type of cover - for lifetime.

For public liability cover, you can take out membership with the Dog's Trust for £25 per year which gives £1,000,000 cover per claim.

https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/get-involved/membersh...

pidsy

8,151 posts

163 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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Cover for life is probably the most important thing.
I’ve got one dog on PP but the other dogs renewal (£130 a month) with 1 claim in 7 years was too strong so moved her over to BBM - half the price for pretty much the same cover.

rigga

8,748 posts

207 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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Bought by many were incredibly efficient when we had to claim last year, a 11 night stay at the vets ain't cheap, they sorted the claim quickly without fuss, and the renewal a couple of months later, was better than expected. New puppie was added to the policy later at a reasonable cost too..

Was with petplan for a few years previously, and the premium just got ridiculous, and we never even claimed.

Monkeylegend

27,067 posts

237 months

Tuesday 27th April 2021
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Our Vet made two successful claims for cruciate ligamant ops since last March on one of our dogs, capped at £3k for the two, we had to pay a grand total of £37.

This is with Tesco, paid out with no problems whatsoever and we received a very sympathetic letter from the confirming the payout direct to our Vet.

BoggoStump

317 posts

55 months

Wednesday 28th April 2021
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Tesco 10/10

LotusMartin

1,116 posts

158 months

Wednesday 28th April 2021
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rigga said:
Bought by many were incredibly efficient when we had to claim last year, a 11 night stay at the vets ain't cheap, they sorted the claim quickly without fuss, and the renewal a couple of months later, was better than expected. New puppie was added to the policy later at a reasonable cost too..

Was with petplan for a few years previously, and the premium just got ridiculous, and we never even claimed.
BBM have been a complete PITA for us. every claim takes an eon of back and forth. Asking again and again for information from the vet which they’ve shady received. the last claim took nearly 3 months to pay out.

here_we_go

169 posts

112 months

Wednesday 28th April 2021
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RowanF said:
Admittedly wrong animal but our cat insurance through Tesco was faultless on a recent claim that ultimately sadly ended with euthanasia for the poor thing. £1400 claim settled within a week, paid direct to vet. £120 excess taken by vet by way of deposit.
Similar story here - no complaints about Tesco.

sc0tt

18,115 posts

207 months

Thursday 29th April 2021
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Petplan for us.

Bonefish Blues

28,806 posts

229 months

Sunday 2nd May 2021
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Not Protect Your Bubble (I will never, ever, forget the glee in the voice of the Agent who disallowed a claim)

Tomo1971

1,143 posts

163 months

Monday 3rd May 2021
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Take a look at Pdsa insurance. Paid a £300 claim for us promptly which did include an initial vet visit that we initially weren't going to claim for but the condition worsened and the vet linked the visits and paid no quibble.

Paying £13 a month, went up to £15 this (our 2nd year) with them.

Lotobear

6,990 posts

134 months

Wednesday 5th May 2021
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We've never insured and our (pedigree) terriers are now 13 and 14.

We've had the odd vet bill along the way but overall we have paid much less by 'self insuring' than had we taken insurance through a provider.

We found that there are so many exclusions it made no sense, the 'house' always wins etc. - others will see the risk differently of course but it's worked for us.