Pet Insurance Hikes!

Aldaniti

Aldaniti

At the Start
Joined
Dec 21, 2005
Messages
2,360
Location
Wickford
I complain about the rises each year but this year takes the Piss!

I have three dogs insured who apart from having their jabs have never been to the vets, they are all under 6yrs old
2008/9 £38.50 total for all three per month
2009/10 £60.50
2010/11 £143.51!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Healthy Pets otherwise known as Feck Arse Industries :mad:

Promptly told them where to shove it this morning after ringing them to make sure it wasn't a mistake!
 
You ought to get a discount for a no-claims bonus, too! Does Go Compare compare pet insurances? Might be worth searching.
 
I had the shock of my life when I rang Pet Plan last year - Ive got the two dogs ( 9 year old greyhound, and 2 year old golden retriever) and Red ( 14 year old thoroughbred hack) so I wanted a multi-pet quote, with the vets staff discount....

they quoted me more (£36pm) for Percy than I was already paying - so when I asked for Maisy (the retriever) as well and gave her details over, I was given an amount of £42.... I thought that was ok for the two of them (id had quotes for Maisy ranging from £8 a month up to £30) - but no, it was £42 for her, plus the £36 for Percy - that was WITH the discount for the multi pet AND my vets staff discount.... "would you like me to put you through to the equine department miss J ?"

errr - no. !!!!
 
Imagine how many animals would be dust-carted if pet registration and insurance became law, as it does for vehicles. If you two, presumably earning fair money and Trudi in particular with access to a clinic, think these charges are high, I can't believe that any of the dogs on Council estates are pet-insured. I realise there's the PDSA for those on low incomes, but if the RSPCA's estimate of an expenditure of £30,000 over an animal's average lifespan is to be believed (it seems high to me, but it is an average of costs), how on earth can low income earners afford one, let alone two or three animals? I suppose that's when we see those ghastly documentaries on animal rescuers retrieving them from starvation and filth.
 
lol - Im not on that good a wage Kri,and with my animals accidentproneness,Im fairly regular at my small animal vets for various stitching and antibiotic needing things - hence i need it !!

its like a lot of things - its a huge waste of money unless you need to use it. I object to handing out over £50 a month to them when htey are such buggers to claim from,but with the average vets bill being well over the excess, I just cant afford to not have it.Well - I can, but its put them down for something that i cant afford to treat,leave them injured in the hope that they will get better,or just not have them at all....

Its funny, we see all sorts of things at work - some people get lucky and never really have a problem, and others seem to get every problem going. usually the ones who get every problem out there are the people who look after their horses brilliantly - proper fences/checked twice a day at least/shod every 6-8 weeks religiously, you know the kind of thing... and the ones that dont get any problems are the ones kept in the fields with the saggy barbed wire,rubbish and sharp things all over the fields, visited once in a blue moon (you know the kind of thing!!)
 
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Christ - I just realised the costs quoted were per month and not per year! Feckinell, that's outrageous! I can now see why the PDSA is inundated with pets which people say they can't afford to pay for themselves.
 
Oh yes - per month.... though to be fair, over the years Ive paid an awful lot less in insurance premiums than Ive had from them all for various injuries.... and contrary to how it appears, i dont rush them to the vets whenever something goes wrong - i just know what needs one and what probably doesnt!

just as examples - Red's premium cost me about £260 for the year (paid hers in a lump, and yes - its less than the dogs work out at!!) she had a sinus infection at easter,which didnt clear up with antibiotics, turned out that she had an infected tooth root (only seeable on x-ray) and she had to have that removed - its cost well over £2400 so far, and shes off for a scope tomorrow becuase shes still got trouble with it. now if I didnt have insurance, it would have been staff price, but that would have only taken it down by about a third, half at the most - and Im lucky that Id be able to pay it off in bits. The antibiotics she was on very first of all at COST price came to £80!!

Compare that with Percy, who's last biggie was when he impaled himself on a stick in the back garden - it went between two of his toes,into his foot. I took him into the small animal vets to see if he was stitchable or not,they kept him in for the day because they had to put him under to do it - and instead of the large cut that we first thought he'd got, they found a large cavity that was full of bits of stick and dirt. His excess for the insurance is £60, and the total bill (which I had to pay,then claim back from the insurance company) came to £480 by the time he'd had all the treatment he needed,and antibiotic cover.

and then there was Po - who cost my insurance company nigh on £25k in a year for various injuries (ten years ago) when he was a yearling. I had a very nice letter from the insurers when his renewall was due, requesting I took my horse elsewhere.... they had paid out a hundred times more than I had paid in - almost literally !!!!

Pets are expensive things to have when they go wrong !!!
 
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What makes it worse is that when your pet gets to a certain age they quite often won't insure it anyway [just when it's at an age when things start to go wrong]. Think Pet Plan are one of the better ones when it comes to that. I've never insured a pet before, but I've now got my whippet insured in case she breaks a leg or gets cut on barbed wire [something that they are prone to doing]. Wish I'd got all the money I've paid out during my life in insurance, because I'd be rich by now. And a lot of the increases are a result of fraudulent [sp] claims, and that makes me really angry.
 
I was just about to insure Dougal when he got sick. Ironic, as he was the only one of the cats whom I had considered it for.
 
Have vet bills gone up a lot in the last 10 years or so? As I mentioned in the other thread it's 10 years since I lost my cat but I can't remember bills being so high. Since then pet insurance seems to have become more popular, is this as a result of increasing vet bills or have vet bills increased because so many owners are covered by insurance and they know they can charge more?
 
Vets bills have increased a lot in the last 10 years (and longer!) mostly becuase of the improvements in treatments and management of animals. Ten years ago, there werent the feeds about that there are these days, there wasnt the knowledge about nutrition that there is, and the advances in medical knowledge are huge. Its the same as human medicine up to a point,there are improvements all the time - and with the changing knowledge, come changing treatments. 10 years ago there wasnt anywhere near the amount of surgery done that there is now, and this is all thanks to people learning more and more about the best way to treat ailments.

The reason that vets ask if an animal is insured is usually so that they know that they can treat the animal with whatever they think is best, without having to worry about the cost. If an animal isnt insured,they dont get any worse treatment, it just may have to be more conservative, or treated with slightly different drugs to get (hopefully) the same results.

Im pretty sure that some vets do the "oh good its insured, rack it up" thing though !!
 
redhead said:
I was just about to insure Dougal when he got sick. Ironic, as he was the only one of the cats whom I had considered it for.
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Bugger! Same thing happned to me with my very sick stray black guy Bags. And he then had to have 1,000 tests and meds.

I then insured my 2 ferals for 2 years, but they seemed okay and the cost went up, and I got a third cat ..... so I stopped. Sure enough, new cat got cat flu (despite having shots) and big stripey grey guy stated coughing in a mysterious and expensive way.

I was with Pet Plan for a horse I have on share with a friend. We stopped and switched to Farmers Unuion because Pet Plan kept changing the rules, and price, every year. Thank God I still kept her insured though as she now has navicular and the vet bills are never ending.

My cats have no insirance now and I worry ..... but who can afford premiums like this?
 
Sometimes it seems that the treatment is cheaper than the insurance. From what everyone here is saying, I seem to be paying 40-50% less for actual treatment, which is monthly and will be ongoing until whatever happens.

I think firms like PetPlan try to scare you into forking out each month.

When they first started, weren't the payments annual?

Tesco have their own pet insurance branch now, might be worth investigating.
 
Don't have my pup insued at the mo, although after the times he recorded at the weekend we going to do a bit more racing next year so I think we going to need the cover just incase.
 
I had my two insured up to about 18 months ago,let it lapse, then the older one had a lump which needed surgery in March.£300 lighter I decided to re-insure them and got it with Animal Friends Insurance(AFI) through the Co-Op.

Costs me £20 per month for both for basic insurance with a £65 excess, although I do have to pay 35% for my older dog (14 this year) of any claim, but I can handle that. They are not roamers and usually stay out of trouble but due to the rise in vets costs and the 'unexpected' I thought it was worth it. Plus I got £15 worth of vouchers to spend at the Co-Op :lol:

< The two in question are the ones in my avatar.
 
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Adorable dogs, BW - I love the one who's clearly aware the camera's on him, and the other (is he the elder?) focusing on somewhere else. Lovely expressions on their faces.
 
As I'm on my mob and can't chew through th forms at a rough guess as mines non ped would it vbe a cheaper premium if he's lurcher rather than whippet?
 
quite possibly - cos he'd be classed as a crossbreed, and they think they are more robust than pedigrees.... you will have to make sure your vet has him down as a lurcher though - cos theres a bit on their form to say what breed - and you dont want to give the insurance co an excuse to drag their feet if you need to claim.
 
krizon said:
Adorable dogs, BW - I love the one who's clearly aware the camera's on him, and the other (is he the elder?) focusing on somewhere else. Lovely expressions on their faces.
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Thanks Kri. Yes,the younger one (Kady - pronounced Kay Dee) love's the camera and will pose all day but Skye, my old Belgian Shepherd, is very camera shy and I have to catch her unaware for an 'ears up' picture:D
 
It is funny how some dogs just seem to crave the spotlight! Perhaps they're the reincarnations of old movie stars? And I apologise to Skye for calling her 'him'!
 
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