Dog insurance

[bunn]

Tis the season for painful amounts of money to be spend on Mollydog insurance.

She was with M&S pet insurance, and being a lazy person, I would probably have just renewed if someone hadn't pointed out 2 sneaky changes to the policy:

1) The excess on vet bills is no longer £50 - for dogs aged over 9, it's £50 + 15%!

2) They now require you to call a special 'helpline' before you are allowed to rush your dog to the emergency out of hours vet - otherwise they may not cover you.

How crap is that? For one thing, I don't want to be messing trying to get through to helplines if my dog needs emergency care, for another thing, the amount of 'help' they can give in an emergency by phone is likely to be much less than my vet, who is qualified to give advice and has her full medical history, and for a third thing, if you are in the middle of a wood with a dog with a hole in it, you might just not have the phone number for your insurance company, complete with policy number to hand! What are the odds that if you phone them but can't give your full details they refuse to speak to you 'because of data protection'...

Beh!

Axa was £60 cheaper for better cover - and underwrote the M&S policy anyway.

Comments

[chainmailmaiden]

I try not to think about the amount we spend in pet insurance and I can guarantee we pay far less than you for our 2 kittens with no previous health problems, it still seems a lot though :-(

On the other hand it's cheaper than paying out to get them fixed if they break :-)

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

You should get 23 identical ones at the same time, then it doesn't matter if one breaks as you'll have spares.

[chainmailmaiden]

:-p

No thanks, it's bad enough cleaning the litter trays when there's just 2 of them. I can't begin to imagine how much work it would be, doing it for 23 of them!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

What, 23 identical pet insurance policies? ;-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I think I'm about £10 ahead on Az, having broken him comprehensively and had to have him repaired, but Mollydog has cost enormous sums and I've never made a claim on her (apart from her leg, which is excluded as a pre-existing condition, she's never done anything expensive). The new policy is £247pa. I could probably insure a car for that!

Our gamble on not insuring the cats has paid off quite well over the years as so far (touch wood) they have been amazingly healthy.

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

They insist you call a helpline in an emergency????

Sod that. I'm glad you went elsewhere. That is just apalling.