Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 5:04 pm Post subject: £ 4,000 vet fee cover - is it enough?
My insurance renewals are coming up soon. I have an excellent policy - Pet Protect from Vet Select (or the other way round!). All the Labs are insured with them and they are very good, paying promptly and always very helpful.
I am certainly not going to change company but they do different grades of cover. With so many dogs to insure I have them on £ 4,000 worth of vet fee cover (each dog). All hips / elbows have been scored and with no signs of HD so fortunately that is one less thing to worry about. I need to be covered for illness and injury - do you think £ 4,000 is a reasonable amount? Even with all Fife's tumours being removed I have not, so far, come anywhere near this figure so far, (fingers crossed as I write this).
The next level is £ 6,000 but the rise in premium is steep.
We have only 4000pounds worth of cover for the year. We were rather limited on insurance company choice because we moved overseas so took what we could get. Haven't used any this year as costs for any treatments have been so low. I have the feeling things might change on return to the UK though.
I always had £4000 for illness or injury with Madison and she was hip scored or anything. Even her last year,the only year i ever claimed, i didn;t even use half that amount for her operations, aftercare and medication.
I have 7k cover, but that's for just 2 dogs. I think if I had any more than 2 dogs, I'm not sure I'd insure at all, but rather just keep a savings pot for emergencies.... so with that in mind, if I could find insurance for multiple dogs that fitted my budget and provided 4k cover for life, I'd be really pleased with that (esp since the dogs seem A OK on the hips/elbows front).
I will also be interested in the answers to this. Kaiser is currently covered for £4000 per year with pet plan but i've done a quote with AXA and they will cover him for £7000 per year for £5 per month cheaper so will probably switch over.
ok just a word of warning for those who are thinking of switching over, and believe me this comes from bitter experience, remember once you have switched over you can no longer claim for anything connected with anything related to previous illness recorded on the vets medical records, so if you have for instance been to your vet with an ear infection under one policy, anything related to ears in the future may well be deemed as a pre existing condition, i found this out the hard way so hope i can help someone from making the same mistake i made
Thanks all of you. I did try M & S for a year for one dog after someone recommended me years ago - I can't remember why I changed back to Pet Protect now - I think M & S went up massively the second year or something. Your cover sounds good though Gary.
I did wonder about the putting money in a pot idea, Mo, but having had lots of claims for Tarka (OCD) years ago, and more recently for tumours on Fife, I tend to stay on the safe side. I can budget for the premiums each month, and know I am able to have whatever treatement the boys require without having to worry how to pay the bills.
I'm not going to change company though as I have been with them since 1997 for my old boy Tarka, and I get discount for all four Labs being with them. I feel happy with £ 4,000 cover for life so I think I will stick with that again this year.
Good advice Sheila! And I think you do get what you pay for, which is why although my company is not the cheapest around, because they have served me so well for so many years, it would take a lot to make me change to a different insurer. They will let you change policy within their range from year to year with no change to what is covered - hence my question at this renewal time.
Tara was insured at the beginning of Jan she was diagnosed with a chronic kidney infection and a rare genetic condition was diagnosed on to top of this.
We had cover for £6,500 per condition.
We spent up to her death, £4000 on her Hirshsprung and £4500 on her uti/kidney infection. She was 10mths old when she died.
Had she lived we would have been praying for no other UTI related problems for the rest of her life as the money may have run out.
____________ Natalie x
LAB LINK RESCUE Co ordinator and Forum Administrator for my sins
Jack, Molly & Maia, watched over by Tara Banana from the Bridge
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