Hi,

I am going to be getting PetPlan insurance soon for my new puppy.

Pet Plan offer 4 weeks free pet (dog) insurance.
The website has a 10% discount on the first year premiums when you sign up (not the free weeks)

I was therefore wondering if anybody had any experience of Petplan and their 4 weeks free insurance?

Namely, after the 4 weeks free cover, do you also then get the 10% discount, or is the 4 weeks free cover instead of the 10% discount?

Thanks

I can't answer your question, but I'm in a similar position and have just got a quote.

I am shocked at the price combined with the number of exclusions and excess. Frankly it looks like a very poor deal. Had I taken out insurance on any of my previous dogs, I would have been well out of pocket.

I never took out insurance on my previous dog, a cross breed, and excluding cremation costs, he had an operation at around £500 to remove a cist from his eye lid. So, we did quite well with him.

My new puppy, however, is a pedigree, and I know they are more prone to genetic problems.

I got a quote for a lifetime policy of around £30 per month.

I'm a huge fan of insurance and especially PetPlan. My dog needed a brain scan on fri and with other tests it will cost them well over £2000. I have in the past had a dog who lived to 14 and I never claimed a penny but that's how insurance works.

I'd be happy to pay £30 for lifetime cover plus PetPlan don't put it up if you claim and ours has only ever increased £1-2 a month at renewal although now he has turned 10 I'm expecting a bigger increase plus a requirement to pay % of the bill which is becoming very common. I wouldn't use any other company these days.

Call me old-fashioned, but if I pay them considerable amounts over a long period of time, I expect insurance to pay up.

They make it look like the insurance covers a lot, but when I looked carefully, a lot of it is unnecessary padding. They are in business to make money, eager to take yours but not so keen to deliver.

I go this with my new pup. Be warned they don't like it when they call you and you tell them you don't want to continue it. They called me about 4 times and were more pushy each time and quite rude!

If your going for insurance PetPlan is the one to go for, my vets says they never quibble and always pay up no problem. My dog isn't insured, I didn't bother insuring her and she has been ok up to dec 2014 when she had to have a four hour op to remove a swallowed toy costing £650. Now she's uninsurable as once their stomach has been opened you can't insure the dog, only for a broken leg or something, no part of the digestive tract. My vets has let me pay this off over the past year, am now down to the final £80, had she been insured the bill would have been paid straight away, on the other hand I'd have shelled out a heck of a lot more than £650 for years worth of insurance, which would have been a waste of money when the vet's happy to be paid in instalments.

I probably will insure my next dog, but for now it depends on your vet, their prices and if their happy to work out a payment plan. I'm lucky enough to have small country vets who have good prices and I get discount as I worked there. If you've got a very expensive vet insurance is the way to go, I know one surgery where a client was referred to, cost £400 just for X-rays, over half my total bill.

My dog I mentioned earlier has mild kidney and liver disease and has just had had 2 fits. Insurance gave us the luxury of him having a brain scan to check for a brain tumor as at his age it's the likeliest cause of fits. Because of his kidneys we didn't want to opt for medication based on guesswork and risk further harm to his kidneys. Thankfully there is no tumor but a slightly abnormal area so the scan has been sent away for a more detailed inspection but it isn't causing the fits.
He has had lots of bloods to check other possible causes which have been negative, just waiting for the last couple to come back. The vets and vet hosp did a direct claim so we only paid our excess of the £2000 + bill. The information from the tests has given him the best chance of living as healthy life as possible. It's unexpected things like this that are why I insure our dogs. I don't claim for smaller things I pay them myself. Even if your own vet charges reasonable prices if a dog needs referring on to a vet hosp then the prices are eye watering but sometimes it's necessary or they have to be PTS - their prices are a whole other discussion. Obviously we all choose how far we go with treatment and I'm not a believer in carry on at all cost but in his case an MRI isn't invasive and is a reasonable next step, brain surgery wouldn't be to me. Insurance gives me peace of mind that if they're seriously ill I don't need to panic about paying for it.

Pet Plan all the way for me. Vets trust them and are usually happy to claim direct from them. I think where pet ins can fall down is if vets won't claim direct so you are stuck having to pay a big bill then wait to get the money back which to me defeats the point of insurance really.

I'm just about to start ey plans 4 week free insurance. My pups had the 4 weeks free with the kennel club insurers, but their quote was nearly £100 a month! Pet plans will be just under £40.

My cat's insured with Pet Plan. He's nearly 5 now, and although he hasn't been to the vets in a few years, his first couple of years were constant vet visits. I was debating cancelling it, but I figure it's best to keep it going with the new pup around, just in case.
They never questioned it. We paid our access and that was that. He was in for some strange reasons too (climbing next doors wall, peeing down their door and falling. Eating tinfoil. A broken tail and a burnt paw. To name but a few).

Sounds quite a character

I work in insurance, and my cat is also insured with pet plan.

I can say that as insurers go, Pet Plan is very good, and has a sound reputation.

Another positive vote for Petplan over here I work closely with pet insurers and can only say good things about Petplan in regards to paying out claims. My own pets are also insured with them - yes, they are more costly than other pet insurance companies but from what I've seen & dealt with, you get what you pay for. I was very thankful for it when one of my cats racked up a £3,000 vet bill due to being referred to a specialist.

But then after that pay out how much will your next premium be?

Pet Plan don't increase the premium if you claim. Other insurers may start off cheaper but if you claim they hike the premium up, often to crazy amounts. In her first year of cover my dog developed a life threatening autoimmune disease. We went past our £4000 cover in 3 wks but she recovered and we were so glad we had the £4000 from Petplan which they paid direct to the vet hosp. The premium went up by just over £1 a month at renewal! And the same amount the next year.

I got this when I got my puppy from the breeder.

After the four weeks were up petplan offered the deal of the ten percent off, if they don't just remind them about it if you wish to take them up on the offer.

Good luck with your puppy too, what breed are you getting?

I've never bothered with pet insurance as, to me, the costs and exclusions don't make it worthwhile.

You're better off putting the costs of the insurance away into a fund and drawing on that as and when your pet needs treatment.

Wouldn't have worked for me. Four months after starting her policy with petplan my dog was seriously ill and PetPlan paid out £4000. She recovered and was fine but it took months and a lot of meds and treatment.

My other dogs with them has developed kidney trouble and the meds and blood tests aren't cheap, I doubt we'd have saved enough up to cover them. He's doing really well now he's on the right meds and diet but he'll need treatment for the rest of his life for it.

Maybe we've just been unlucky but if my dogs are ill or injured the last thing I want is to be worrying about is paying for it, that's why I have pet insurance.

My dog needed £4,000 of treatment, we'd had him 3 years which had cost around £800 in insurance payments.

Mind you although it was Pet Plan I had the budget one, and after that they found a tenuous link to that condition for everything else we claimed for and so in the end we gave up the insurance (had another vet bill for £2,500 last year-non-insured).

I'd recommend Pet Plan but only the higher cost plans, not the budget one.

I have to say that maybe we've been lucky but we've not had any problems at all with petplan and the vets and referral hospitals have been happy to deal direct with them. You just need to ring Petplan and authorise them to speak to the vet direct if necessary and it's all gone smoothly - so far!

We had the lifetime classic cover of £4000 a year for our girl that we lost at xmas and the same but £7000 for my boy.

They would have found the connection to it on either plan, the basic or higher cover. It wouldn't have anything to do with the plan, most likely.

Yes true- but on the budget plan you are only allowed a set amount per condition for the life of the dog, whereas with the higher tiered plans the amount renews each year.

I have always been a massive advocate of pet insurance, but I now have a very nasty taste in my mouth and neither of my dogs are insured.

I originally took out a whole of life plan for both of my dogs with Halifax literally the day they entered my life. After about 4yrs Halifax decided not to continue with pet insurance, so by then my dogs were older and harder to insure. BUT, Halifax recommended me to another company (very relieved) and the premium was very similar so I stayed with them for a few years.

But - the insurance doubled one year for no reason as we hadn't made a claim and the dogs were still young (ish). I couldn't afford the premium for both dogs so I went online and found another company. I put down everything the dogs had ever had wrong with them and the premium was doable, so I stayed with them. However, on the dogs 8th birthdays the premium soared and the % we would have to pay off the final bill was eye watering ... but we stayed with them as it was better than nothing.

However, at the age of 9.5 years my Springer got poorly ... and he died. I went to make a claim and they declined it. It turned out that I had forgotten to mention a small cyst which he had had removed when he was 6 months old. Due to that cyst - they wouldn't pay out for his abdominal tumour. I was about £1,750 out of pocket. I was gutted. I had been so careful listing every ear infection and grass seed in his paw ... but I forgot something that happened 9yrs prior.

I then cancelled the insurance for him and my other dog .... and now I pay monthly into a separate savings account. If the money wasn't enough then I would use my empty credit card.

How awful, I am so sorry for the loss of your dog and then everything that happened, it's just awful.

Do you mind saying what company it was?

It was Legal & General ... well, their pet insurance side of L&G. It was a horrible time. Not only were we grieving the loss of our beloved fur son, but I then had to fight with the insurers. Even the vet got involved and said that the cyst from 9yrs ago had no relation whatsoever with the abdominal tumour.