My Pets

My Pets
Dakota & Princess (in Doggy Heaven), Lenny & Nancy

Thursday 18 October 2012

To Insure or Not? Confused.com

Deciding whether to insure your pet is a personal preference, one that I have not done. I may not have made the right choice...but I’ve made my dog bed.

If you do decide you want to insure your dog or cat, Confused.com has launched a multi pet insurance comparison website and asked me to blog about it. While searching the site I learned my 12 year old male Labrador mix could be covered for £120.36/yr (accident only) or £196.92/yr (lifetime). These costs do not include regular visits to the vet or for neutering, which in Lenny’s case is not necessary as he was snipped a long time ago. The max payout per year is £2,000 and the policy is with an insurer that I am not familiar with. The most expensive policy with another insurer was for £654.96/yr (lifetime) with £5,000 max coverage. Coverage seemed really good but the cost for it was extreme in my view… I know he’s old but come on. Although my cat in the last year of her life did rack up over £2,000 in vet bills.

Confused.com is very easy to navigate and there are 12 insurers listed: Animal Friends, Computer Quote, Cover My Pet, Green Insurance, Healthy Pets, Help u Cover, More Than, Pet Insurance, Pet Pals, Pet Protect, Purely Pets and Vets Medi Cover. Haven’t heard of many of these companies but then again Lenny isn’t insured. The insurers and policy types are listed by order of expense making it easy to compare. If you Google ‘pet insurance’ there are at least two biggies not compared, but you could easily search those websites individually. Confused.com also doesn’t list the supermarkets and major insurers not dedicated to pets, probably offshoots to their core insurance coverage, of which I am suspicious. What I really want to know is how people view these companies and if they find them easy to deal with… now that would be useful. I guess that would be a consumer watch dog (ha) website.

Confused.com boasts…”The new solution allows customers to get an insurance quote for up to five pets in the same quote process”…. “As well as offering discounts of up to 10% on multi-pet insurance policies, customers will also be rewarded with 1,000 nectar points for every pet named on the multi-pet insurance policy. “ The website also has testimonies from customers’ illustrating savings.

If you try the site or have insight into animal insurance I'd love to hear what you have to say so let me know.