Is anyone insured with Sainsbury's Pet Insurance

[meriad]

if yes, any comments on them either good or bad

I need to move two of mine over from where they were and the choices for me so far are PetPlan or Sainsbury and Sainsbury is far cheaper per month

[sarie]

I was insured with Sainsbury's and they always paid out without any problems so I can't really say anything negative about their service. However, I switched mine over to Petplan just over a year ago as the price with Sainsbury's jumped to the point where there was very little difference in price and there were a few things I didn't like about the Sainsbury's policy.
The first and biggest issue with Sainsburys pet insurance is that they don't offer a lifetime policy, or they certainly didn't when I had it. It's worth double checking this but it was one of the main reasons I ditched Sainsburys as the per condition per year cover is useless for ongoing conditions. I have my cats on the Classic Lifetime policy with Petplan covering up to £7000 per year for life.
I'm very relieved I switched as Harvey now has a heart condition that requires care for life so I'd have been screwed.

The other big issue for me is that most vets won't deal direct with Sainsburys so you have to pay out of your own pocket and claim it back. I had to hand over £1200 to cover a vet bill after my cat was hit by a car and it took 6 weeks to get the money back from Sainsburys. I had to borrow money from my parents at the time to cover the cost and I know not everyone can just find money like that. Again, I'm relieved as Petplan deal direct with vets and I've now got over £3500 of bills outstanding that are being dealt with by Petplan - there's no way I could've financed that myself without direct claims.

The final issue is that I've had three insurance companies pull out of the market on me. Sainsburys are still operating in the market but they're not a specialist and there's a chance they could pull out at some point and that would mean any pre-existing conditions would not be covered by your new insurance company. Petplan have been around for a long time, everyone knows them and they're well reviewed so I decided to just take the plunge and switch.

Personally, if you can afford it, I'd go with Petplan. Sainsburys will jump in price after a year anyway so it's only a temporarily cheap solution. My Petplan policy went up £1.50 per cat this year so it's not a huge hike whereas my Sainsburys policy jumped £6 per cat one year, very quickly closing the gap on the likes of Petplan.

[meriad]

Thanks! I just bit the bullet and moved the boys over to PetPlan. As you say - they are good and most vets are happy to deal with them direct.

As expected they have excluded Harry's recent polyp issue, but 'only' for 24 months so provided I haven't made any claims for a polyp in that time then that exclusion falls away

[sarie]

Cool, hopefully they're as good to you as they have been to me. I just got a call this afternoon from Petplan to ask how Harvey is doing and to confirm that they've approved his rather large outstanding claim so I'm feeling pretty glad to have them right now!

I'm impressed that they'll only exclude Harry's polyp issue for 24 months too, that's good news! Hopefully he doesn't have anymore polyp issues in the meantime

Oh, one final good thing about them.. they always answer their phones really quickly! Makes such a change from some of my previous insurers.. AXA were dreadful for leaving me in long queues.

[meriad]

and actually for this first year they were the same price as Sainsbury so..... but just watch this space next year when they increase the pricing by silly money

[sarie]

Hehe hopefully they don't. As I said above, mine only went up by £1.50 per cat this year whereas Sainsburys almost doubled my policy costs one year so fingers crossed for you Petplan don't hike your costs too much next year!

[greenkitty]

I have no quibble with Petplan either, I've claimed thousands for Hector over the last 6 years and they've never once questioned or refused to pay a claim. I've had claims pre-authorised so my vets can settle direct again with no issues.