Pet insurance can be a lifeline when your pet gets sick or has an accident, as it will allow you to pay the often hugely expensive fees that veterinary surgeons charge to get your pet well again. Without the financial help that pet insurance cover can provide, you may be faced with the unhappy option of having your pet put to sleep rather than allowing it to carry on suffering.
With this in mind, more and more people are deciding that this once-overlooked type of insurance is a worthwhile buy. But how can you decide which of the dozens or even hundreds of policies available is right for you? Here are three things that you should definitely consider.
Firstly, is the policy suitable for your pet? Most policies have specific exclusions that could render them totally unsuitable for your situation. For example, certain breeds of animal that are prone to expensive treatments might be excluded from cover. Another example is that most policies have an upper limit on the age of the pet to be insured. If you don't carefully review the policy for these exclusions, you could well find out that any claim you have to make in the future is turned down.
Next, decide how much you can afford to pay for your policy. Obviously, in most cases, the less you pay the less features you will get. The flipside of this is that if you pay more you might end up being charged for benefits you are unlikely to need or ever claim for. That said, policy prices can vary widely even for products offering much the same set of features, so it's worth shopping around and making use of price comparison services to get the best deal. Always remember though that comparison sites don't usually cover offers from every insurer on the market, so it can often pay to do a little research of your own too.
Finally, take a look around on the internet for reviews posted by other customers. This will help you decide on whether the policy is worth taking out. There are two points to bear in mind here though. Dissatisfied people are more likely to post reviews than people who are happy, so you might get a false impression by only reading reviews posted by unhappy customers. Secondly, positive reviews can sometimes have a hidden agenda: they might have been placed by the company themselves, for example, or they might even be written by a broker with the aim of earning a commission by convincing you to buy. Nonetheless, you can get a general feel of the value of a product by reading a wide range of reviews across multiple sites.