Petplan for rabbits?

Hi, I was wondering what people thought about petplan? I got a months free for both of mine at the vets and am considering taking it out for them but it's a little pricey and wondering if it's worth it? You seem to have to pay for cover for things like 250 towards alternative therapies - are my rabbits likely to need alternative therapies? Also as vaccinations and neutering obviously aren't covered, how expensive can rabbits get if they have problems?

Hi, when i had 10 or more rabbits we had them all insured and ran to the vet all the time and litterally spent thousands through the insurance.
I no longer have insurance and am unsure whether it is worth it or not.
I guess it is hit or miss like most insurances, if you are unlucky and your bunny is ill it would be very expensive so worth it, what are the excess costs.
You will have to pay the first small amount each time before they pay the rest so if the excess is £50 say and you pay £20 a month then you would already have paid £70 before they helped out and if you had just put £20 in a pot every month chances are it would cover an unlucky illness. However you could be very unlucky and end up needing a lot of care. Check if it would cover a bunny who developed teeth probs, although again there is the excess you would need to pay.
Sorry this is not helpfull, i also have thought of insuring them again, someone on here might use it and give you another opinionxx

karen

Yeah we too have mulled this over many times! We were insured with Petplan for a year but the premiums for our two buns (only 2 and 3 yrs old) went up to over £200 or something ridiculous - and they don't pay for dentals or vaccinations obviously and you have to pay the first £50 or so of treatment. At the end of the day, including the fact that each year the premium will go up as they get older, that adds up over 7-8 yrs (buns live up to 10yrs) to around £2000. Well, even if buns needed urgent complex surgery and treatment it would probably come in under that or around that - and there is always the chance that they would never need it? I think it depends on your financial situation. If it were just me and my buns I'd have to do pet insurance as could never afford the emergency bill if it ever happened. But with my OH footing the bill and earning enough to put it on credit cards and pay it off later if we ever needed to, it's not a problem for us.

Hi!

I have mine insured, but I think it is a matter of how your finances are (sorry to get personal!). We don't tend to have a lot of capital floating around (we are getting married next year), but can afford £13 per month, so it is much easier for us to have her insured so that if something awful (fingers crossed not) does happen then it won't come down to what we can afford. If we were a bit better off at the moment, then I think I might take the gamble, as it is very unlikely that you will get out more from teh policy than you put in.

Having said that, if you contact Petplan, when I joined Bix up a few months ago, they were doing 12 months for the price of 11, and that's after the initial 1 month free which I also took advantage of.

Hope this helps!

Hi I also considered this as got a month free too. However, the excess is £50 and each time I have taken mine to the vets it has luckily been for minor things and cost between £20 and £40 so not worth claiming. I guess if you had a serious problem (God forbid) then it would be worth it though. It's the same with all insurance you can pay for years and never need to use it... but if you don't have it then it can cost a fortune! :roll: Sorry this prob hasn't helped!

Ive got both of mine insured but only Dill through petplan.Its all very well me thinking of just saving money for their bills,but I tried that before & ended up spending it!:lol:If you are not as weak as me & can save,then maybe its better but as I struggle to save for anything insurance is the root ive taken.Also,B became ill 2 months after insuring which would have meant I would've had probably £20 saved for vet wheras because she was insured she was well covered-good job too as she had to have xrays & blood tests-not cheap.

I was looking at petplan yesterday for my two - it was £24 per month for the both of them 'for life' cover. The small print stated that they must be VHD and myxi vaccinated and they must have a dental check up every year, although the insurance doesn't cover the cost of burring and regular normal dental treatment. Cover also doesn't include any travelling costs if needed for treatment.

So really down to you whether you save up yourself or pay into insurance....I'm still deciding!:?

If you couldn't afford vet bills of over £500 then yes get insurance

pet plan is worth every single penny... in Alvins two short years of life i have had to claim twice for Stasis at over £300 a time, they have no once objected to out of hours vets neither

and Pearl has also just had £300 worth of treatment for an unknown breathing issue again all paid fully apart from the £50 excess

as much as i hate insurance companies on the whole, i cant find fault with petplan

Amber is insured with Petplan. I have claimed once and had a cheque within 2 weeks. Will be insuring my new bun tomorrow

I phoned Petplan tonight for a quote. Based on Snowdrop, who is 7 months, and i explained that i was plannin on rescuin a rabbit after she had her op on Friday. They based the quote on the rescue bein 3 just as an example. Quoted £17.38. Is this quite good?

I asked about dentals, they said they do dental treatment but not filing, anyone know what that means?

Nicola x

Hi, no insurance company i'm aware of (i deal with insurance claims at my vet practice) will cover PREVENTATIVE dental treatment for any species, be it cat, dog or rabbit. For a rabbit, this consists of dental burring/filing. So basically, if your rabbit requires spurs to be filed down or if the incisors need to be trimmed, insurance will not cover the cost. However, Petplan will cover the cost of other dental treatment, such as, abscesses, loose teeth etc.

My last rabbit had a loose tooth and in an 18 month period his vet bills reached around £1200, just for the tooth problems!! Petplan paid it all no problems.
He also had a liver torsion (from which he died) and they paid that too.

Petplan are fab and i always recommend them. Never any problems and they pay promptly. Worth every penny in my opinion. Saving up money is an option, but what if you save, say, £20 per month and 3 months later your rabbit breaks a leg - £60 would barely pay for an xray let alone the repair!

If you have loads of dosh (not me!!) then you can maybe afford to be without insurance, but for me, insurance is about being able to provide the very best treatment for your pet and if money is an issue (I couldn't afford hundreds of £), then insurance provides you with a way of giving your pet the best you can.

That is much clearer now (bit of a novice) :lol:

Thank you

Sorry about your bun

Nicola x

donnamt said:

as much as i hate insurance companies on the whole, i cant find fault with petplan

Click to expand...

I agree with the above 100%.

Question...

Just wondering when it says that you have to get dental check ups what does this mean? The vet checks Bikky's teeth when we take her in every 6 months, is this adequate? :?

Should be. You might want to get that noted on his medical records though so that if you have to make a claim later the vet can check for sure. Petplan won't cover a normal burring though so it's mainly for the major dental problems.

thanks for the advice, I think on balance probably should get them insured, if only because then with my luck then nothing will ever happen that needs in excess of £50, but if I DON'T insure them then probably the opposite will apply!

i tried to insure a kitten through petplan and i thought the premiums of £10 a month for a young cat a bit on the steep side! my vet recommended Sainsburys. he deals with that one fairly often and never has a problem. Has anyone treid this?

none of my pets are insured at the moment but i am considering it, particularly for the bunny.

Both buns now insured, cost was about £16 per month for the two, obviously Lemmy's not insured for URIs unless he gets symptom free for 6 moths which is fair enough.

Do people really think insurance is worth it then?

Iv had rabbits all my life with no problems until now, my 7 year old bun has had health problems since january, but shes too old to be insured.

Even so, the excess for petplan is now £55 per illness- ontop of the £9 roughly per month in insurance. Now my buns had various illnesses, so id have to pay the £55 per time, and most were only about £50-60 per time, so the insurance wouldnt cover anything really. It also doesnt cover her teeth, which is the main expense for her.

Other than her, we've only ever had my new buns who caught a virus, and with the excess for each of them (3 buns), it works out that 2 wouldnt have got anything towards it, and one only a one off of about £150.

We have injections, and theyve all been neutored, which again insurnace doesnt cover. So to me it seems a waste of money from my experiance.

However, i know many people on here hve had long term costly problems with their buns- so i did consider it, although my vet said in her personal opinion, itd be best to put the money away and save. So im really confused now:?