Pet Insurance: Comparing policies can be a nightmare

You may be convinced pet insurance is the right way to go.  But you may not be prepared for the nightmare of comparing policies.

You can compare pet insurance in several different ways

• price of premium;
• levels of cover;
• range of cover;
• reliability of payout.

So why is it so difficult to compare pet insurance? There are a number of factors that contribute to the problem.

• Different providers use different wording to mean the same thing, or the same wording to mean different things!  And they use jargon they don’t explain. One notorious piece of terminology is “lifetime cover” – many providers offer it, but they don’t necessarily mean the same thing by it. 
• Different policies have different levels of discount.  So when you think you have found the cheapest policy, you find another with a discount that makes the premium look even lower – but you don’t know if the discounted one is REALLY cheaper or not.
• Prices aren’t necessarily the same all over the country.  You need to watch out that you aren’t looking at a sample policy for the north of England when you live in the south, where costs are often higher.
• Providers don’t necessarily make their conditions very clear.  You could find that what looks like a cheap policy carries a very high excess, so you would actually be paying more in the long run.  Or it could come with a lot of exclusions which you might not realise until too late.

So how can you find a reliable way to compare pet insurance?  One way is to find sites on the Internet that provide comparison tables.  But beware – there are complaints that some of these are incomplete or out of date.