Bloody insurance companies!!

lauren123

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2007
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East Yorkshire
My lovely ,lovely insurance company have sent me the renewal for the upcoming year:mad::(... Well I aren't happy!! I knew there would be exclusions. However I wasn't expecting exclusions where for once my horse hasn't suffered from!:mad: . Also slightly annoyed as I wasn't able to claim for something , due to a previous exclusion. Well they have excluded it anyway!! Sadly one of the exclusions is a blanket exclusion and there are 2 that might as well! Because of the nature of the condition/ injury :(

I don't even feel sorry for the person who will take my call right now :(

Seriously questioning the insurance should I shouldn't I?? As I also think like honestly I have already drawn the line on a few things. There are things I wouldn't put Sox through now. Due to the stress and that he has been through a lot and I don't feel it would be fair on sox to do that. I have openly discussed with a good vet as well. That with his issues mainly his gut ( in this case), colic surgery would never be an option. Its hard enough for previously healthy horses but with soxs gut issues. I wouldn't put him through that, there would be no point and it wouldn't be fair on him. A few months ago there was the possibility of possibly another scan and I declined. As I didn't see how that could benefit us and straight away I told a friend I wouldn't put him through the stress of loading and taking him all the way to my vets for a scan that 'might' tell us something.

Bloody insurance!!
 
My horse has just come through a resected hoof. My insurance excluded anything to do with his front feet five years ago when he had an unexplained lameness which I would probably say was down to a crappy barefoot trimmer not trimming feet properly.
Bill this time - £3.5k vet hospital, £750 my own vet, 5 trips to the vet (hire of box) £760, boxrest - £200, stable mats and extra equipment I had to buy - £350, additional feeding because he got all depressed and I tried everything and anything - £500 - haylage, carrots, treats, chaff, fast fibre, sugar beet, molasses, hayblox, etc. All in, circa £6k.
And fecking bedding. I forgot about the bedding £250 and the presents I had to buy folk to thank them for all their help £100, and the five lunches I bought for folk to come with me on the hospital trips £100, the packets of fags for all the stress £gazillions, the petrol for the four hour round trips £200, the days off work.
Yes my insurance wouldn't have covered all of that stuff but gawd it would have helped.
Right now if something else happened to him, I'd have no funds to do anything about it. I thought about ditching my insurance. I pay £40 a month for it. But after the hell we've been through, im not taking any chances. You only think of the big things like colic surgery etc. There are no end of issues we could potentially be covered for and have the probability of a good prognosis but a fairly sizeable vet bill!
 
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I like @OwnedbyChanter's way of doing insurance, cover them for very little value but still get vet fees cover out of it :)
I'm still wrestling with cancelling my insurance for jess, she's covered for so little now it seems a pretty long shot that any future issues will actually be covered.
 
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Kia isn't insured but other than short term injuries I wouldn't get the vet out for anything major, he would just be shot. Small minor triage I can do myself.

Having had insurance allow me to run up vets bills then not pay out I'm not a fan of them.

I told my vets Kia isn't insured so don't be tagging on unnecessary stuff to my bills as I will check it and not pay for it. They weren't happy but hey my money my horse my Rules is how I see it now.

If I get another horse and it's in work and competing then I will probably insure it but I'll a starting with a clean slate and if the premiums are more Han what I put aside monthly then I might not bother with the way things are now. I will have money in the bank though and the first time the insurance starts any crap I'll be back to BHS Gold and a savings acct.
 
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Ales got tons of exclusions and his insurance is still only £450 a year, he got stung by a bee and the bill was £380 then a couple of weeks later something in his eye another £350. For me it's worth it just in case as even though he's loads of exclusions there's still alot that could go wrong that is covered.
 
Raf has loads of exclusions too, in fact I think he's probably only covered for accidents now. What bugs me is that the premiums go up every year, even as more exclusions are applied - surely if they're covered for less the premiums should go down :p

Anyway I haven't worked out what I have paid in premiums versus what I have claimed, but I'm sure some years I will have claimed far more than I've paid in and that is why I don't know how insurance companies make it work - claims for horse related injuries or illness can often run into thousands and horses are so flaky there can't be many people who don't ever make a claim.
 
I have never insured for vet fees and yes I have had a few bills of £700 ish including an eye operation,a broken elbow a 5 day choke and a case of salmonella. Over the years I have had up to 40 horses at a time with average annual vet bills of around £1000. Main differences are vets that trusts us to do all nursing ourselves including bandaging and injections and believe like us in field rest and common sense remedies. Not for the faint hearted though!
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Lauren, from all you've said about Sox, I can totally believe that he's hardly covered by insurance these days so it might not be worth bothering! You could try switching to a different provider? Not sure how that works but pretty sure they'd compare notes! Might be just as well saving some money yourself each month (although if that was me, I'd end up just spending it as I have no will power!)
 
Hum.
I just checked mine and we are no longer covered for loss of use. Not too sure why because they have still charged for it!!?
 
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