Pet Health Insurance

In this article I’ll have a closer look at the Tesco Pet Insurance from Tesco Finance Ltd. I haven’t been able to find any statistics about how many people are using their pet insurance packages, how many payouts they have made or how many injuries and sickness cases has been reported in by their customers.

That is not unusual however, as that is normally kept within the company due to competition. So by no means does it say that there is anything to be worried about from a customer’s point of view.

The company Tesco Finance Ltd. offers a lot of different financial products like insurance, credit cards, loans, mortgages, saving and coverage when travelling. That means that the pet insurance part of their business is just one of many products that they spend their time and effort on. The pet insurance part of their website can be found here: Click here

When I first arrived at the page I saw a little kitten and a large red badge telling me that I could get “2 months free”. Now that sounded nice so I have to look a little further into that one.

Luckily for me, it didn’t require much effort to find out that you don’t actually get 2 months of free pet insurance coverage, but merely that your monthly payment has been reduced so that you in a twelve month period would save an amount equal to the two months. Personally I hate that kind of “offers” but I guess that is just the way advertizing is done today.

Tesco Pet Insurance – Cats and Dogs

From the front page of the pet insurance section of their website it seems to me that the only two pets that seem to be covered are cats and dogs. If you visit some of the insurance companies that are specialized in pet insurance you will find coverage for animals like horses, birds or exotic creatures. But the biggest part of the marked is without a doubt in the cat and dog industry because those are the two favorite pets.

The smallest price you can pay per month for your cat insurance is 4.50 GBP and 8.00 GPB for your dog. This price includes the “2 months free” offer and as that offers is only available to new customers and only for the first year, you can expect the price to be a little higher in the second year. It should however not be more that a 17% increase.

It is always advised to call the insurance company to make sure you’ll get the coverage that is right for you and Tesco Insurance is no exception. From them website we can see that they offer two different types of insurance coverage. One is called “Basic” and the other is called “Extra”.

The difference between the two is that Extra will cover up to 4,000 GBP per condition whereas the basic will only cover 2,500 GBP per condition. Secondly the Basic coverage will only cover your pet for a 12 month period from the start of the condition whereas the Extra coverage will cover for life (as long as you keep paying for the insurance coverage that is).

Tesco’s selling points

Again from the main page you will find Tesco listing 4 key selling points as to why you should choose them over other insurance companies. First this is that they have no maximum age limit for pets. Now I can only guess but I’m sure that you will be more likely to benefit from that one if you have registered your pet for a Tesco pet insurance when it was young and kept the policy live throughout your pet’s life.

But as I said, I can only guess. I haven’t tried to register an old pet for insurance with them so I can’t really say. What I do know is that any insurance company will always be able to turn you down as a customer with whatever explanation they can come up with.

Second selling point is that they do not reduce coverage when your pet gets older. Now that is a good thing because most pets will need to coverage in the end of their life and not so much in the beginning. The third selling point can seem to cause a little bit of worry though as it says that “there is fixed excess payments, so you’ll always know what you need to pay when you make a claim”.

No I can’t help thinking: “Pay when you make a claim? Wasn’t the idea of a pet insurance not to have to pay when bad things strike?”. Well, if I were to sign up for a Tesco pet insurance I would definitely make sure to ask what that was all about before signing anything.

The final selling point is that you have a selection of ways that you can pay for the insurance. Hardly a selling point if you ask me, but I guess that they weren’t able to come up with more that the three mention above. Now you might think that I’m giving the Tesco pet insurance option a hard time but really I’m not.

What I’m trying to say is that when a company is trying to sell something online they will need to make as much effort at is as they do when trying offline. Sure they have listed a few points that are valuable but from a customer’s point of view there isn’t much “WOW effect”. I simply have a hard time finding the “What’s In It For Me” part. Sure they’ll have you save a few pounds as a new customer but what else do they have?

If I were them I would have included a bunch of customer testimonials right there on the front page. When people shop they like to see what people like themselves think about a product and if they like it you’ll be more inclined to buy. Simple stuff really!!

Now to finalize I can tell you that the Tesco pet insurance website offers a small selection of articles about why and when you need pet insurance coverage but make sure that you, when you read them, remember that they really want to sell you something and that they are not just there to be “friendly”. My last advice to you is to call up Tesco and ask them all the questions that you can possible come up with.

Make sure that you don’t hang up until you are certain whether they have the pet insurance product that you feel will cover your pet the best. Their phone number is: 0845 300 2200.

By the way… they only cover pets living in the UK.