Care for Your Pet’s Health

As I normally do I want to give you a review of as many pet insurance company websites as I possibly can and today I go through the Banfield Pet Insurance website with you. If you want to visit their website you can do so by clicking here. Before I get started with the review I would like to state that I have no relationship to Banfield and I am not associated with them in any way.

Banfield Pet Hospital

From their website we can see that they have been in business since 1955 which means that they have more than 50 years of experience in the pet industry and without digging any deeper into what they are all about that should at least give them some credibility as nobody stays in business for more than half a century without having a happy customer base. That is an important observation to make as we sometimes see that new business are creating a great buzz and then they disappear in just a year or two. As we generally expect to have our pet for more than a year or two we’ll like the insurance company to stay around for a long time as well. In addition it is almost certain that the Banfield VET staff is also highly educated people.

Main Page Options

From the entry page we’re able to subscribe to their email newsletter. This isn’t something new but what is lacking is an explanation as to what it is that we’re actually subscribing to. It doesn’t say whether it is about keeping your pet healthy or whether it is about the Banfield Pet Insurance business and how their sales numbers are evolving. That could definitely be improved quite a bit. The second thing that I found a bit odd was that you are asked to enter your company name. Does this mean that the newsletters are meant for corporate people that have their own company or at least work for one? If you had asked me I would have assumed that the newsletters were for pet owners but I must be mistaken.

The Banfield Newsletter

I decided to sign up anyway and within a minute or two I received an email to confirm my request. Now that is the way an email newsletter signup should work but even after receiving the mail and having a look at the confirmation page I still don’t know what it is that I can expect to receive.

But let us go back to the main page again. The page’s right side is divided into two categories. One is the three current news articles and the other is the four major sections of their website.

One thing that I can help to notice is that nowhere on the front page is stated anything about Banfield Pet Insurance or even anything about insurance in general for that matter. But from the main four sections we might be able to locate something about it.

The Four Major Sections

The site is divided into sections called “Your Pet’s Health”, “Locations”, “Careers/Practice Ownership” and “About Us”. From the view of a pet owner the sections about careers and about Banfield seem rather irrelevant. Sure it would be nice to know more about them and if that is what we want we can click the about us link but currently we’re trying to locate something about pet insurance options.

I believe that it would be a fair guess to assume that anything about insurance ought to be found in the section called “Your Pet’s Health” as the “Locations” section will merely be a bunch of addresses and phone numbers. It is relevant information but not what we’re currently looking for. In the end it might come in handy because we might have to call them up if we can’t find the information about their pet insurance.

The Pet Health Section

Entering the section about pet health we don’t seem to find that much. It is another page with a newsletter form and then a few paragraphs claiming Banfield veterinarians to provide exceptional pet care. They write about their “Optimal Wellness Plans”, but still nothing about pet insurance. However we would all agree that being well is the preferred options as to being ill and needing insurance coverage.

From the page we are again provided with three options. We can choose between the “Dog Health”, the “Cat Health” and the “Optimal Wellness Plan”. Neither the dog health section nor the cat health section says anything about Banfield pet insurance. The dog section talks a little about the importance of nutrition, vaccinations, parasite control, spraying and neutering and about having routine checkups.

The cat sections talks about exactly the same things and as a matter of fact the two sections look almost identical in nature.

The Optimal Wellness Plans

Since we have only the optimal wellness plan section left I feel comfortable that we’ll find something in here about pet insurance. However I find to be quickly disappointed. The only thing on the page is information about the importance of keeping your pet healthy and how you can increase your pet’s life with 25% by great preventive care.

Don’t get me wrong here. All of this is VERY important and nobody wants to have anything but a healthy and happy pet but we’re still here to try to find information about insurance and not prevention.

Conclusion: No Banfield Pet Insurance

So here we are after surfing their website we still come up empty handed. We have found pages about pet health and why it is important but even though I have surfed through all the other pages of their site I couldn’t find even one place where the Banfield pet insurance was mentioned. Therefore I must come to the conclusion that what might be referred to as the “Banfield Pet Insurance” isn’t really an insurance but rather a “Wellness Plan”. Banfield is committed to giving you the best possible tools and options for keeping your pet as healthy as possible and in the case of illness and injury… well, you have to find your insurance coverage elsewhere.