Overview
Year Company Started: 2005
Underwriter: AGCS Marine Insurance Company and North American Elite Insurance Company.
AM Best Financial Strength Rating: AGCS Marine Insurance Company (Rating: A+), North American Elite (Rating: A)
Website: www.gopetplan.com
Phone: 1866-467-3875
Based in Philadelphia, Petplan USA is affiliated with Petplan UK – the world’s largest and most trusted pet insurance provider. Over 1 million pet owners have Petplan policies. They provide guaranteed life-time coverage, offer treatment for alternative therapies like acupuncture, and cover hereditary conditions, which most other plans exclude. Additionally, PetPlan does not impose dollar or time limits per condition—meaning your limits are fully reinstated each year, regardless of previous claims. Choose from $50, $100, or $200 deductible (the higher the deductible, the lower your monthly payment).
Petplan Review
Rating: 9
Our review process starts with calling each of the insurance providers over the telephone and then, we gather quotes for these three pet profiles:
- A 2-year old male Yorkshire Terrier named Jax
- A 6-year old male Cocker Spaniel named Max
- An 8-year old female mixed breed cat named Fluffy
After the pre-recorded message picked up, I waited for a pet insurance adviser for six minutes. The recording repeatedly suggested I leave a message instead of waiting. I finally got a representative on the phone, but my call was disconnected. After waiting again for eight minutes, Fabrice took my call. It was well worth the wait.
He informed me that Petplan is the number one rated pet insurance company in the United States, and the world’s largest pet insurance company, covering over a million pets. It got a lot more interesting when he explained why they do not cover routine care: as offered by other pet insurance companies, it’s a scam. Most of them consider the pet’s breed and size and then charge what the average annual veterinary bills cost for the first year of a pet’s life. Since the first year is the most expensive, people generally break even, and possibly come out ahead after meeting the annual deductible on year one. When the policy renews, however, policy holders often pay more in premiums than they’ll use on their pet’s health care. According to Fabrice, you’d be better served to put the money in a savings account—at least then, it will accrue interest.
Although this may have been a well-oiled sales pitch, I must admit I was impressed with his knowledge, as well as the time he took in explaining the industry.
The Plans/Quotes
Fabrice told me you get a 5% discount when you order your policy online and an additional 10% multi-pet discount on each one after the most expensive (reflected in the quotes below). You can choose from three deductible options—$50, $100, or $200—and three levels of reimbursement—80%, 90%, or 100%. I chose a $100 deductible and 90% coverage.
For the 2-year old male Yorkshire Terrier:
- Bronze $8,000 annual coverage: $391 annually or $33/month
- Silver $12,000 annual coverage: $438 annually or $37/month
- Gold $20,000 annual coverage: $489 annually or $41/month
For the 6-year old male Cocker Spaniel:
- Bronze $8,000 annual coverage: $824 annually or $69/month
- Silver $12,000 annual coverage: $922 annually or $77/month
- Gold $20,000 annual coverage: $1,029 annually or $86/month
For the 8-year old female mixed breed:
- Bronze $8,000 annual coverage: $276 annually or $27/month
- Silver $12,000 annual coverage: $294 annually or $25/month
- Gold $20,000 annual coverage: $312 annually or $26/month
I asked what the difference would be if I wanted 100% reimbursement just to get an idea. For Fluffy, it brought the rates up about $30 more on every level.
The Details
Fabrice said they are working on their own version of routine care—something more ethical than the current industry standard—that they will roll out in the next few months. All plans cover hereditary and congenital conditions and illnesses for the pet’s entire life. Pre-existing conditions are not covered. The only difference with the plan levels is how much coverage your pet gets annually. There are not caps for injury, illness, or for the plan’s lifetime. With Petplan there are no hidden ceilings, like with other companies. Rates increase based on veterinary inflationary costs, and there are sometimes age adjustments. However, they never go up based solely on claim activity. File as many claims as you need to; you won’t be penalized. You can pay your premiums monthly, quarterly, or annually.
Conclusions
Despite my first impression after the long hold time, I was very satisfied with both the customer service and the information provided. In making my choice, I will consider the following:
Pros
- Petplan has been around for 30 years and is the world’s largest pet insurance provider.
- With three options for deductibles, coverage, and plan level, the policies are highly flexible.
- Hereditary conditions are covered with no dollar or time limits.
- Petplan covers chronic conditions for life as long as you keep renewing the plan with no break in coverage.
- Alternative therapies are covered.
- Insurance underwritten is part of the Allianz insurance group, which is rated by AM Best Financial Strength Rating of “A+”.
- The multi-pet discount is 10%—and you can get that on top of the 5% online discount.
- Cover hip dysplasia at any age of a new enrolled, as long as it’s not pre-existing.
- Customer reviews are overwhelmingly positive.
Cons
- Petplan does not currently cover routine care (but that should soon change).
- Other customer reviews indicate specialist care requires a 30% co-pay regardless of how you customize your plan.
I spent a lot of time researching companies and plans prior to choosing petplan. I carefully selected the policy that was right for us. We have not filed a claim ever. Our first year’s policy is about to expire, and I got a renewal letter saying they are changing our policy and increasing the fees by $50/year. This is a 27% increase, and we have never made a claim!! What a bad company!!
I have four cats, and all have a PetPlan Gold insurance policy. I initiated each policy when the cats were 2, 2.5, 3 and 3 years of age (so pretty young). None had any pre-existing conditions.
Two Sundays ago, my 3 year old female Bella got unexpectedly and dramatically sick. She was suddenly lame on her entire right side and her extremities all felt very hot to me. Given that it was a Sunday, I took her immediately to a local ER vet that is co-located with speciality veterinary practices (internal medicine, oncology, opthamology, surgery, cardiology). She was admitted with a dangerously high fever and placed on IV. Over the three days that she was there, she went through a series of diagnostic tests – xrays, full bloodwork, surgical veterinary consultation and evaluation, internal medicine consultation and evaluation, abdominal ultrasound, and more bloodwork to check for infectious diseases (hemobartonella, mycoplasma, tick-borne diseases, and toxoplasmosis).
They gave her great care and her fever broke, so I took her home to care for her – she continues (knock wood) to improve every day, but we don’t really have a diagnosis as all tests came back either normal or negative for infection (shrug). The grand total of the bill was $3,441.00.
I filed my claim in the coming days. They required the actual emergency veterinary paperwork as well as two years* worth of history from Bella’s regular vet, including doctor’s notes (* I haven’t had Bella for two years, so they accepted the 15 months of veterinary notes that I do have). The forms themselves served as the cover sheet for faxes with Bella’s policy number pre-populated as well as my own information – I downloaded all of this right from their website and it was VERY easy.
PetPlan is sending me a check for $2,208.00. Because this was emergency and/or speciality vet care, my coinsurance was 30%. They calculated their 70% responsibility from the total vet bill and then subtracted my $200 deductible on the policy. The claim was closed in a matter of days. My monthly premium per cat is $14.95 (although that may go up for Bella after this large claim).
It sounds like a good plan for I too have researched a lot. But it dosent make sense to me that in their policy it says if a vet recommends say non routine teeth cleaning it depends on if you get reimbursed if there’s no teeth extractions and other conditions. What? They said on the phone that anything the vet recommends depends on some things so you won’t know if you will be reimbursed or noyt till after the procedure. This to me is confusing. If its writtten Petplan provide coverage for chronic and heritary conditions with no hidden costs for all treatments a vet recommends, then why did petplan just tell me it all depends on certain things? This plan makes no sense. I think what’s written and what they tell you are different. I would hate for my vet to recommend a non routine teeth cleaning and with no other issues like extractions, pay over 300 and then may not get reimbursed. Not a good plan for me.