Buddies Pet Insurance Review

You must be the owner and keeper of your pet and permanently resident in the United Kingdom, Channel Islands, or the Isle of Man.

Your pet must be over 8 weeks old and not have previously displayed vicious or aggressive behaviour.

Buddies Pet Insurance, offers three policies they are as follows;

Standard Policy - Covers vets fees up to £3,000 per condition up to a maximum of 12 months.

Premier Policy - Covers vets fees up to a maximum limit of £4,000. This amount is reinstated each year as long as you keep your policy up to date.

Premier Plus Policy - Covers vets fees up to a maximum limit of £7,000. This amount is reinstated each year as long as you keep your policy up to date.

The Premier and Premier Plus policies are better known as "Lifetime" policies.

A list of important exclusions - Buddies Pet Insurance does not cover;

1. Routine Examinations including preventative and elective treatments.
2. Spaying or castration, retained testes, whelping or kittening.
3. Removal of dewclaws.
4. Worming and Flea treatments.
5. Routine blood tests.
6. Treatment in connection with pregnancy or giving birth.
7. Costs caused by any of the above.
8. Any costs associated with organ transplantation.
9. Behavioural and training costs, unless as a direct result of an insured incident.
10. Hospitalisation, out of hours or house calls, unless the vet confirms moving your pet would endanger its health.
11. Bedding or housing.
12. "Notifiable" diseases under the Animal Health Act such as Rabies.
13. Travel Expenses incurred by you or your pet.
14. Any animal that is, or is crossed with an American Bulldog, Cane Corso, Pit Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Dogo Argentino, Fila Braziliero, Perro De Pressa Canario, Dogo Canario, Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, Saarloos Wolfhound/ Wolfdog, any wolf hybrid, or any other animal registered under the UK government’s Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.
15. Medication that hasn't been prescribed by your vet.
16. Any form of commercial or security use, racing and any claim for worrying livestock.
17. Costs if your pet dies from an illness caused by the failure to vaccinate.
18. The repair and treatment of Umbilical hernias.
19. Death cover if your dog is aged over 9 or your cat aged over 11, with the exception of the following breeds, which are excluded once they reach the age of 5. All breeds or dogs crossed with, Beauceron, Bernese Mountain Dog, Bulldog,
    Deerhound, Dogue de Bordeaux, Estrela Mountain Dog, Great Dane, Irish Wolfhound, Leonberger, Mastiff,Newfoundland, Old English Sheep Dog, Pyrenean Mountain Dog, Rottweiler, Shar Pei and St Bernard.
    
    

The standard policy does not cover complementary medicine.

The premier and premier plus policies cover complementary medicine up to £500.

Complementary medicine covers physiotherapy, acupuncture, osteopathy, massage and healing,
laser therapy, chiropractic treatment and up to 10 sessions of hydrotherapy. It must be prescribed by a vet and the cost approved by Buddies prior to treatment.

The £500 limit is part of the overall vets fees limit and not in addition to it.

Prescribed food is covered under all three policies, but only food use to dissolve existing bladder stones and or crystals in urine. The £100 limit covers a maximum of 30% of the cost of the food, for a maximum of six months. Only one occurrence is covered.

Dentistry is covered by all three policies but only for treatment caused by an accident.

CT/MRI scans and Cruciate Ligament claims are covered by all policies, up to the vets fees limit.

The cost of putting your pet to sleep, burial or cremation costs are not covered under any of the buddies policies.

Buddies offer a 5% discount for insuring more than one pet (cat or dog) under the same policy.

Buddies will not cover any condition that was evident prior to inception of the policy.

Treatment in connection with pregnancy or giving birth is specifically excluded under the buddies policy.

Buddies policies cover you taking your pet abroad to one of the approved European countries under the UK "PETS" Scheme.

The standard policy covers you for up to 30 days and the premier and premier plus policies up to 180 days.

This section covers emergency vets fees, but does not cover emergency repatriation, quarantine costs, or loss of your pets passport.

Buddies Pet policies are for a period of 12 months.

Buddies state if they offer renewal, they reserve the right to change the premium, excesses and policy terms and conditions, as well as the right to withdraw third party liability cover based on your pet's behaviour.

The policy is payable by credit or debit card  or monthly direct debit and renewed annually.

If you cancel your policy within 14 days, and no claims have occurred, your are entitled to a full refund of premiums.

If you cancel outside the 14 days period and no claims have occurred you are entitled to a pro-rata refund of premium.

If you cancel the policy and have made a claim, you are entitled to no refund of premium, unless the policy is cancelled due to death, theft or loss of your pet, in which case you will receive a proportionate refund of any premium.

You may cancel the policy by telephoning, emailing or writing to Buddies.

You are able to download forms for the various different types of claim direct from the buddies website.

Buddies are unable to assess a claim until they have received a completed claim form from you.

Claim forms should be completed and either emailed or posted back, together with supporting receipts.

There is no cover for accident or liability claims within the first 72 hours of the inception date of the policy.

There is no cover for any illness claims within the first 14 days of the inception of the policy.

All insurance policies (cat or dog) have a fixed excess of £90. This is the amount of any claim that you are required to pay.

The standard excess for all dog liability claims is £250.

In addition to the standard excess, you are expected to pay an additional contribution of 10% of any claims for pets under the age of six.

When your pet reaches the age of six, the amount increases to 20%.

For example if your claim is for £1,000, you will be expected to pay £90 plus 20% of the balance £182 + £90 total £272.00.

The website provides only basic policy, claim and renewal information. We could not find any frequently answered questions.

There is no live chat, but you are able to email or call their specialist team. The quotation system is easy to use and having only three policies to choose from its an easy process of comparing them.

At only 12 pages long the policy felt cramped. There is no effort to space out the text and one paragraph runs into the next.

There is no summary of cover provided. An index helps with navigation. There is no colour coding to help identify whats covered and what excluded.

The policy text had a reading score of 52.6 (out of 100) and classed as fairly difficult to read.

The text had an average reading age of 14 - 15 years. This means that a person with a reading age of 14-15 years should be able to understand the policy.

Buddies Pet Insurance is not available on any comparison sites. You can obtain quotes by visiting the companies website direct.

Buddies do not have a vet help line.

There are very few customer reviews on Buddies Pet Insurance. There were 9 reviews on trustpilot with an overall rating of 2.2/5.

There have been a few complaints over the length of time it took to get through to a customer service representative, or for Buddies to respond and that the customer portal was often down.

A customer was told that Buddies were having system issues and recruiting more staff in response to work volumes, so at least they are being proactive.

There is no information on administration charges, so assume they don't charge any.

There are currently no special promotions or discounts.

Buddies offer the choice of time limited or lifetime cover. All three policies were awarded a three star rating.

You are expected to make a 10% contribution to any claim from inception of the policy and this increases when your pet reaches the age of 6.

There is no cover for Euthanasia or cremation/burial costs.

The Buddies website confirms that "With pet insurance, your premium will increase each year at renewal as your pet gets older".

Our premium research indicates that Buddies is not the cheapest insurer.