We bought a 7 month old crossbreed from Battersea and insured him with pet protect - lifetime extra cover. 7 months later we noticed our dog occasionally limping and some occasional stiffness in his back legs. Out vet had a look and diagnosed dislocating kneecaps but as our boy was so young the vet wanted to wait until he was older and for us to just monitor him. 3 months later he was often limping and he was in pain so we took him back to our vet and out boy was put on anti-inflammatories which helped and referred to a specialist. I notified pet protect and they sent out a couple of claims forms. He had his first patellar luxation operation done and the vet claimed direct from pet protect - the claim was approved and paid within one month. During the second operation we were advised that our boy also had a problem with his cruciate ligament and it turned into a much bigger operation than anticipated. Pet protect approved and paid this claim as well. They declined £103 on the second claim as that was over our £6k limit and we paid £50 excess.
Pet protect have now changed their T&Cs to limit cruciate ligament surgery to £750 and for our renewal, our premium has gone up by just over 15% + our excess has increased to £75 and we will have to contribute 15% of the vets fees - which considering how much they have paid out this year we're not complaining.
From our experience we'd recommend pet protect, they have been brilliant for us.
But now that I know about cruciate ligament surgery and the cost of it I'm not sure if I would take out the initial policy if there had been a limit of £750 for cruciate ligament surgery. It would have cost £2,900 for just this surgery but we didn't know anything about cruciate ligaments and there wasn't the £750 limit and there was no indication that our mutt would ever have joint/ligament problems as he was a robust, healthy, bouncy 7 month old puppy when we took out the policy.