Plan Price and Coverage
Like most pet insurers, Nationwide covers cats and dogs. But what sets this company apart is that they also cover birds and a long list of “exotic” animals. According to the company’s website, this includes everything from amphibians, gerbils, and turtles to goats, iguanas, hedgehogs, and rabbits. Others listed include chameleons, chinchillas, ferrets, geckos, guinea pigs, hamsters, lizards, mice, possums, potbellied pigs, rats, snakes, sugar gliders, and tortoises! Truly your options are wide open with their coverage. It’s nice to have a resource for a wide selection of pets.
The limitations to Nationwide plans include no coverage for preexisting conditions, taxes, waste removal, and luxuries like boarding and grooming. Other than those stipulations, the company has coverage for almost any other pet need. Their plans are broken down into three tiers:
- Pet Wellness Plan: This covers vaccines, wellness exams, and preventative care such as heartworm prevention, microchips, wellness bloodwork, and fecal testing.
- Major Medical Plan: This doesn’t focus on wellness but instead covers accidents and illnesses. These can include hereditary conditions, prescription drugs, hospitalization and surgeries, chronic conditions, and specific treatments for allergies, kidney stones, fungal diseases, or bite wounds.
- Whole Pet with Wellness Plan: This plan combines both of the other two types of coverage. It covers your entire pet, “from nose to tail.” That means it covers all wellness items as well as accidents and illnesses. Extra features are covered dental cleanings and prescribed pet foods.
There’s no limit to the amount of coverage you can get from Nationwide in your pet’s lifetime. When you enroll for a plan, you choose an annual deductible among $100m $250, $500, or $1,000. Each plan’s cost is different, of course, but you can get prices as low as $17 per month for Pet Wellness plans, $34 per month for Major Medical plans, and $64 per month for Whole Pet with Wellness plans. If you insure more than one pet per plan, you can also save 5% off.
Claims and Reimbursements
There’s no limit to the number of claims you can file in your pet’s lifetime, and the claims you file have no effect on the monthly premium you pay for your plan. That said, the claims process is relatively easy to go through and Nationwide strives to make it intuitive.
After paying your pet’s vet bill (after meeting your deductible), you can file a claim for reimbursement by sending the invoice to Nationwide along with a claim form you fill out. There’s a great tool on their website that outlines the steps for filing a claim and directing you to this claim form. You can file it via mail or online through fax or email.
Once you’ve filed the claim, expect up to 30 days before you hear back about a decision for it. If you qualify for a reimbursement, this will be sent to you in the mail with a check. While it would be nice for Nationwide to provide direct deposit and a little faster processing time, they do have other great online resources to make filing claims easy to understand.
Enrollment and Sign Up
To enroll in a pet insurance plan with Nationwide, you work with a customer representative either online or over the phone. You should expect to provide information about your and your pet, such as your pet’s name, age, past injuries, medical history, and location, as these details will determine your monthly premium and your pet’s eligibility for coverage. Their age, for example, is an important factor in determining whether your pet is even eligible to be enrolled in a plan, as pets over 10 cannot qualify for coverage.
Enrolling for a plan takes only a few minutes to do, and the company makes the process relatively easy. One of the decisions you’ll have to make while signing up is whether you want to pay for your pet’s plan all at once now or over time each month. You may also want to have your pet be examined by a vet in the year preceding enrollment since information from this exam might be important in determining eligibility as well.
Nationwide plans are 12-month plans that renew yearly, but as a customer, you can be sure you can cancel coverage any time without penalty if for some reason you need to. Once you’ve enrolled with a plan, expect no more than two weeks for it to take effect. Specifically, coverage for Pet Wellness plans take only 24 hours to go into effect, and both Major Medical and Whole Pet with Wellness plans will take 14 days to become official.
The waiting periods here are really quite reasonable, not taking any longer than most companies do. In fact, they are shorter than some other companies’ waiting periods. Between this advantage and the fast, easy enrollment process they offer, this company doesn’t present many frustrations to customers for enrollment.
Member Resources
Pet insurance members at Nationwide access their accounts through an online portal called My Account. Simply named, the portal has many capabilities. Through it, you could check a claim status as well as your claim history, update your personal billing information, renew your policy, download a claim form, and more.
In addition to easy account management, the company’s website, in general, is really useful. For example, filing a claim for the first time might be a little confusing and nerve-racking; there’s a page on Nationwide’s website for that. It provides simple, outlined instructions for what you need to file a claim and what steps you need to take to file it. There is also a really helpful FAQs section online that potential members and current members alike can benefit from.
Members can connect to Nationwide through a companion newsletter the company puts out as well. There’s also a section online called the PetHealthZone, where you can find articles about any animal-related question you might have. Whether you need more information about insurance, animal breeds, safety and health for your pet, potential toxins to keep out of your home, or reasons why you should spay or neuter your pet, this is an excellent resource to get educated about your pet.
Nationwide customer service isn’t available 24/7, but there is a 24/7 vet helpline you can access for medical questions about your pet instead. This helps make up the difference with their limited business hours. In addition, there is a discount program members can benefit from called Policyholder Perks.
One feature Nationwide lacks is a mobile app specifically for pet insurance customers. Yes, the company has an app for general customers, who might have auto insurance through Nationwide, for example. But this app won’t be as helpful for pet insurance members. Other than this, the company has a lot of perks for its members that will make managing their accounts easy and fast.
Customer Service
Anyone who’s seen a Nationwide commercial knows their jingle, “Nationwide is on your side.” Evident in this slogan is the customer mindset that this company has strived to encourage. Nationwide wants to empower customers. If you’re a pet owner, this is good news because it means the company wants not just to give you pet insurance but also to educate you about your pet’s health and give you the confidence to make decisions that will affect your pet’s wellbeing. With such a widespread company, it’s to be expected that you’ll have varying experiences with specific customer representatives at Nationwide, both friendly and perhaps impatient. But on the whole, the company has a positive view toward customers with the desire to provide them with lots of resources and empowering information.
Before you enroll with a Nationwide pet plan, it’s a really good idea to get a quote. Without getting a quote (either on your own online or through a rep online), it’ll be somewhat hard to get specific details about prices and coverage.
Customers can contact Nationwide through phone, fax, mail, and in person. They don’t have a clear email address for the company, but there’s an online messaging tool you can submit questions and concerns through. They don’t have a live chat feature, which detracts some convenience, and they are only available during business hours and not 24/7. There is, however, their 24/7 vet line, which is one way this company stands out above its competitors, especially for sudden medical concerns you have about your pet.
In addition to typical contact forms, Nationwide provides wellness resources for customers, a helpful member portal, and charts online that compare the various plans they offer. This can help potential customers decide which plan is best for their pet. Beneficially, there are customer reviews about Nationwide right on their site as well, if customers want other opinions about the realities of working with Nationwide.
