Vets4Pets

dawnie1972

I recently registered my dogs with Vets4Pets - one of my dogs hurt his leg - to cut a long story short - 3 weeks of being completely bandaged up, xrays taken, nothing found, whilst i was happy with their service I am FURIOUS at their charges ie bandaging leg during xray £40!, next visit no charge, next visit £5.00 (this was not advised to me!), next visit £27!!, next visit nothing - this was all for rebandaging the same leg ie same procedure!!!

Ruby_Moon

snowman2 wrote: »

You can ring any vet for OOH, an emergency clinic wont mind either way but for a small practice, the vet on-call is likely to have to work the following day. is it fair to wake them up in the middle of the night if you have never been to them before and have no real intention of ever going back to them?

Its not all one sided.
If the Vet is willing to take my money then I am willing to call him, whenever that may be. That is, afterall, why a charge is applied.

mrcol1000

If you become a member of Dogs Trust for just £20 a year then you can get free access to a vet nurse 24 hours a day all year round inculding Christmas Day. We got it free also with our More Than Insurance and they are very friendly and helpful and it doesn't matter how minor the problem my OH rang them with we first got our dog (our dog only has eaten half its breakfast instead of all of it.....) they were very friendly and helpful and patient.

http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/howtohelp/membership/

snowman2_2

Ruby_Moon wrote: »

Its not all one sided.
If the Vet is willing to take my money then I am willing to call him, whenever that may be. That is, afterall, why a charge is applied.

Sorry but that is wrong. Vets are obliged to provide a 24 hour emergency service and if that vet is doing their own work, they have a legal, ethical and moral obligation to see you out of hours. It is nothing to do with the money and the vet you see may be an associate vet who sees none of the money. 2/3 of my out-of-hours work was from people who I had never seen before and most of them I never saw again. I missed out on meals, sleep, time with my kids, going swimming or to the cinema to provide an out-of-hours service to my clients but it was other people abusing my good will, charge or no-charge, that drove me to use an emergency clinic.:mad:

emlou2009

its not often i agree with ruby moon, in fact i think this is probably the first and only time, but

snowman2 wrote: »

Vets are obliged to provide a 24 hour emergency service and if that vet is doing their own work, they have a legal, ethical and moral obligation to see you out of hours.

doesnt that say it all? by being a vet, its your obligation to provide care for a injured/ill animal, and it doesnt matter whether you are going to see them again or not. someone might be visiting the area and suddenly need out of hours care, or not be registered with a vet at all and pick up the yellow pages and pluck the first/closest one they see, and then decide to research further for their next visits. if you never saw them again, maybe the animal never needed to see a vet again! i (well, my parents) had two cats when i was younger that never saw a vet in their lives, and lived to the ages of 18 and 20!

as for missing time with your kids etc, if you didnt want to do that then you chose the wrong career path really! everyone knows being a vet isnt a 9-5 job and you would have known that before you chose to be one yourself. its like any well paid job, you cant expect to earn well for doing short and sociable hours, you have to expect to put some in for a good living!

MrsTinks

Vets4Pets mainly use out of hours services to cover for them as to start with they are 1 vet + 1 part time nurse. They can't do out of hours 365 days of the year. Having seen their business plans recently (not a vet btw ) then yes they DO make a profit on the vaccinations - the discount they get by bulk buying is unreal... To be honest looking at it I'd think "normal" vets should look to bulk buy as a "co-op" to see if there wasn't substancial savings to be made...

The business model works, there IS provisions for OOH (supplied by an OOH service in most cases at least until they grow into a multi vet practice which IS likely but takes time) - so at the end of the day it is up to the client who they go to for OOH. When my cat was hit by a car I hadn't yet registered with a surgery where I'd moved to but I found the OOH number for the vets and had to drive over 15 miles to get there. I'm sure the £1500 vet bill made up for the vet being called out at 4am...

KVet

emlou2009 wrote: »

as for missing time with your kids etc, if you didnt want to do that then you chose the wrong career path really! everyone knows being a vet isnt a 9-5 job and you would have known that before you chose to be one yourself. its like any well paid job, you cant expect to earn well for doing short and sociable hours, you have to expect to put some in for a good living!

Actual lol at the bold section.

Doctors get paid about 2-3 times what we get paid AND they dont do OOH etc. It's a joke

emlou2009

we obviously have different standards of what we would call "well paid" then i'm afraid. to anyone living on the poverty line as i am myself, a vets wage is pure riches!

snowman2_2

emlou2009 wrote: »

doesnt that say it all? by being a vet, its your obligation to provide care for a injured/ill animal, and it doesnt matter whether you are going to see them again or not. someone might be visiting the area and suddenly need out of hours care, or not be registered with a vet at all and pick up the yellow pages and pluck the first/closest one they see, and then decide to research further for their next visits. if you never saw them again, maybe the animal never needed to see a vet again! i (well, my parents) had two cats when i was younger that never saw a vet in their lives, and lived to the ages of 18 and 20!

Sorry but you missed my point. My argument was it was not fair to call the local vet out of bed in the middle of the night and have no intention of using them during the day as there is another vet who does cheaper vaccines but uses an emergency clinic. What has that vet done wrong to get the lost sleep, bad debts (far higher in out-of-hours work), unprofitable jobs. If they are visiting, more than happy to see them, I get a lot of new clients who are unhappy with their regular vet and try us, they usually stay. As for not having seen a vet in 18 years, I guess they wouldn't need a cheap vaccination anyway.

emlou2009 wrote: »

as for missing time with your kids etc, if you didnt want to do that then you chose the wrong career path really! everyone knows being a vet isnt a 9-5 job and you would have known that before you chose to be one yourself. its like any well paid job, you cant expect to earn well for doing short and sociable hours, you have to expect to put some in for a good living!

Thanks for the empathy!! I have never heard such a callous reply. Obviously my kids are unimportant, sleep is unimportant, my regular clients / patients are unimportant, my health is unimportant, any kind of family life. What is important is for you to save £5 by driving across town during the day time not the poor vet who only sees you in the middle of the night. I chose this career at 15 - how many 15 year olds think about time spent with kids in another 10 - 20 years time? None.

As for a good living, vets earn on average 1/3 of a GP for a similar job. With my qualifications, I could easily have earned much more money being a doctor, dentist or lawyer.

KVet

Hear hear!