Metacam prices 28 September 2011 at 6:34PM in Pets & pet care 6 replies 1.8K views

Cardew

My wife took our ancient labrador to the vets yesterday and the Vet prescribed Metacam - which they supplied.

As well as paying for the consultation etc the cost for a 100ml of Metacam was £39.80!!

The identical drug is widely available on the web for £12 upwards(including VAT and postage) for the same 100ml and the 180ml costs around £18.

There is no detail on the package of the UK importer(it is produced in Germany)

Does anyone know if there is a maximum recommended price, and what are people paying. It is clearly rip-off time at the Vets.

gettingready

As per numerous threads on this forum - you can ask your vet for prescription only and with that prescription buy Metacam from online pharmaciet like AnimedDirect or VetUK or others.

But you will need a prescription from your vet and you may need to pay for it.

Cardew

Will the one prescription allow multiple purchases from an on-line firm?

gettingready

No, but you can get a perscription for a bigger bottle or more than 1 bottle.

Shoshannah

Worth looking into the prices of Meloxidyl too - identical product, generally cheaper. May work out as even less online with your prescription.

krlyr

Just bear in mind that vets have different costs to an online pharmacy - think of how your local corner shop/Post Office selling groceries, things often cost twice as much as in big name supermarkets. The latter have the benefit in buying in huge bulk numbers, which helps. There's other factors to consider, like whether the the vet can sell a whole pack (e.g. I've bought medication than can only be bought in multipacks and the vet hasn't been able to sell the remaining ones so had to charge me more to cover it, whereas an online pharmacy would probably get more customers to get through multipacks before the expiry dates). Rather than a cheap rent/mortgage on a warehouse, they have to store medication in the veterinary surgery which probably costs more in rent, electricity, etc. They have to pay the wages of vets to exam the pets before giving a prescription (mine do free checkups before giving flea treatment etc to check the pet is healthy enough), the nurses to sign off on the medication, the receptionists to have taken your appointment in the first place then process your payment, and so on. Also, some vets choose to make their profit in different areas of their business - mine tend to charge more for consultations and other procedures to charge less for the medication, but some might do the opposite.
Yes, many vets are there to make money but many don't make it their sole objective to rip you off, they just can't compete with these online places who have low overheads and can buy in cheaply. Mine are happy to give me a prescription if I decide to go elsewhere - I try to support them where I can but in our efforts to save for a deposit I've given in and started buying flea stuff online with the prescription.

Shoshannah

Very true. In many cases, we buy the drugs from our wholesaler for more than the internet pharmacies sell them, so we can never compete.