To not pay the whole vet's bill

God some of the comments on here are bloody depressing.

One PP suggesting their vet offering a blood test as being "sneaky"? Really?

As a vet who worked in a very low income area for several years the amount of verbal abuse I got for offering medical investigations and suggesting the gold standard of treatment was ridiculous.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Agree with PPs that the crux of the issue is that the NHS is free and people are completely ignorant about the cost of medical care.

OP, if you walked away without paying for the blood test, who exactly would be funding the cost of the needle, syringe, blood vials and the time it took the vet or nurses to take the bloods? Even without the blood test ever being run the clinic would be at a loss. Obviously not the biggest issue here, but something to consider. A vet clinic is a business trying to stay afloat just like any other.

I agree costs need to be discussed before procedures are carried out but surely when the vet starts suggesting a blood test, if they don't mention cost, you ask?

As an aside, I'm no longer working in clinics. Life is too short to put up with the level of stress you experience on a daily basis (thanks to the clients of course, not the animals).

My ds1 is training to be a vet. He gets a full student loan to pay for his education which means that at the end of 5 years he will owe around £120,000 before interest.
He will need to be paid enough to have a decent wage to live on after the student loan payment is taken, so that he feels better off than a minimum wage employee with less responsibilities otherwise he may become one of the vets leaving the profession. Unlikely in his case bit not in many others.

Blood tests aren't just a case of taking the blood, they have to be processed in a similar way to humans in the NHS which means paying for the equipment and tech staff to use it, transport if an external lab is needed for more extensive tests. This is what you are paying for.

A consult fee is exactly that, paying the vet for their time, for the expertise gained during 5+ years of study, for the blood, sweat and tears thats gone into learning every part of the anatomy for every animal, what and how things work, how to tell if they're not and how to fix it.
They can work to gold standard where money is no object and the animal can receive every test needed and the best treatment options for a great prognosis, more often though they have to be realistic in their approach.
They will tell you what needs doing, ideally to gold standard and if you are happy, get that moving. If there are concerns about payment, then start the conversation, they will have options available, just different ones. They want the best for your animal and don't know your finances but will happily tell you the price if you ask.

My issue is that the extra costs should have been mentioned before being incurred.

That doesn’t explain why you thought a consultation fee also covers all tests and investigations. Surely it’s obvious the consultation fee is just that, for the vet to physically examine the animal and discuss thoughts with you? Do you think the fee also covers any medications required?

If you think about how humans are treated, it’s no different. Pathology and things like x-rays are ‘billed’ separately under relevant item codes, you may not have to pay but when it’s all ‘paid on the books’ behind the scenes so to speak these are seperate items, they are not covered under your consult item. Why would it be different for vet services?

Yawn?
How odd.

YABU purely for the fact that you would have said no if you’d have known about the cost. Why have a pet then?

Yawn, BoredofthisCrap7 - they haven't asked. I asked the price of the castration and they told me. No mention of bloods. It will be interesting next week if they do offer and indeed, mention the cost.

Sorry tsmainsqueeze but it is sneaky. It's like the small print on contracts. I asked for the price and they told me but I bet it doesn't include blood tests. Why don't they say upfront, 'it costs £68 for the procedure and an extra £.... for the bloods, which are optional but we do recommend etc'. I really appreciate the great work vets do but a bit more transparency over costs is needed. We all want what's best for our pets ultimately. Maybe there wouldn't be so many abandoned pets if the full cost of treating a pet was advertised better.

"My cat is going in to be castrated soon and the cost is quite reasonable at £68. They didn't mention blood tests so I bet they try and sneak the question in when I drop him off."

I'm sure you'd be very very angry and upset if your cat had complications or even passed away under general anaesthetic due to an underlying kidney or liver problem, and then you found out we hadn't carried out a quick simple blood test to check their blood parameters which might have saved the cats life.
It's not "sneaky" to ask if you want the voluntary blood check. It's called a Pre Anaesthetic Blood Screen and it's offered to all animals undergoing GA or heavy sedation to check for underlying problems before we anaesthetise them.
If you don't want the bloods, that's also fine - but we give people the option and leave it up to you. It's up to you to make informed consent and informed choices about the treatment for your pet, and that is why we tell you this blood test exists, and how we can use the information to give your pet a safer anaesthetic.

Honestly, it's a no win situation for us sometimes. GIVE the information and you're a money grabbing sneaky git, DON'T give the information and you are potentially putting the life of an animal at risk and would incur the owner's fury if anything happened to their pet that was avoidable all for a quick blood test.

Wouldn't you rather be OFFERED the choice, even if you ultimately decline it?

We have just left our vets and moved to another one as they were absolutely horrendous at informing you of costs and I am sure they just made prices up sometimes as they varied so much!

The final straw was us verbally being told a invoice would be £300 only for them to present us with an invoice of nearly £1,000 a week later because they "forgot" to add some things on and demanded we paid them.

Whilst I think you should have known that the consultation fee doesn't cover anything other than the actual consultation, vets should be far clearer and transparent about how much things cost. Many people have no idea how expensive blood tests are and vets need to make this clear to people, not just go off and do them so they can add them to the invoice!

Blood tests done privately for humans are eye watering. A number of years back when I had comprehensive blood testing done, the costs of those alone were c.£1k (thank you, BUPA). And that’s before you get into the cost of MRI scans etc. I was stunned

Well, clearly she doesn’t or she wouldn’t be posting.

Yes I think they should have said before, mine usually does. However I think that you need to put it behind you rather than start creating a fuss. They’re trying to help your dog. Concentrate on that. That’s most important. Rule out some serious things with those blood tests hopefully..

@steff13 Heartworm {Lungworm} sadly IS now in UK since all the relaxation about importing foreign dogs, especially puppy farmed and ''Street'' dogs from certain parts of Europe.
I was horrified that a woman I knew of had two ''Prague ratters'' imported at 8 weeks old..Far too young for rabies shots, so these dogs are being smuggled in.

Exactly this

They'd be negligent to prescribe medication without seeing the animal!!

If the blood tests were done in the last 6 months they will be good for the castration. You can refuse them of course, but it helps the vets understand liver and kidney function and if the cat or dog has any issues before they go under a GA. Some pets die under GA, very unexpectedly and sadly, so it can pre warn of any issues. Some give us no clue and then they die, leaving everyone from owners vets and nurses in a dreadful state. Its a dreadful feeling to lose a pet in surgery, the very worst thing that can happen. My own cat had a dental last year with one of the very trusted vets and nurses I work with and he tried to die, even after bloods were done, took forever to wake up, like forever, stopped breathing and turned blue. The poor vet, as I was there working that day too and she was omg your cat is trying to die on us, as I said to her, we had done the bloods, they showed nothing at all, there is no reason he would die at all, apart from hey, he is a staff members cat and they are always prone to causing a fuss and scaring the life out of us all. Be kind to your vets and nurses folks, we only earn a wage at the end of a day, we dont get paid extra on bloods and the other 101 charges that may apply. Thats goes to the company. A lot of the time we empathise and do our best to keep the prices low, but kicking off at us wont help at all

Sounds like a fair bill to me. Surely you didn't expect free blood tests?!!

Vets are expensive. Despite having a big bill for DBoycat I paid extra for other bits. You have to pay it.

You are being unreasonable. I think you have to pay the bill in full, it's not the NHS. Probably best for you to always, from now on ask how much things are going to cost before agreeing but I doubt, because, it's not the NHS, the vet thought you would this spelling out to you.

I too am shocked at the massive leap in vet's fees between dogs {I had a gap of a few years between owning them}

Agree that owning a dog is expensive, just the routine wormers &c. Vaccines, Spaying, never mind the insurance... and all the things not covered

I too love the nose boops, and consider my dog a furry friend and an 'Essential'
It's crazy how many people go to expensive trainers/behaviourists these days, rather than training the dog themselves.

YANBU my vet tells me of the cost of all treatment including blood tests before commencing with them. You should have been informed of the costs.

Everything at the vet always costs extra. Blood tests are always expensive.
Your ignorance on the matter or failure to ask doesn't make the bill go away or you less obliged to pay it.
Your responsibility to pay.

From the title I half expected this to be someone else's animal you or your pet injured and you didn't feel you needed to pay the whole bill due to reasons the vet found that weren't your responsibility. But no this is you not wanting to take responsibility for costs incurred by you for your animal..... Definitely being unreasonable.

A cousin of mine is a vet and he regularly tells us stories of pet owners trying to get out of paying for treatment for their pets. He says many pet owners expect a vet just to treat an animal for free because “surely they became a vet because of their love of animals!” It’s a service like any other. It’s not like there’s an NHS for animals.

YANBU
They should have warned you first.

Vets salaries are on a par with teachers. The most experienced are looking at about £60k so similar to a head teacher. New grads are around £30-35k . I’m nearly 30 years qualified and my FTE is just over £50k
For proof of that have a look at the vacancies page on the IVC Evidensia website for example.

Qualified RVNs are poorly paid and there is currently a campaign to raise their salaries to £30k minimum.