Vets..excessive mark-up! Should I return items?

[lonelylou09]

I've got 2 dogs and 1 horse. No insurance (yes I'm an idiot!)
This year so far ive already spent £969 at the vets plus another £125 yesterday.

That's made up of 2 emergency call outs and painkillers for the horse (£150) the rest is daily meds for older dog arthritis plus monthly jabs and my younger dog had to have a growth removed from his leg.
I paid beforehand £130+ to have a biopsy sent off and tested but the results were inconclusive so vet recommended it be removed as well as a large area around it just incase.
This has left him with a huge open wound and we've been to the vets every other day for 3 weeks now for dressing changes. Which resulted in the £125 bill yesterday. I wasn't expecting it to be that much so asked for a print out.
So far everytime they have changed his dressing it's £5 for the melolin pad and £5 for the vet wrap. They have also given me 6 melolin pads incase I need to change his dressing at home. But no vet wrap so I ordered some online. £1 each!
So I looked up the dressing pads online...£6 for a box of 10. Same make and size.
I really don't mind paying my vet bills (honestly I can't think of what else I could possible think to spend £1000+ on 😭😭 ) and have always just paid it without question but surely if I can get them that cheap they are not paying anywhere near £5 each for them!
Would I be being unreasonable to take the pads back and ask for a refund?
I hate being that person but at the moment every spare £ is going to the vets without feeling ripped off in the process.

@Springsnake think that's slightly harsh! I did used to have insurance on my older dog but the policy doubled and then we got the other dog so it was too much. I've got savings and so far costs have been minimal. Just had a run of everything happening at once so far this year.
Insurance now wouldn't cover what I would need help for with the dogs but that doesn't mean to say I shouldn't own animals without insurance.

@littlepattilou yes perhaps and at least now I know and won't be having anymore off them and perhaps I need to be slightly more assertive and questioning at the time..I've always just gone with whatever they have recommended without question.
Lesson learned

@Roboticcarrot yes she gave me 3 last week and another 4 yesterday without saying a word.. just change them if it gets wet. He's going back on Tuesday anyway so 1 or 2 would of been enough.
Had no idea at all till I paid and had time afterwards to look at the bill that they were so expensive

@lurker101 yes that's completely understandable. With that wine your covering all the other costs that allow you to be able to sit and enjoy that wine. But if they had sent you home with 6 extra bottles at that cost and you got home to find it's £6 a bottle rather than £30 would you of been happy?
I'd rather pay the extra cost of taking him in and having them check the wound and change the dressing ..same as you paying the extra to above the wine served to you

Op I assume your horse is insured (not necessarily for vets fees but third party?).

Statistically most people must pay in more than they get out for pet insurance - but obviously its a gamble.

I have elderly animals. To insure them would be £1000+ a year, with high excess and % of treatment. I am far from rich, but they have their own savings account instead, with enough in it to give a reasonable amount of care and put towards anyour long term medication they may end up needing. Anything more serious and at their ages it would be unlikely to be fair on them to put them through treatment anyway.

As for the bandages - it cost you £30 to learn to always keep a well stocked first aid kit at home. Your vets prices seem very reasonable in general, I'd not argue about the cost or try to return. Just know for next time to be able to politely tell them it's fine, you have your own

Definately buy your own. I paid for some medicine for my cat from the vet then googled it and found I could have brought it online for much much cheaper. Such a rip off.

And just an update as I've just checked..the £125 extra was for 4 bandage changes at 4 X £15 ...totally fine with that...the rest was costs for what they have sent me home with.

I won't take the dressings back..that's why I asked on here to find out what others thought..but I will be more cautious in future.
My older dog has just had her monthly injection changed and the vet said it would be maybe £10 more expensive than her current one but that she then wouldn't need her daily meds so it should balance the cost out. Went to pay the bill and it was 3x as much!
I love my vets very much but I know a ex friend of mine who would of marched right down there and demanded her money back if she found out she was paying 10x more for something.

Would have.

@pursuedbyablackdog

Op I assume your horse is insured (not necessarily for vets fees but third party?).

What's that got to do with the post? Third party won't help with vets bills.

Re having animals insured - it works up to a point but insurance companies are notorious for piling on exclusions for things like colic, lameness and pre-existing conditions. A lot of horse owners opt to put money aside each month and find that on the whole it works out cheaper. Plus you at least have some financial security behind you, whatever happens to your horse or other pet.

And just an update as I've just checked..the £125 extra was for 4 bandage changes at 4 X £15 ...totally fine with that...the rest was costs for what they have sent me home with.

I suspect the high costs of equipment is to make up for the very low appointment/treatment costs, to be honest.

The prices you've listed on this thread for emergency visits, pain injections etc. are very low.

@sunflowersandbuttercups I think normal consultation costs are £30. Emergency call out was £60 I think then £15 for painkiller injection. We are only a 5 minute drive from vets. But yes I thought that would be much higher.
Normally if it's the same issue being treated it's an all in one cost. When he's been castrated ect I've not had to pay for aftercare or stitches removed as that goes in with the cost of the operation.
Well I'm well prepared now with a box of dressings and bandages for future use 🤣🤣

@Sueaxlbrick

Your treatment may have been reasonable so far but I do agree that vets put a massive mark up on the medication they sell. It is ofter 4 times the amount you can buy it for online and, whilst I expect it to be a bit more at the vets, not that much. You already pay for the consultation fee so it's not their time you are paying more for. I just pay around £10 for the prescription and buy it online, still works out much cheaper.

I'm a vet nurse , vets do not 'put a massive , often 4 times the amount you can buy online' If we did charge 4 times the amount i don't think we would be keeping hold of many clients. We cannot buy the vast majority of medication we need from online suppliers the way our clients can . We have to by law buy them from a veterinary wholesale supplier . We are very aware of price differences and so we offer our clients the option to buy a written prescription , we still get the odd person moaning about the charge for this , they don't consider that we have to read the pets notes ,make a new script each time ,we don't duplicate previous scripts in my practice ,it gets vet checked , double checked and then signed , all takes time and concentration. When the client who doesn't buy the product direct from us has a mad panic that the product is unobtainable on occasion from their online supplier we have the responsibility of making sure the pet gets what they need -NOW ! There is so much work , costs and responsibility behind the scenes of a vet practice that people very little idea about , also most of us are very generous with our time ,lots of things are done for the good of the animal in our care and not charged for, eg cooked chicken breast for something off its food fetched from the local shop -a very minor example !. I know there is the odd rogue after your money but i have to defend my wonderful veterinary colleagues when there is yet another accusation of vets ripping people off.

@tsmainsqueeze appreciate your comments and it was on no way a post against vets although perhaps could of worded the title better.
We've had the option, from the vet, of buying medication via online and as the cost difference wasnt much I've opted to stay with getting it from the vet for those very reasons.
But paying the same for 1 item that I can get 10 off was a bit hard to understand.
I won't make a fuss over it as I greatly appreciate my vets and all that they do but I will have a better stocked supply for home use in future.
I switched to my current vets as they have a great reputation and I wanted a second opinion on a dog I had years ago as the old vets where charging me full consultation for each appointment for the same issue. My current vet doesn't do that and they are much more caring towards the animals.

This happened to us but worse. Our old rotty has a huge growth in his leg and we were quoted £700 for it to be removed. Then he had to go in every 48 hours for dressing changes. They led us to believe that the dressing changes were included and then they said on the serving dressing changes that they would have to charge for the dressing due to an offer due in pricing. That was fine. But then after 3 weeks they presented us with a bill for another £800 !! I nearly fainted. Turned out they had opted to sedate him every single time as they were worried he might bite. I argued it down and said had they told us, we would have stayed with him instead of dropping him off for an hour at their request. Her so had an open at that point and so we went the chemist, night loads of the same stuff and did it daily ourselves without the sedation and saved £800 for the next three weeks. I argued with the lack of disclosure for the extra bill and we settled on £400. I still felt like I'd been robbed.

[quote lonelylou09]@WaltzingBetty I have paid for all of it as stated.
When it's the same issue there is generally not a full consultation fee each time for the same issue. If I was taking him every other day for a different matter and taking up the vets time in a consultation I would happily pay for that if asked. They have charged a small fee on top of material costs for each dressing change and I've happily paid that.
My issue was with being unwittingly sold these dressings to do at home at such a high cost. I've now got 7 spare dressings that the nurse has just given me when bringing the dog out..that's £35 when a box of 10 cost me £6.[/quote]
I didn't say you hadn't paid for it

My point is that you don't seem to appreciate that your vets are vastly undercharging you for time. It is entirely normal in most veterinary practices to charge a consultation fee for each appointment. It doesn't matter that it's not a new condition. It's still the same amount of time they're using where they could be charging a full consultation fee.

Rather than appreciating your vet's generosity in charging you extremely low prices for their professional time and services, you've totally overlooked that, and started a thread in the internet slagging them off.

You sound incredibly entitled.
I expect your vets is a local small business - if you carry on refusing to pay them for their services and products, they'll no doubt end up selling to a large corporate who'll be pricing at standard business rates.

Maybe then you might be a bit more appreciative of what they're currently giving you

Insurance probably won't cover pre-existing conditions though (like your dog's arthritis). So think twice.

£10 to have a dressing changed is actually really cheap considering how much vet/ nurse fees are. My old vet used to charge the full £35 for follow up visits and it was £250 for an emergency appointment.

They did charge me £6.50 for a 25ml of a special antibacterial wash to help my cat's acne. It was hibiscrub and when I googled it I realised I had been ripped off, questioned the charge and had it refunded and then changed vets.

@lonelylou09 yes, because if you buy something in the moment you pay for the convenience of having what you need there and then. In my previous example if I wanted 6 bottles to take home I wouldn’t expect to get the wholesale or internet price (I might appreciate a bit off it, maybe 5% as goodwill but would still pay full price if required because otherwise the restaurant would have a missed opportunity cost) Now you know what is required you can buy them online cheaper if more are required.