Vet fees

[Sprockersmum]

AIBU to complain about an additional vet fee.. An extra £17:98 just to give a monthly injection in the scruff.This is in addition to the drug. The vet fees now are horrendous as it is but this additional charge came into effect a few weeks ago. I'd just like your thoughts please before I send in my complaint

If that is the charge I can’t see what grounds you have to complain , find a cheaper vet is the answer .

I'm not sure on what grounds you'd complain- injections aren't free?

What grounds do you have to complain?

If the vet has to do the injection, that takes up time and appointments from others. The £17.98 is for their time, and more importantly their experience and qualifications.

Besides, you should be able to get your pet insurance to cover it.

Where I live there is still a wait list for most vets
If I had a good one I wouldn't complain about the pricing

The problem with vets is that as humans in this country we have the NHS so don’t appreciate how expensive medical treatment is. If you have a private medical procedure and see the bill, you’d see that less than £20 won’t get you anything at all. Vets are similarly trained and drugs are similarly expensive.

No need to complain, you have the choice to pay it and have the injection or not pay it and not have the injection. Or look around and see if you can get it cheaper elsewhere.

Seems completely reasonable. It's vet time plus admin plus PPE plus room prep/cleaning plus disposal. It all costs.

🙄

Sounds reasonable to me. I don't think you have grounds to complain, OP.

I’ve reread your post as at first I thought YABU, but now I realise this charge is just to administer the drug.
the cost of the drug is on addition to this.

i am a regular vet visitor, one dog needs monthly pain relief injections, my other dog is going in for an operation on Wednesday to an orthopedic specialist.

At no time have I seen a cost to just do the injection. That I would not be happy about.

You can complain but you’ll get nowhere.
Try to find an independent vet, if one exists, and not one that is part of a huge corporate.

Thanks for putting a different slant on things...However... This is literally for the act of injecting the drug which I could do myself jab! We literally walk in. "How's he doing" ? ... "Fine thanks"... Jab... "thanks bye see you in 4 weeks" . How can they justify that cost on top of the med and visit? Surely the cost is in with the cost of the injection...its only been introduced over the last 4 visits, he's been having the monthly injections for over 4 years now. Money is not the issue.. It's the principle of it. I don't feel I'm getting value for money also it's an odd amount..
Perhaps I'll bite my tongue and suck it up... It does stick in my craw though

Exactly this. As a general rule, we are so cushioned by the 'free at point of use' NHS that we are a bit clueless about medical costs. Medicine, medical equipment and medical expertise is expensive.

You are paying for veterinary qualifications, experience, expertise, years and years of training (it's as hard if not harder to study vet med than it is to study medicine to become a doctor) not to mention the general overheads of running a business.

It might stick in your craw to pay it but it is what it is.

Mn isn’t really the place to complain about vet fees, some people defend them no matter what. I get that obviously you pay a consultation fee for their time, I very much disagree with them making huge amounts of money from the actual medications though. My last two visits were for a rat with an ear infection, first one was to vets for pets who charged me a £40 consultation fee and £35! for 0.5ml of antibiotics! The second one was to the pdsa (as a paid patient) as my first few goes of getting antibiotics into a rat had failed and the lot was wasted. I was charged a £16 consultation fee and 60 pence for the antibiotics, and they gave me 5 times the amount just in case. How tf do you go from 60pence to £35 for less than a teaspoon on rat medicine??

Why not ask if you can get an online prescription for the medication and do it yourself at home?

This, I am sure the vet would be willing to show you how and then you could do it at home, just paying for the medication and any needles etc.

You can ask for a prescription and buy the medication elsewhere, you would still need to pay the fee for the diagnosis obviously

£139 to euthanaise a gerbil - outrageous- we declined the extra £80 to dispose of the body

You could ask for the prescription and then just buy the medication, the syringe, drawing up needle, administering needle, the sharps box, pay for disposal of the box etc etc if it works out cheaper. There are lots of people who inject their own pets.

Vets are highly trained professionals with a lot of overheads eg building, staff, buying in supplies etc .
You won't find that many of them are rich; they do the job because they find it interesting and ime because they like animals.
This is the cost of their services and as per a pp we are not paying at the point of care for medical treatment so have lost perspective. It is a similar situation with dentists.

You also have to pay vets to write a prescription too nowadays. And when the actual medications are usually actually very cheap, it’s not even worth the expense and effort of getting the prescription. I’m quite lucky in that I’ve got family in countries where a lot of animal medications can be bought over the counter. As long as it’s not urgent, I’ll get a relative in Belgium to nip to the pharmacy for me and post over whatever it is I need

Presumably, had you not needed the injection, that slot would have been used as a standard consultation, meaning you actually had a reduction in cost for the vets time and they had a loss of higher income.

Yabu

Have you questioned the cost to see if it’s correct? Was it explained to you about the additional cost prior to or at the visit?

I'd be fuming about that as well op.

Can you give the injection yourself?

Specialist dermatologist vet taught me how to do the injections, gave me all the bits and I do it myself monthly in the scruff. Can you raise that with your vet? They might just teach you how to do it.

Vets are now in short supply, like Dentists, they can charge what they like... don't like it /can't afford it? don't have a pet.

My DD works in the NHS, the money she could now earn in the private sector is eye watering & thats here in the UK.

We voted for this, so can hardly complain.