vet holding cats ashes hostage

[Saitama]

My poor cat had been at the vet on and off for months, but in the end unfortunately had to be PTS. This was on a weekend and so the cost of it was extortionate, but it would have been cruel if we'd waited until monday. We asked for him to be cremated and to have his ashes back and his paw prints etc.

We've spent several thousand £ at this vet in the last months for my cat, trying to diagnose and treat him, all paid up to date until the PTS. Now I owed £700, I paid 350 of that and set up a payment plan for the rest at X amount per month. But the vets are refusing to give me my cats ashes back until it's paid in full.

All my savings have gone into my cat and I have nothing left, so his poor ashes are just sat at the vet alone and waiting for me and I can't bring him home. I've been with the vets for years with my other animals, have always been a good client, paid on time, never missed an appointment, no reason for them to think I'd just take his ashes and not pay since my other pets are registered there.

It's going to be approx 4-5 months until I can pay the rest of the bill to get my cat back, it feels so cruel of the vet to be holding him hostage like this when taking all the above into account, and how many appointments I had had there with this cat alone. I'd even sent them a card and chocolates after some of the appointments before to thank them for their work etc.

AIBU to think it's super messed up and cruel that they won't just give me his ashes now?

Then you could pay the vet, get the ashes back and pay down the balance on the credit card at the same rate you were doing to with the vet

I’m not your ‘love’, no need for the misogynistic filler thank you.

i honestly can’t think of any business where I can just opt to delay payment for 5+ months without any formal hire purchase arrangement and they would be fine with it. Can you give a single example? Invoicing at the end of the month and settling the account in full at that point is NOT the same thing, clearly.

Yeah, look, you might like to tell yourself that all vets are like that to make you feel better about your DH's workload, but they really, really aren't. I have a vet who actually cares about me, my animals, my family...and I've been seeing her for 18 years. She's in sole practice though, and we're lucky to have someone like that. I hope your DH can find a practice that allows him more of a connection.

Most insurance doesn't cover cremation so even if yours had lapsed you would still have to pay for it. It will cover the cost of euthanasia but not cremation so that is something to think about for the future.

Also why did you have it cremated if you didn't have the money to pay for it. You could have taken your cat and buried it yourself (we've done that before, we know exactly where they're all buried too).

That's why I think it's better paying the crematorium directly and arranging it yourself. The crematorium we've used in the past has a monthly payment scheme but you pay in advance so by the time you need it it's all paid for.

It is so hard to lose a pet.Sounds like you did your very best for them and so did the vet. Maybe focus on that instead of this very sad situation.

Sorry, but even if you auto-renew insurance, they send regular reminders that payment is due to give you chance to shop around if you so desire
Impossible to lapse unless you've ignored reminder letters/emails and did not notice that you had an extra 'x amount of ££' in your account each month that previously had been taken out for premiums

For those saying it's business, then I think that's a little harsh.

The vet has accepted a payment plan so should release the ashes. By holding it hostage until full payment is received is completely lacking empathy and in most pet owners eyes this is NOT good practice.

I've only had 1 pet cremated and we settled the bill a couple of weeks after we had the ashes.

Normally I’d say you’re being unreasonable. In this case, as a long standing client of the vet, I would have thought they could have made an exception. Just my thoughts.

When you enter into any type of payment plan with a business it’s usual to get what you are paying for upfront.

I don’t know how many times this has to be stated, but the OP hasn’t ‘entered into a payment plan’ with the vets. She simply can’t afford to pay the bill and her vets have no choice but to accept whatever they can get from her.

I should try this later when I go to Tesco. I’ll get to the checkout and declare that I can’t afford it but ‘promise’ to pay in instalments over the next 5 months. Then I’ll start a thread on here to complain when they don’t let me take my groceries away with me.

But it's not an official payment plan - what they've done is (very kindly) allow OP to spread her payments out over several months, but the consequence of that is that she can't get the ashes back until payment is complete.

It's a bit like those "Christmas Clubs" you can do at the Post Office - you put money away as/when you can but you can't take the gifts home until you've paid the balance in full.

But this is not a payment plan. A payment plan is with an official lender who runs a credit check and allows you to spread your payments out over 12-24 months.

This is a vet who is offering for OP to spread payment, but who won't give her the item until the payment is complete. Like those "Christmas Clubs" at the Post office, for example.

Loving the use of the word 'hostage' here
I expect Terry Waite, John McCarthy et al, would find it highly amusing. Given that they were actually held hostage and their lives threatened.

The OP has not said it was a casual arrangement. You said yourself they can offer credit through a 3rd party organisation. If vets could get into a lot of trouble for allowing a casual arrangement then why would they do it as a matter of course. Surely, it makes more sense that it is a formal arrangement.

If it was an official plan via a credit agency, she'd have the ashes already.

I see. So if OP has a credit agreement then she should be able to take the ashes.

This thread title is nuts, the story is nuts, the vets are nuts, people supporting the vets are nuts.

Maybe you all need to wean yourselves off this bizarre attachment to dumb animals.

Sorry this post really riles me.

A vet has to make a decision to either provide 9 - 5 care or to have a 24 he service.

The costs of providing a 24 hour service are significantly higher.

They may only get one call in a week. They have to not just cover staff costs for 9 - 5. They have costs associated with the other 18hrs of the day where they have to be on site and available. That means they can't be on holiday, they can't be out drinking or looking after their children etc etc. They are on-call so they need to pay either themselves or consider the cost of paying agency staff to plug the gaps.

During the course of a week there's 128hrs outside 9-5 to cover. There's also heating and lighting and insurance to cover. Taking pets in 24/7 rather than 9 to 5 is likely to be higher risk in terms of insurance liabilities.

Calculate the cost of having a locum vet for a week. Let's call it £60 an hour for arguments sake (it's likely to be more). Theoretically that's £7680 just for that alone. Divide that by 52 weeks. The vet has to make a profit of at least £150 per week from out of hours service just to cover the theoretical cost of the locum for one week.

My suspicion is in reality it's a hell of a lot more per hour and it's likely to be much more than a week that the vet will need cover for even if they live on site. Being on site does not mean you never leave nor have a life of your own. Can you start to see why out of hours calls HAVE to be expensive to justify the service? You might only see an hour of the vet but the true cost of providing the service includes the other 127hrs of out of service costs.

Exactly the same at my vet.

How can some vets do that but others can't?

So the cost of £300 for an out of hours appointment starts to look fairly ok and very reasonable when you add all of the above considerations together.

Vets are not cheap. This means pets are not cheap.

Get insurance and understand that it still could cost you a lot.

If the OP had borrowed money from a 3rd party organisation to pay her vet bill, then…her vet bill would have been paid! 🤦🏻‍♀️ She would no longer owe them any money and the ashes would be released to her. Honestly, you’re embarrassing yourself now.

They did do that.

OP didn't have to worry about payment for several days, when she received a bill much larger than she expected and that she couldn't pay. They then, very generously, offered for her to pay it off in instalments, but wouldn't give her the ashes back until payment was made in full.

Would you go in to Tesco and say "sorry, I can only pay for half of these, but I'll take the lot and just pop back next month and give you £20 towards the rest"?

No? So why is it okay at the vets?

Dumb animals beat dumb humans like you any day of the week.

Maybe some vets have had high instances of people taking too long to pay bills/not paying outstanding bills at all…and therefore their cash flow can’t afford to bankroll people who can’t pay for services they have already availed themselves of?

The sense of entitlement is strong on here sometimes.

“I want, don’t have the money, so someone else should pay’

Because they practice in an area where it's economically less well off and the risk of default on payment is much higher.

There are supermarkets in some areas with security tags on cheese. This isn't the same in other areas.

This isn't rocket science.

Haven't you watched the news and seen about the sheer level of inequality out there.

A vet will act to protect themselves financially. If they can't afford to lose money they don't have an alternative option. The cost of chasing unpaid bills is higher. If they had to do this, they'd have to raise prices for everyone or cease to be able to provide a service as it would not be financially viable to be a vet.

I do wish people would engage brains on this and consider that vets really do love animals and do understand the sensitivities of being a pet owner. They really wouldn't be resorting to this as a measure unless they felt they didn't have a choice.