This week, I have been charged £920 by my vet for an x-ray. The explanation I was offered was that she was a larger dog and that she needed hospitalisation. Now, both of those explanations don't ring true - she weighs 30kg so less than a Labrador, for example, and the hospitalisation meant just staying in the vet from morning until evening, as is normal for an x-ray. This led to me looking into the issue and finding that in the last five years, many practices have increased their fees by upto 5x. As a consequence, I started a petition for a regulatory body in the industry. If you also think this is an issue, I would be grateful if you would sign and share my petition:
Stop the Relentless Increase in Veterinary Fees
chng.it
You think that’s bad, read on...
My 11 year old Golden Retriever had a couple of dodgy episodes last October and we genuinely thought the end was nigh, it was like she became paralysed and as if blind as she wouldn’t move and just looked vacant and scared. We were distraught, had her down at vets etc, which isn’t fun in the pandemic. Anyway, vets did all their checks and couldn’t find anything so we were referred for an MRI scan, now there aren’t many places that do these as it’s very expensive equipment (think there were 3 places in the whole of the North West). The place we were referred to were immediately on the phone booking us in for the following morning, asked about which insurer I was with as that depended upon what payment options were available to me, anyway they then tell me it’d be £3,500! My insurance meant I have to pay 25% due to age of dog so was looking at best part of a grand.
Following day on the way, think it was Runcorn, appt at 9. I couldn't speak to anywhere else as it had been a Sunday day before so on the Monday morning whilst on way I phoned another place near Wigan that mentioned specialised in sorting for people with no insurance etc, had to leave a vm and they phoned me back while we were sat outside the clinic. Now we had to wait 3 days to go to the new place once I chose to go there, and we just fucked off the place that we were sat outside, and obviously we had the flap about were we doing the right thing etc as it was delaying scan by 3 days, but she didn’t seem in any pain it was just these weird episodes.
Had the MRI brain scan 3 days later, same day results were all clear and she been fine ever since and we have no idea what caused the episodes, but anyway, bottom line, we got the EXACT same scan done for £1,400.
So the cûnts were going to rob us of an additional over £2k just because it was a referral from the vet and they knew they had us by the bollocks. An absolute disgrace.
