One of our cats has had a bit of bad breath so I went to try and have a look to see if I could see anything. Cat went bezerk as soon as I touched her mouth, howling, clawing, and I mean properly trying to gouge the inside of her mouth with claws. Blood everywhere. Had to get to vets asap but at 19.00 had to be out of hours service.

Verdict was (probably) a rotten tooth that had been partially dislodged. Leave her there and pick her up first thing tomorrow.

So, the bill for a blood test, anaesthetic, tooth removal and medication…

£687!!!!!!

Yes she is insured but that’s not the point, that is an obscene amount of money for what must be a really minor procedure.

Out of hours work is a goldmine. Nearly half my monthly take home is out of hours work and <10% of my hours worked.

Vet? Naaaah, IT.

£24.99 Open till 8pm

I had a grass seed out of my dogs ear driving him nuts, no anaesthetic, total time in there less than 10 minutes and £148.

My cats meds went from £14 every 5 weeks to just under £100 for the exact same pills – i think the cat and the vet are init together and splitting the profits!

Our cat recently cost us £97, which leaves £403 before she reaches the £500 limit I’ve set for vet’s bills. She had better stay healthy.

Our cat had a similar op last week but for 2 teeth. As it was planned and during working hours it was ‘a mere’ £211.

That included cleaning out her ears too.

@jamie I drive past that canal most days I think (skipton). No cats drowned there AFAIK but flowers still there from tragic car accident that I think drowned a teenage girl.

Pfft Ferrets make cats seem cheap!

I think our vets have all been to Hawaii off our ferret vet bills this year!

That is steep. Both my dogs have been to the vet after accidents – one half ripped a claw out and had to have a GA before they could remove it, the other cut her knee open and had it stapled. On both occasions it was just under the £70 excess for claiming on the insurance.

Top trump vet story is it…
In July we had a BBQ.. that evening the dog was violently sick and went into shock (shaking, crying and in extreme distress). 10pm visit to vets.. had and injection to stop vomitting, had a high temp (was a very hot day too).
Dog wasnt too well for the next few days and seemed in alot of pain.
Back to vets for a course of antibiotics.
7 days later dog still in lots of pain..
A large lump comes up on his side (like an ulcer).
He licks all the fur off the lump and it starts weeping alot.
More antibiotics from vet.
2 days later more lumps appear on his side and on his hip.
Vet suggests something rather sinister and doesnt look good for his future.
Next day Mrs cloudnine spots a small twig on his hip and goes to pick it off.
What she starts pulling off is not a twig on his fur but something sticking out of his hip… so starts pulling.
She removes a 6″ wooden kebab skewer.. (remember that BBQ 3 weeks ago).
Another emergency out of hours trip to vets, more antibiotics and a scan.
A few more trips to the vets over the next few days for check ups.

Dog given all clear… Half a months wages handed over.
Unbelievably survived without getting peritonitis from secretly stealing a whole kebab from the table. Must have swallowed it down in one… travelled through his stomach wall and stuck in his body cavity. He walked round for 3 weeks with a skewer pushing backwards and forwards inside him until it ruptured out through his hip.
Dog uninsured as he already has bad hip dysplasia so already has a £40/ month tab for anti inflammatories. Stupid dog… but still my best friend…. Just

Cost us about £450 to have a guinea pig bladder stone removed and subsequent follow ups, patient didn’t survive either. Previous guinea cost over £200 for sedation, x ray and put to sleep. I’ve told the remaining one he better be cheap when he goes.

Complain, stress how ridiculous you feel the bill is etc etc and I bet you get it reduced. Wife got one cut massively by doing it, but if you don’t ask you don’t get.

Alternatively tell them they can keep the cat!

How much would you charge to staff an out of hours emergency clinic. How much would you expect to be paid to work out of hours?

Cost of the NHS per yer per person is about 2k a year

Cost of GP service excluding out of hours cover in my surgery is about £120 per person excluding drugs. For this the average patient will have 4 GP and one nurse appointment. Out of hours cover adds perhaps £10 extra.

Just a small unscientific comparison…

I’m guessing you don’t do surgery on your out of hours?

Seems like we got off lightly with our vet…

Our rescue cat was about one year old when, one evening he appeared rather quiet and subdued. Then as we were heading to bed, the cat was reluctant to move.
The situation deteriorated and by about 1am we decided we should ring the vet.

It turned out that his bladder was blocked due to formation of crystals in his urethra.
So in the early hours, the vet sedated the cat, drained his bladder, flushed and redrained the bladder and then kept him in for 24+ hours for observation.

A not uncommon but fairly grave condition for male neuters.

We were billed about £350.

Complain, stress how ridiculous you feel the bill is etc etc and I bet you get it reduced. Wife got one cut massively by doing it, but if you don’t ask you don’t get.

what makes you think its ridiculous?

staff either on the premises out of hours or available to call out cost money (more money than 9-5 staff).
an overnight stay with monitoring / nursing care isn’t going to be cheap.

if it is a “really minor procedure” as the OP suggests then (a) he could have done it himself – apparently not as his simple investigations aggravated it OR (b) it could have waited till the morning – it probably could have but the OP was worried.

Look at the private (human) dental costs at the bottom of this page and you’ll see that without even an overnight stay it is quite possible to run well into the hundreds for out of hours + complex extraction (involving GA) add in the blood tests and medication costs and actually if I wasn’t NHS I might get the vet to do my dental work!

Yeah, go on, I’ll bite.

Just how much do folk actually think the average vet earns? Probably around the same amount as a teacher according to recent studies. For a lot, that salary is for a pretty shitty, often thankless job, working stupid hours including nights/weekend on call and risking injury most days. The NHS culture in this country means health care in general is undervalued and expected as a right.

The comparison with a GP surgery is also irrelevant as how many of these have full operating facilities, dental suite, xray/ultrasound, etc etc on site, 24/7. The whole scale of your average doctors surgery is also much larger with no real competition. Plus the average GP earns around 3 times a Vets salary, with out of hours wages around 10 times.

Sorry for the rant but it really does annoy me how people expect Vets to work all hours and perform miracles for nothing. And for the OP, your cat’s alive and insured so where is the problem?

Sorry for the rant but it really does annoy me how people expect Vets to work all hours and perform miracles for nothing. And for the OP, your cat’s alive and insured so where is the problem?

But your all loaded, you take all that money you charge straight to the Ferrari dealer don’t you?

Anyway well put.

Sorry for the rant but it really does annoy me how people expect Vets to work all hours and perform miracles for nothing. And for the OP, your cat’s alive and insured so where is the problem?

Even if the insurance is paying for it…

I like vets, it’s one of the professions that I have a lot of respect for. And it’s very demanding too imo, in terms of what people expect out of a vet.

£687 is a lot of money, it might be justified. I would expect to pay no more than about £250 for “a blood test, anaesthetic, tooth removal and medication” during normal working hours with no overnight stay. An extra £437 for out of hours/overnight stay seems a lot, unless there’s been extra work/complications not mentioned.

EDIT : My vet has emergency work after 11pm covered by another practice. I was discussing with her recently their charges and she mentioned how shockingly expensive they were, she certainly seemed to think they were difficult to justify.

OK, lets try this for size…….
You finish work at 5pm, at 7pm you get a call saying can you come back in? This is a regular thing, not a one off. How much would you want to go back into work for the evening to deal with a cat with bad breath and a rotten tooth?
I really don’t think that the OP’s cat was an emergency. It was probably far more convenient, for the OP, to take Tibbles in the evening rather than the next day.
I presume if the cat wasn’t insured the OP may have been a bit more careful with his own money and waited for normal surgery hours

My vet in the US is a large practice (now 8 vets). They do have a 24 hr emergency number for their clients. Basically, its a cell phone that they all use on a rotation for when the office is closed.

I had an elderly cat, and one night he was real restless. I found a large swollen lump on him. I called the emergency # at something like 2AM and discussed the issue with the vet. I decided to have him seen, and IIRC there was something like a $60 or $80 fee for the after hours visit (disclosed in advance). After that, everything was just the regular cost. No tech was needed in my case, that would have been additional. They do have a sign up that explains the (significant) cost if they need to have a tech spend all night with an animal.

There is a 24 hr animal hospital in the next town. I have been told that they are extremely expensive. It may be justified, though as the overhead of having a facility staffed 24/7 would be huge. And I’ll bet that there are a lot of nights with no business at all. And those costs need to be covered somehow.

I do sympathise as pets do become part of the family.

Vets should offer a no pet no fee service.

I have a deep mistrust of vets as I do think some of them overcharge and play on the fact it’s someone’s beloved pet. Once you find one that doesn’t take the piss you begin to see others for what the are.

For example we know an excellent vet in Chesterfield and one of our cats came home minus most of an eye. Operation to remove eye and an overnight stop to check he was ok – £80.

Another vet has told us that we should have another one of our cats tested for cat flu-£90 please. Took him to our favoured vet who asked why would we want to test for cat flu, what would we do if he had it?

They also removed a gammy tooth from cat 3 for £15.

Good service as well and no BS. If your pet needs something they’ll do it, if not they’ll tell you not.

😯
How much is a new cat?

They also removed a gammy tooth from cat 3 for £15.

At a massive and significant loss to the business? Sounds like nice person hopeless sense of business. I’ve known enough vets to know there are some good and some bad in medical terms and in knowing how to operate a small business. Sounds like the overnight stop was just that, no monitoring no checking just be happy if it’s alive in the morning.

loddrik – Member
One of our cats has had a bit of bad breath so I went to try and have a look to see if I could see anything. Cat went bezerk as soon as I touched her mouth, howling, clawing, and I mean properly trying to gouge the inside of her mouth with claws. Blood everywhere. Had to get to vets asap but at 19.00 had to be out of hours service.

Matt24k – Member

I really don’t think that the OP’s cat was an emergency. It was probably far more convenient, for the OP, to take Tibbles in the evening rather than the next day.

I’d probably put that as an emergency. 🙄

I was considering a pet but all these unexpected costs are putting me off a bit.

I really don’t think that the OP’s cat was an emergency.

What has that got to do with the price charged, which is what is being discussed here ? Are you suggesting that he was deliberately charged more because because it wasn’t a “real” emergency and that if it had been he would have been charged less ?

Furthermore the usual arrangement is that in an emergency the vet is phoned first before the animal is taken, if you can decide from the few sentences in the OP that this wasn’t an emergency then presumably the vet would have come to the same conclusion from a telephone conservation. There is no evidence that the vet was taken to the surgery against the advice of the vet.

How much would you want to go back into work for the evening to deal with a cat with bad breath and a rotten tooth?

Is it extra if the cat has bad breath ?

OK, lets try this for size…….

Not very good I reckon. If you’re a vet I wouldn’t take any animal to you, specially if you object to cats having bad breath.

I have a deep mistrust of vets as I do think some of them overcharge and play on the fact it’s someone’s beloved pet. Once you find one that doesn’t take the piss you begin to see others for what the are.

Someone running a business who doesn’t know how his customers value his time/service and who is content for a race to the bottom in prices but probably complains about how they are paid less than Dr’s and Dentists?

Our cat was in overnight doubled up in pain, two xrays, antibiotics, pain killers etc came to about £500 for the stay. Seems pretty reasonable given you have to sedate then awaken the cat for each xray, put it on a drip etc – a lot of work for a skilled professional.

We don’t insure and we’re still quids in self insuring.

@MikeSmith-excellent vets actually, been the years and years and has excellent ratings on all review websites. Predominantly a farming vets and that is where they make the bulk of the money. They then do pets relatively cheaply.

Spire Vets in Chesterfield for reference. Just inconvenient for us to get to now as we are across town

Small animals out of hour vet is a complete rip off. Compare it to large animals out of hours call out it usually is 4 or 5 times the price.

I’ll concede that comparing a GP with a VET doesn’t work, you have the whole of the NHS backing this service up. Vets are just like private health providers, they cost the earth if you wish to use it. However, what i get annoyed about is the cost of medication and anesthetics. My last dog ended up having a serious bowel and intestinal issue, and some drugs were prescribed (which didn’t really work), i remember we were paying something along the lines of £120 per prescription every month – these same drugs were available via the pharmacy for a fraction of the price, it was only by coincidence we found out as we had them left over from another prescription.

i remember we were paying something along the lines of £120 per prescription every month – these same drugs were available via the pharmacy for a fraction of the price, it was only by coincidence we found out as we had them left over from another prescription.

Most vets do that as a balanced approach to pricing, ie part of the profit from the drugs goes to support the rest of the practice. If they charged wharehouse prices for drugs then they would have to up the costs elsewhere.

Predominantly a farming vets and that is where they make the bulk of the money. They then do pets relatively cheaply.

Still doesn’t mean anyone actually was looking after the animal over night, there is not much money in large these days and it’s getting tighter. Most of the large practices I knew are now merged into county wide affairs or part of larger buying co-ops to try and keep costs down.
£15 to remove a tooth isn’t cheap, it wouldn’t have covered anything that was used or the time to do it.

Fair pay for fair work?

Small animals out of hour vet is a complete rip off. Compare it to large animals out of hours call out it usually is 4 or 5 times the price.

I assume you mean livestock?
I can’t see a horse doctor coming out on a cold evening for £50…

one of the junior staff politely mentioned that really there was nothing that could be done – they knew that on day one, I’d just been paying for a lot of tests to determine why she was going to die as she spent her last few days constantly starving and spraying liquid shit all over herself – I don’t think I can forgive them for that.

That is unforgivable. We’ve used the same vet for several cats and dogs for over 20 years. Not cheap but I think the charges are justified. And I trust them. For example when I took an elderly cat with health problems to see him and discussed possible causes/treatments there was no attempt made to get me to carry out further treatments and prolong a poor quality of life. It was just put as a choice – try and treat but expect the worst in a few months time or put it to sleep.

For a pet that has had a long happy family life it’s a travesty to prolong it for a few months or a year with poor quality health.

starting mid-low 20’s to mid 30’s – rising to 50ish – about double the national average – of course, you never get rich working for someone else – that’s probably why our Vet drives an Aston DB9.

Glasgow?
Just a mere 5 to 6 years of uni to get there just like the national average earners. Same training gets you up as a gp and double the earnings.