I fired my Veternary Clinic today – Sunset Animal Medical Center in Fair Oaks, California. If you’ve had good or bad experiences with your vet or any business be sure to post reviews on Google+ Local and Yelp. Think of online reviews as filling the need the Better Business Bureau used to fill – connecting people with better estimates of the quality of businesses.

In a nutshell we’ve been less than impressed by the quality of care and customer service for a very long time. We should have switched vets long ago. The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back today was the arrogant attitude of a vet tech telling me she probably wasn’t going to be giving my dog the post-op eye medication I had just returned with because it might affect the glucose curve testing I had agreed to do today. You see my dog is a diabetic, went blind, and had her cataracts removed about a month ago – so she needs her post-op medications to avoid further complications.

I’m sure the vet on duty would have straghtened the vet tech out but that arrogant attitude gave me zero confidence that my dog was safe. Like I said – this was a straw. If this was a single incident I would have not lost my cool. In my experience this is the status-quo at this business. I was done.

So I demanded they return my dog and after waiting a few minutes for them to get my dog’s medical chart together so they could give me a bill I lost patience for the last time and left – telling them to bill me as I left. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted waiting for their office staff to get their charts together.

One of these charming office staff clerks called later to say I owed them $120 (or something like that) and that I had to come back in to pay them and talk to the vet about the results of the tests. The dog was there for 20 minutes so I don’t know how they had time to do anything but nice to know. Anyway after informing the gal I wasn’t EVER walking back into their business – but happy to pay over the phone if they’d tell me what they did for $120 – she said she’d need someone with more authority to call me back.

I’ve waited and no call. Par for course I say – at least I’m not in their waiting room.

Here’s the review I posted on Google +:

I was a customer of Sunset Animal Medical Center for over 8 years, until today. I fired them. There wasn’t just one thing they did wrong that drove me away, it was years of doing things wrong. In short it seems they’ve gotten so big that they’ve lost their ability to provide a consistent level of care or quality of service. It’s as if your pet’s chart is the only thing keeping people on task.

 

I’ve also experienced long waits in their waiting room and some arrogant office staff. Today for example it was the vet tech’s rude tone that lit my fuse. So in my humble opinion the big problem plaguing that the place is the ever changing string of staff and vets.

 

For example it’s a rare occurrence when I see the same vet two times in a row. I want a vet clinic that is personally involved in the day-to-day operations of their office, who remembers their patients, and follows-up on their treatment.

 

I recently experienced this higher level of service and care when we took one of our dogs to an eye specialist for cataract surgery. That eye clinic is run so smoothly and every member of the staff seems personally committed to my dog’s care. Unfortunately they just do eyes. So today we’re searching for a smaller more personal clinic. Goodbye Sunset!

 

Please be sure to post positive and negative reviews on Google+ Local and Yelp. The more of us that share our stories the easier it will be for all of us to find the good ones.