Banfield Pet Hospital review: Vet Services

If I could give a -10 review that is what it would be. Run, Run as fast as you can. This place is awful! I have given them the opportunity to do the right thing but apparently they will not. My poor little 11 lb, 15 year old Shih Tzu was brought in on a Tuesday because he had be throwing up, which he did occasionally and the vet told me according to the X rays he had ingested something "metallic". Even had a specialist confirmed her belief. $ 468 with pet plan increase now to $ 50.00 per month to cover Xrays. Bring him back next day to see if he started to pass the object. No, he did not - it was lodged. I was told it could possibly be plastic, or even "kitty litter". Options were to treat throwing up or preform surgery. I told technician I wanted to discuss with my husband based on the amount the surgery would cost and, mind you, the dog is 15 years old. The tech tells me I have 20 MINUTES to make this decision! Under the absolute impression that they dog ate something (as I was told over and over by) we agreed to the $1700.00 surgery as we were worried what the metallic, plastic substance would do when he passed it. I was then called after the surgery to find out it was a stomach mass (probably cancer as one of the other vets mentioned). NEVER, EVER in any discussions with the vet was a mass, cyst, anything of organic nature in the dog ever mentioned. He was 15 years old and we would have never agreed to a $1700.00 surgery based on that! Four days later the dog was euthanized as he little body could not recover. His last 4 days on earth were miserable. Had we know it was even a remote possibility that it was not something ingested we would have made a completely different choice. I spoke to another vet who said they "could have made the same mistake" Worst part of all this is after spending all this money on their error I am apparently still stuck in my $ 50.00 per month contract. I called the corporate office last week and they said someone would get back tome in 3 days - more than 3 days have passed - No response. The very least the could do is make this contract go away. The vet can be COMPLETELY WRONG and its no consequence to them. But we expedited the death of this dog and made him suffer. I admit to making the very poor decision to allow the surgery but it was based on the "experts" 14 year experience.