Banfield Pet Hospital
Reviews and Complaints

I cancelled my pet insurance for my two dogs several years ago, after an incompetent vet at a Banfield location nearly killed my German Shepard. I should have sued, but instead decided to let it go and try to move on. Banfield is still trying to collect on the insurance I cancelled. That's not how insurance works! Now its on my credit report. I want it removed!

Our 12 ½ year old Whippet had his teeth cleaned at our local Banfield. During the procedure, Banfield contacted us for permission to remove one of our dog’s molars because the root was showing right above it. We gave them the ok, and after the procedure was over, we were informed that during the tooth extraction, a small piece of the root had broken off and was now lodged between the gum and the nasal cavity. Our vet, although very experienced, was not able to retrieve the piece of bone, and did not want to keep our older dog under anesthesia longer than his health permitted. The clinic is also not technically equipped to handle very specialized surgery. We were very worried that this complication would require another procedure under anesthesia, and at that point regretted our decision in allowing the tooth extraction.

Well My dog had been on the plan for over 14 years. I had to put her down on Saturday July 22nd, 2107. I was told to call the Banfield 800 number to cancel the plan. The girls working at Banfield, seamed very strange when I ask how to cancel the plan. Well now I know why, I am now paying for a DOG The is no longer alive. I will be paying till December 5th each month ! I hope Banfield and all their employees go to HELL. They have the worst attitude at the store in the Greewood area, that we drive out to the Plainfield Store. NEVER EVER DO Business with Banfield, they are very deceiving when they sale you the plan. If they put your Dog to sleep or it passes away, that should be an instant out of the plan, NO Questions Ask. They have been collecting money every month for 14 years. It just added pain to my heart to pay for a decision they almost forced me to make. Banfield I hope you go out of Business! ¥ou Suck at Kindness your flyers are a little deceiving!

First of all, while I will not deny attempts have been made to contact me, I will say that your representative always call me when I am at work and I have explicitly told them that information and asked that they instead call my husband's number to get the bill taken care of. Instead your people continue to call my cellular phone when I am at work. As a member of the us air force and a medical professional, this is greatly inconvenient and not conducive to me doing my job. I am in a biological hazard room, dealing with terminally ill patients and you are calling me about paying a bill? As if their lives are less important than your money? Inappropriate and unacceptable! I work during the day and it's almost like despite my requests you refuse to acknowledge that. Which brings me to my next point. My husband has tried on many occassions to contact your company to square off the bill and cancel services. My puppy is gone, and we do not need services anymore (Not that we utilized these overpriced services often to begin with, but that's neither here nor there). Everytime he tries to contact you, you transfer to someone that never picks up. You try to bully us into paying without at least making sure we can cancel our account. We should not have to pay off the account and then be further charged for services we no longer use. I have/had no problem paying the bill. Fair is fair. But your company, along with others such as comcast overcharge, continue to charge and then make it so that people need an act of god to cancel services!

There's a policy of cancelling the Banfield Wellness Plans within the first 4 business days to get the full refund of your membership fee. I called them on Monday(Signed up on Friday) and waiting time of 80 minutes so that system put me in line for my turn. When I received a call back, it was just 2 rings and no one called me back again. I then tried couple of times and the system said it cannot take calls anymore for the day.

I did also sent an email to them that evening & left for the day. Next day morning, i got a email confirmation that I have to pay the remaining balance of service used including the membership fee. Customer service rep named Eric also called me and he did not say a word about membership fee refund until I confronted him about the policy. Once that's confirmed, now he started saying that I'm on the 4th day as they consider Saturday/Sunday as business days. I then did not even think twice and went ahead and cancelled the plan by paying remaining service due along with Membership fee.

Poor and unethical customer service. Please stay away from them.

I've had my dog on the Wellness Plan for over 10 years at this location. There's obviously a huge problem going on there within the past year or two. Scheduling an appointment is impossible~ It takes weeks to get in to see any vet. paying $52.95 per month for over 10 years is a lot of money and when your dog gets sick they can't see them because they are too busy, so they refer you to an emergency hospital? Why am I paying for Vet services when I can't get the care my dog needs? I'm ready to sue this place! I will be contacting their corporate office, as well as possibly hiring an attorney... these people need to be held accountable for their lack of performance.

they wont allow me to control my own account, I didn't get paid on a Thursday and they tried taking money out on Thursday but money wasn't available till Friday so they pinalized me with a $20 charge. I called and tried to make weekly payments and they said they have no system to make my own payments. I live on a budget so I like paying my monthly bills down by paying weekly and banfield WILL NOT ACCEPT AN EARLY PYMT. WHY? please I need to pay my bills weekly I have to many other monthly bills this is not fair. they need a system where we can go online and pay ourselves. there greedy they look at all monthly pymts for there income but god forbid I wanted to pay weekly.

Good AFternoon
I'm very disappointed with the service that we received from the Banfield clinic. Our puppy had the wellness plan with them, when I phoned this morning cause money is still getting deducted for this plan they informed me that this was a auto renewal plan (we were never informed about that when we signed up ) so to my surprise we have paid over $300.00 for no service received. When I request a refund they informed me to read my contract . I'm very disappointed with this response. When the front desk don't informed you or you don't even get a call reminding you that your contract is up for renewal. They just informed me that they are sorry that we were not informed about this clause in the contract but there is nothing they can do !

Our dog was poorly diagnosed and treated when it was noted that his liver enzyme levels were climbing. Instead of a strong recommendation for aggressive treatment, no especial concern was expressed and a non-urgent drug treatment was suggested. The result within little more than a month was a sudden diagnosis of late stage liver cancer and death from intense bleeding of the tumor that was beyond control. It is clear in retrospect that in January, the poor dog was dying; what is a shame is that he was misdiagnosed, with no sense of urgency and died earlier than if he had been more knowledgeably and capably treated.

We had guardianship of Rufus, a pure bred Shihtzu male who was 12 years 7 months old when we took him to a regularly scheduled check-up on behalf of his owner in September 2016. We noted a drop in his weight from 15 pounds, 8 ounces to 13 pounds. Other than that and an elevation in the dog’s liver enzyme levels that the vet described as slight, the dog appeared in satisfactory health.

We took Rufus back to Banfield in December for what we thought was a problem, a bad limp. The limp turned out either not to have been a problem or it simply resolved itself. It was either then or during follow-up in January that we had another round of blood sampling done. We concluded his liver enzyme expression was clearly going in the wrong direction. The dog’s veterinarian, Dr. Nicoline Lee, suggested three possibilities of treatment and diagnosis: An ultrasound to image his liver; a different type of scanning whereby Rufus would be fed a special meal and then scanned to track his digestion and absorption; and a treatment of Demarin that in Dr. Lee’s opinion had a good chance of lowering the lever levels to normal. We briefly discussed all three but we concluded from discussion with Dr. Lee that the dog was in no imminent danger, and that the Demarin treatment was a reasonable course of action. We also discussed reviewing his liver enzyme levels in 60 days to evaluate his progress.

Dr. Lee, who is described on the Banfield San Mateo Webs site as a cat specialist, commented that her experience in veterinary school was that Demarin was a good treatment option for the type of condition we faced. We asked Dr. Lee if Demarin could reduce the elevation of his liver enzymes and the Veterinarian gave her opinion that it was a reasonable treatment option.

Two thirds of the time through February, we decided we did not want to wait any longer. The result of this February examination was that his liver enzyme levels had reduced slightly but were still high. This time we asked more specifically as to what was meant by high. How high were Rufus’s Liver figures and what was the standard for a conclusion of healthy? Dr. Lee responded specifically when we pressed that his readings were in the 700s where as normal would be a reading under 100. We were shocked to learn of this huge difference between normal readings and wondering why there we were not told of this huge discrepancy earlier. If we had not asked, we would not have been told; and the dog likely would have died suddenly at our home. An ultrasound exam (previously listed as a possible step but not stressed in January in preference for the treatment of Demarin) was ordered up and found that the dog had a large mass on his liver.

We also discovered a build-up of fluid in the dog’s abdomen. A follow-up with a veterinary oncologist followed as quickly as possible. The oncologist took the dog in for additional scanning and diagnosis. Immediately upon beginning the exam, the Oncologist found that the fluid build-up was blood from the tumor on his liver. Efforts to stop or restrain the bleeding failed and the dog died within a short time of arriving at the oncologist’s office.

Cancer, when diagnosed, moves quickly in small dogs. It is not the finding of cancer but the casual attitude and treatment recommended when in retrospect the signs of cancer were there, and there was a lack of aggressive treatment as a result.

We cannot bring our beloved dog back. We are filing this complaint to prevent other dogs from the casual, complacent diagnosis and lack of aggressive treatment that killed our dog when with proper care, he could have had some time with us before the disease killed him.

You may feel free to email me later but to make it short and to the point, I just wanted to warn you to re-consider taking your beloved family member to any Banfield Pet Hospital. Banfield seems like a great choice up front. And to be honest, the Wellness Plans are a decent deal. But the type of care your beloved family member will (or will not) be getting is so sad to say the least.
You see, what Banfield does is brilliant financially. They will hire Veterinarians with little (1+ years) experience to practice medicine on your beloved family member. And if this is not bad enough, more than half of the time these Veterinarians received their medical degree outside of the United States. Though the Veterinary school may be AVMA accredited, that is just not good enough for my baby. This combined means that Banfield does not have to pay much for these Veterinarians.
The next fact is even more important to know before taking your baby to Banfield. The people who actually work on your babies and take orders from the Veterinarians with little experience are called Veterinary Assistants or Veterinary Technician. To be honest, an RVT (Registered Veterinary Technician) is more often than not, experienced enough to do what your pet requires, the best way possible. But since Banfield wants to save money and make more money from you, they will hire young people who's only Animal experience is walking dogs (and sometimes not even that much). Do you know what happens when young people are hired by Banfield with no experience? They practice. And what do they practice on? Your Baby. That's right. And does Banfield let you know that the person putting that catheter in your baby or doing a dental on your baby or performing radiographs on your baby has no experience in the field? ABSOLUTLY NOT. Why would they? I mean, how else are people with little to no experience able to get that experience? They use your baby. That way Banfield can pay some inexperienced person $10 per hour to train on your babies. I am not making this up. I saw it all the time. Techs in training being taught how to do things on other peoples babies. I saw a tech in training pull up a drug for an inexperienced Veterinarian to wake a dog up and since the tech in training pulled up the wrong drug, the dog went into a deeper sleep and almost died. Did they inform the pet parents? NO. Why would they if your baby is alive when you get there. You honestly couldn't imagine what I have seen done in the back of a Banfield and when the pet parent comes to pick up, they are not informed about ANY OF IT. I have seen pets that get "nippy" and the person holding will put a choke on them until they tire out. I have seen a Veterinary punch a dog when it became bad. Vets and Vet Techs will loose it (when a patient is bad) and do what they need to do to get the job done in the back of a Banfield. You will never be told what had to be done. I promise.
BANFIELD IS WHERE TECHS AND VETS START OUT, NOT WHERE THEY END UP. Banfield is where you pay a Premium (because of the brand name) and get people with little to no experience and Vets with educations outside the U. S. training on your babies. Please believe me, Banfield is where I started out. And being in the field now for almost 10 years, I can say that if you want the best care for your babies and don't want to worry about what is going on behind closed doors, DO NOT TAKE YOUR BELOVED FAMILY MEMBER TO BANFIELD. I am not spreading rumors because nothing I am saying is made up. Please take your babies somewhere else. Please, don't let your beloved family member be used for training purposes. Let Banfield do that to someone else's baby, but not yours.

This is the biggest rip off out there! Do not use this plan. You cant even cancel the plan if your pet dies! This is the most insane thing I have ever experienced! It is crappy! I took my cat in to get fixed for a urinary tract infection and the "Doctor" said that she had to have an x-ray and MRI and that the x-ray would be about $1200 and that anywhere else it would be about $2000. I went over to a local vet and they charged me $135.00 for both the x-ray and the MRI and the office visit! So needless to say I will NEVER step foot near a Banfield EVER again! I would highly recommend that NO one ever goes.

I took my dog stella to the vet due to her ingesting a piece of

plastic from a flosser she gotten a hold of! So they kept Stella

for 4 or 5 hours and they said only 2 hours and did x-rays and

blood work an thorough check up and injected her with fluids!

I Than went to pick up Stella and to my dismay they would not

work with us on a payment plan and instead they wanted 8 or

900 dollars up front they said they like to take care of all there

tickets and paid in full before the day is over with! I told them

well I don't have that kind of money and I'm on a fixed

income and I can make 10 dollars a month payment

arrangements starting on the 1st when I get paid they

wouldn't accept it and tried to hold my dog to get there

payment and I got upset and said a few choice words and

they gave her back and I said some other few choice words

and walked out! Terrible Terrible place for pet care they only care about money not your pet!

This office has not seen my dog since June and its not because I did not bring him in. When we came for an emergency one day with blood in his stool along with diarrhea, they were too full to seem him. They recommended taking him to an emergency vet (affiliated). Of course while taking him there I had to pay 80$ for an exam, another something dollars for fecal and other test, and then more money for his medication. Someone who spends money monthly at one hospital should not have to dish out more at another. The medications and everything went well, but a week later the blood and diarrhea was back. I called banfield (monument) to see what next steps should be done. They needed the paperwork to be able to assist me or say anything. I had to wait until the other hospital was open to have them fax the information. The information was faxed right away, but of course the time this hospital is open and banfield is closed and vice versa. So the next day I had to call banfield myself to see if they got the information and find out next steps for my animal. They received the paperwork but because his doctor was not in that day and another doctor would not look at it since they dont see him, I had to wait until the next day for a call from his doctor. Five days later I never heard from banfield or his doctor. So I called today and they first tell me they cannot find the information that was faxed over. They would need me to once again have information faxed to them. Remember, these two hospitals are not open the same time so I would have to wait more days to hear anything. After 10 minutes they finally found the paperwork and read off to me the same information I already told them about what happened now 2-3 weeks ago. Today is Monday. They said they can see him on Friday in which I will have to pay for yet the same tests that was already done on my dog. My complaint: What is the purpose of this wellness plan when I will still have to pay other hospitals and banfield for services in addition to month to month bills. The doctor could not see him when it first occurred so I had to fork out money to another area they recommended. Physical exams are free on wellness plans so why am i having to pay 80 at another. Then I had to pay for tests to be done at this other hospital. And now banfield once me to pay for the same tests done 2-3 weeks ago. I will be cancelling my wellness and everything else. This is not right.

My cat was left there for routine teeth cleaning at 7am in June. I was told I would get a call just after lunch. At 5pm I called to see if I could pick him up. When I did the person handing him to me could not tell me anything about his procedure or how he was. I left. In the car I thought something did not seem right. Got home and found my poor cat covered in dried feaces and urine and it covered his create. It was obvious he head been in the create all day. I was horrified. I called them to complain. Was told I would get a call back, I didn't, 2 months later I went in and wanted to discuss it with the head nurse, she was not there, again I was told I would get a call. I haven't gotten one. Now I am so angry I intend to post this all over social media. They have ignored me. Neglected me as a customer, and have borderline abused my animal. I am not letting this rest.

Two years ago I adopted a rescue puppy. Because he was an abuse case, I worked with him for aprox. 18 months prior to taking him to see a vet after the initial checkup so that he would learn to trust people again.

After two visits I felt that he was comfortable with the staff so I signed up for the Wellness Plan and scheduled his neutering.

The morning of his surgery, I dropped him off at 7:15 and went to about my business. Around 10:30 I called to check on him and was told that he was being "fractious" and that they were having a hard time getting him out of the room he was in. I asked if they needed me to come down and was told no. I was told that they understood his past and that they would take it slow with him. About an hour later the "Dr." calls and tells me the surgery is done and that they had issues with him. They couldn't get near him so they double looped him and when that didn't work they used a rabies bite pole to "pull him out of the room". They also told me that 3 of his teeth were "cracked" in the process.

Needless to say I flipped out. I went down at the time that I was told he could be picked up to get him out of there. They wanted to go get him and I said them that I would. When he saw me he was quite happy and seemed almost relieved. I took him to the exam room and waited for the "Dr."

when he came in he tried to tell me that the staff said that they had behavior issues with him in the past. I told him this was a lie and that if I had any information that he was uncomfortable there in the past then I would have never brought him back.

He crouched down next to my boy and showed me the "cracked" teeth.. THEY WERE NOT CRACKED! THEY WERE BROKEN DOWN TO THE GUMS! And while doing so my dog that they said is vicious licked him on his cheek.

He then told me that if they needed to be extracted that I would have to pay for it.

While all this was going on my boy and I were in the middle of obedience classes. I couldn't take him back. In fact, the trainer we were working with advised that he now needs a behaviorist. That my friends is going to cost $4200.

And, YES... I WILL MAKE THEM PAY ME FOR IT!

Do not go work here The quality of medicine is way below industry standards and if you try to improve things you will be shut down and terminated for you efforts. I have seen so much malfunctioning equipment and retained tooth roots on dentals its ridiculous. You are paid on production and gosh forbid you don't sell enough vaccines and flea and tick prevention you are in trouble. Don't bother trying to call employee relations either or you will never actually talk to a person.

I took my cat to Banfield Pet Clinic to have his tail amputated after he had been in an accident. During the initial exam, they kept asking me if I wanted to apply for their Wellness Plan because it would save me about $300. After reviewing the plan, I found that the savings would be the same as the cost of the Wellness Plan. I declined, saying I would prefer to pay in cash. The appointment was set up for the next morning, I dropped off my cat at 8:00 AM. At 1:00PM I got a call from them saying that they couldn't perform the surgery without me signing up for the Wellness Plan. What the HECK! My cat had been sitting in one of their little cages for 5 hours! Needless to say, I made an appointment with another Vet and took my cat there. What a RIP OFF. Is that even legal? I am going to be researching this...