Ashcroft Veterinary Surgery

We had an awful experience with Ashcroft when our 18 month old Labrador cross dog died 8 days after her spay. We are pragmatic people and we understand that sometimes animals die unpredictability, so we don’t leave this review lightly. We knew our dog was very unwell and getting worse during the 8 days following the operation and we took her back to Ashcroft 3 times during this period and phoned them multiple times too. On the morning of the day she died we were so worried about her and the perceived lack of interest in her from Ashcroft that we arranged our own referral to a specialist, but they needed Ashcroft to assess her for the referral. We told Ashcroft we were worried for the survival of our dog and asked Ashcroft for an emergency appointment. Ashcroft assessed her as not an emergency, so her appointment was pushed to the next day. She died overnight that same night. We put a complaint in to Ashcroft about how they had treated us when we tried to raise our concerns about our dog. Our complaint was not about the fact that she had died, it was about how we felt efforts made to save her life were poor and we felt we had not been listened to when we knew she was very ill. Ashcroft quickly engaged a third party Defence Service and refused to answer any of our questions about our dog’s death. What was even more devastating was that without even addressing the issue we raised which was regarding how we were treated during her illness, the majority of their response to us inferred that we had allowed our dog to eat poison, or even worse been fed something poisonous by us. This was truly an awful thing to do to a pet owner. I can assure you that we absolutely did not let our dog eat poison and in fact there were other possible explanations for her death, but Ashcroft and their Defence Service refused to speak to us about any of it and did not even look at her clinical history from her previous vets. We had no idea how to get the answers we wanted so we hired an Independent Expert Vet to review our case and he gave us our answers. He also independently looked at our complaint and found that there were multiple occasions where the veterinary practice and our recollection of events and conversations differed, and unless there is audio or video recording present in the consulting areas or of the telephone conversations then our complaints could not be investigated further. This is despite both my husband and I being present at the vet appointments and having the same recollection of events and conversations. The Independent Expert Vet also stated that it was clear from the many appointments and phone calls that we were very concerned about our dog, and that he believed it is likely that many veterinary surgeons would have clearly advised taking blood samples or admitted our dog for supportive care during the appointments leading up to her death. We have no way of knowing whether her life could have been saved had that happened. However, the bar for professional negligence had not been reached. We then asked the RCVS’s impartial mediation service the VCMS for help to conclude our complaint, but Ashcroft immediately refused to engage in the mediation. If you use this vets I would recommend you record all appointments using a voice recorder because without this you have no way to prove what was said to you during your appointments and phone calls without recordings. Ashcroft are not a local independent business they are owned by a large company called Independent Vetcare Ltd who own 100s of vet practices in the UK https://ivcevidensia.co.uk/ Read Less

Terrible customer service, bad attitude of the staff, only interested in making a profit. I realise most reviews, you need to take with a pinch of salt, so I will give you my experiences and facts only, but my recommendation is to avoid unless you have deep pockets. I have had two experiences of this vet practice, The first was 25 - 30 years ago when my parents took our family dog there. My second experience has been over the last 6 - 12 months with my cat. The reason I mention both is that there seems to have been no investment since in the practice, except in the waiting area that you are not allowed to wait in. The rooms, tables, decor of the treatment rooms doesn't seem to have changed at all in 30 years. The treatment of their customers seems to have though. I understand they have too many customers and can afford to be picky or lose some and still make good money. I have visited the practice on 3 - 4 occasions in the last 12 months and have seen a different vet every time. Which is annoying as you seem to have to start from scratch and you're told different things. Having spent just under £1,000 on treatment so far you would think we would be getting to the bottom of things. Even though the vets will state that they can't also provide prescriptions (which are half the price of the medicine if you search and pay online instead of at the vets), they will happily let you pay double for a months supply from them! In a nutshell, my pet is still having the same issues it was 12 months ago, we seem to be treading water and the vet are making very good money. I decided to challenge the practice over this today and was invited into their waiting room and got to speak to a secretary as obviously a vet was unavailable. I explained why I was upset and was told that they had to charge me twice as much then I could order online even though we had paid a prescription charge and they couldn't give me one as even though we had booked an appointment, they couldn't trust me with a prescription. But what they could do is charge me double and give me a months supply, even if my pet needed a different dose. So again the winner was the practice. I asked again for clarification and how the practice can make money this way and was told if I was unhappy then not to take the medicine (which is shocking as my pet would suffer) or please find another vets practice. Got to state, I found it disgusting that a customer that has and is spending a lot of money at the practice, gets an explanation from a Secretary having a busy day with a bad attitude. I will be leaving the practice. I realise you couldn't care less as you are over busy, but I would recommend anyone that wants the best for their pet, maybe a practice that seems to genuinely care about its customers and is not centered around making as much money out of customers than they can, to truly avoid these guys... Read Less

Thank you,very lucky to have vets like you dedicated includes all staff picked poppy's food and medication up via phone and a strict 2 metres apart brilliant a wonderful part of our community and staff positive and uplifting Xx 😻. Read Less