Since 2007 I have been taking my dogs to Vets4Pets Harlow. I did have 3 dogs registered with Vets4Pets Harlow and had booked our 10 month old puppy in for a keyhole spay operation at the beginning of December, 3 months after her first season ended, as that was the time recommended by this vets practice. I was quoted just over £500 for the operation. A few weeks after booking the appointment the vets rang me to ask if I could change the appointment date from a Wednesday to a Tuesday as the only vet who carried out that specific procedure, Anna, only performs this keyhole surgery on Tuesdays. I agreed, changed the day that I had booked off work and made sure our puppy had no food the night before the operation or the following morning and took her to the vets at 8.30am. She was being checked in with the nurse and I was asked to sign the consent form when the nurse confirmed that I would need to pay the cost of the operation, before leaving my puppy with them and that the cost would be just over £300, £200 less than I was originally quoted. I asked the nurse to confirm that it was definitely a keyhole spay they were carrying out and not the more evasive operation where she would require more stitches, a collar and a greater recovery time and I was told, no, she had not been booked in for keyhole. I explained to the nurse that the practice had called me to change the date of the operation to a Tuesday, because they specifically new it was a keyhole spay and that particular operation could not be performed on a Wednesday and that I had only ever been quoted just over £500 never £300 so I could not understand how this mistake could be made. The nurse explained that the practice could not carry out the keyhole surgery, as the equipment required had not been sterilised and I would need to rebook her back in. To make matters worse there was no availability until a month later in January, which was not ideal as I was told that the operation should be carried out 3 months after her first season ends and not 4 months, so I had to rebook her in for January. This would also mean taking yet another day off work and having to make sure our puppy had no food again from the night before. I asked the practice how this error could have possibly been made but didn’t receive a satisfactory response therefore decided to make a complaint to Vets4Pets head office, online, the following week on Monday 13th December 2021. I initially heard absolutely nothing from Vets4Pets following my complaint but did receive confirmation from my bank on the Friday that the direct debit payments for the three health care plans taken out at Vets4Pets Harlow for my three dogs had been cancelled, with no explanation as to why. The following day, the Saturday, and 5 days after making the complaint, I received a letter from Vets4Pets Harlow Practice Manager, Ruth, dated 13th December 2021, (that had been sent by second class rather than first class post and hence took five days to arrive), stating that following my complaint about the practices error, Ruth was giving me 10 days, (from the 13th December) to register my three dogs with a new vet. This clearly shows how unimportant the practice manager felt this letter was to send it out by second class post over the extremely busy Christmas period. Ruth did not phone me to discuss my complaint, instead just sent a cold hard letter and she clearly felt it was unimportant for me to find a replacement vet within 10 days as by the time I received her second class posted letter on the Saturday instead of ten days I now only had five days, and with most veterinary practices closed at weekends plus the Christmas Bank Holidays being only a week away, she had set me a near impossible task to find a new vets practice. Ruth was also fully aware that their branch of Vets4Pets had a list of over 50 people waiting to join their practice, so would be fully aware how difficult it would be to find a vet in normal times let alone now, so much for a duty of care to the pets the practice are meant to care for and cherish and they were more than happy to leave my three dogs without a vets over the Christmas period. Vets4Pets Harlow made the error, luckily I spotted it before they could carry out the operation and because I had the audacity to make one complaint about their clear and obvious error we were struck off from their practice. I feel completely and utterly let down by the practice and am so disappointed that they not deal with this complaint in a professional manner. Following their response, I wrote a further complaint to Peter Pritchard, the CEO of Vets4Pets and they provided the following reply confirming that, yes, the Harlow practice was at fault but despite this, they did not have the power to overturn the decision of the practice, so please be very careful if using this specific vets as under the practice manager, Ruth, they do not deal with complaints professionally, and in my case, were more than happy to leave my three dogs without a vet over the Christmas period and the head office, although apologetic, seem powerless to overrule any decisions made by the practice. Response from the CEO’s office at Pets at Home/Vets for Pets As part of our investigation, there have been a number of factors we have had to look into and address appropriately. I cannot apologise enough for the service you have received from us. I can completely understand why you have been left feeling this terribly let down. As a company, client and customer care is absolutely paramount to us and we would of course hate for any of our customers to be left feeling this way. Please rest assured, your rightful complaint has been fully addressed with the involved colleagues internally. As you will appreciate we owe our colleagues a duty of confidentiality and, we are unable to discuss the outcome of any individual colleague investigation. However, we are confident that the necessary steps are being taken to ensure no other customer is left feeling this way. Sadly, we are unable to override the practice decision. We do hope you have now found suitable veterinary care for your beloved pets. Read Less