slickgirl24: blog 
slickgirl24's blog
price gouging of pet meds
Published Jan 27, 2008Views: 775
How many of you know you can buy your pet's Rx drugs at your local pharmacy?
My husband and I found this out the hard way. Our dachshund is 11 yrs old and has just recently been diagnosed with congestive heart failure(CHF). Well, like a lot of pet lovers my dog is my child, so of course we are going to do what we have to, to keep him here with us. Losing him is a pain I don't want to bear right now. We have been following his condition since December, when he was diagnosed with just having a heart murmur. His heart health has rapidly decline since. Took him to the vet on Friday to have bloodwork and check him out. Doesn't have heartworms...great news, but has CHF. Wants to start him on heart meds and lasix. Fine, whatever we have to do within our means! " The heart meds are a little expensive" "$3 a pill" the vet says. You do the math....30 pills @ $3.00. OK not a promblem. We will just have to plan that into our budget. Thinking we could get them a little cheaper online. Not knowing we could get a prescription from them and take it to Rite Aid as well. You know buying it online for, I don't know $2 or $2.50 a pill. We buy the meds at the vets office and take it home. By the way, our bill for Friday was $294. The heart meds alone were $90.00 for 30 pills. Fastforward, I start researching online, HECK YEAH I could have gotten them cheaper online. Wanna know how much cheaper....not even $1.50 or even $1 per pill. 1800petmeds I can buy them for GET THIS.......$.24 cents...CENTS...I couldn't believe my eyes. OK, I was a little leary about buying his meds online...after all this is for his Heart...the one thing he needs to live. We were waiting to hear back from the vet about his bloodwork to even start the meds. I told her what I had found and that I could have gotten it so much cheaper. She says" oh I'm sorry" I'm sorry that's it. And then when I went back to pick something else up she tells me I could have gotten it @ the local drug store.
Well my husband and I did some more research and found out that we could have gotten the meds from Wal-mart for $4, Rite Aid for $26 and Banfield for $16. With this info in hand we will be getting most of our money back or they with will lose our business and you will be seeing this story on 5 on your side.
Pet lovers... you have an option when it comes to getting meds to care for your beloved pet.
******Update*******
Well after confronting the vet..."it was a mistake inputing the price into the computer" I don't know how much I believe that, or did they just get caught and that was their only way out? Either way, I really like this vet. They allow us to charge most stuff and we got most of our money back. $80 bucks.
Filed under: Personal
close![[no avatar]](http://wwwcache.wral.com/presentation/v1/images/golo/noavatar.gif){kind=avatar}
Welcome to GOLO, where WRAL.com visitors can comment on stories and create profile pages, blogs and photo galleries.
You must be a registered WRAL.com user to use these tools. Click here to register or log in.
Yes, you CAN get the meds cheaper. But it's not the job of the vet to tell you. We consumers are responsible for finding the best prices. That's why they call us 'shoppers'. :-)
GOLO member since July 15, 2007
January 27, 2008 2:36 p.m.
GOLO member since July 18, 2007
January 27, 2008 2:47 p.m.
For the record, he lived, as I said, nearly 3 years after diagnosis. He was happy, comfortable and relatively active until his death. At times, his meds had to be tweaked, but once they got the proper dosage, he'd be good as new. Make sure your dog has the opportunity to move around. I'll be happy to discuss in detail our experience, if it helps!
GOLO member since July 18, 2007
January 27, 2008 2:47 p.m.
January 27, 2008 2:52 p.m.
GOLO member since July 17, 2007
January 27, 2008 3:06 p.m.
I am glad you found an alternative to the price of the vet's meds.
GOLO member since July 2, 2007
January 27, 2008 3:08 p.m.
GOLO member since July 3, 2007
January 27, 2008 3:29 p.m.
Our vet also recommended that we give each dog one of those fish oil capsules each day as well. Apparently this has somewhat the same benefit for them related to circulatory health as it does for humans.
GOLO member since September 6, 2007
January 27, 2008 4:23 p.m.
GOLO member since July 2, 2007
January 27, 2008 4:35 p.m.
GOLO member since August 3, 2007
January 27, 2008 6:13 p.m.
Please log in to add comment.