31 May 2025, 14:31 | Updated: 31 May 2025, 15:59
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For many pet owners, vets are not just service providers – they’re lifelines.
Our animals are family, and when we reach out to veterinary professionals for help, we do so with hope, trust, and sometimes a sense of desperation.
But when that trust is broken, through negligence or worse, the systems in place to hold vet practices accountable often collapse under scrutiny.
The result? Heartbroken pet owners and animals who suffer without justice.
At Which?, we’ve been speaking to pet owners who have encountered problems with veterinary practices.
While these services are often brilliant, they’re not completely infallible.
Mistakes can and do happen.
When they do, it is vital that pet owners feel able to raise their concerns and be heard.
But our findings suggest the opposite: we’ve surveyed over 1,000 pet owners who have had issues with their vet, and more than half told us they never actually made a complaint.
There were several reasons for this.
Some people didn’t think their complaint would be successful, others were worried about falling out with their vet, and some simply didn’t know how to go about making a complaint.
Many of the owners who have made complaints gave distressing accounts of malpractice and flimsy gestures towards redress.
A dog owner from East Lothian told us she got “precisely nowhere” after escalating her complaint when a botched surgery left her paying £12,000 for her dog Honey’s corrective treatment.
Another pet owner that Which? spoke to was originally dismissed by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
However, after three years of fighting from the pet owner, the vet in question was eventually struck off after being found to have ‘failed to provide adequate care’ to a total of 18 animals.
The core problem is that vet businesses are not regulated, so have no accountability for how they handle complaints.
Complaints can be escalated to the RCVS, but it requires an unreasonably high standard before taking action against a vet.
Pet owners who had complained to the RCVS told us they felt it wasn’t sufficiently independent.
They also reported that complaints need significant documentation, time, and resilience – things that may be in short supply when grieving a lost or injured pet.
Pet owners are sometimes forced to relive traumatic experiences repeatedly, navigating systems that seem more interested in ticking procedural boxes than reaching a meaningful resolution.
Vets do vital and compassionate work, often under difficult circumstances.
But when things go wrong, pet owners deserve a system that respects their experience, values their voices, and genuinely seeks justice for their animals.
Which? wants to see vet practices have complaints procedures that are clearly signposted and held to a good standard as well as an independent mandatory ombudsman for the industry.
The current complaint mechanisms are not just outdated – they’re broken.
Our pets, and the people who love them, deserve better.
Lisa Webb is a Consumer Law Expert at Which?
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