Comments on: Dearborn Animal Hospital Moving Out of Decatur

By: smalltowngal

smalltowngal — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:53:56 +0000

That’s very, very bad news. Due for a checkup next month but making appointment right now.

By: J_T

J_T — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:12:08 +0000

And today we get an email that Dr. Villines is leaving Village Vets and not starting or joining another local practice. Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!

By: Cranky Old Timer1197: A New Hope

Cranky Old Timer1197: A New Hope — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:12:34 +0000

Avondale Animal is awesome. 15 years ago or so, I loved Dearborn, and even had a few rescues the doctors worked on for free, but the front desk staff ticked me off about something to do with the real Nelliebelle and vaccinations and I refused to go back after the way it was handled. The people at Avondale are fabulous and highly affordable.

I have no desire to try VV. It’s for new people like J_T.

By: DawgFan

DawgFan — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:18:55 +0000

Not sure they are just hiccups as I have the same experience every time. Just when doing something as simple as dropping off my dog for boarding, I have to fill out a questionnaire each and every time which takes several minutes. Since they are largely automated, you would think that “You are the only person who treats my dog and nothing has changed since last visit” would suffice. Do they not know they vaccinated my dog? Picking the dog up is even worse. It seems to take about 15 minutes for them to swipe my credit card and retrieve my dog from the back (plus, without fail, it takes whoever is helping me 3 to 5 min just to find my dog (common pet name combined with common last name) in the system. Do they not have an automatically generated list of the few pets that are currently under their care? Do they not have the ability to refine their searches?). The vets are great there, and, like you, so long as I am happy with the vets, I will keep using them (unless the experience keeps getting worse). However, they could definitely improve/streamline the front desk operations. Hopefully someone there (who doesn’t work at the front desk) reads DM.

By: VV

VV — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:46:41 +0000

Village Vets, bless their hearts, could not figure out what was wrong with my kitten, even after I spent $600 on tests & treatments – they recommended another $400 of diagnostics, at least.

I went to Dearborn and saw the doctor there with the most experience with the type of issue Miss Kitty was having: Dr. immediately recognized it as an allergy, treated immediately (even going to far as to stay past closing to finish treatment that very day), and did so for under $200.

By: VV

VV — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:41:15 +0000

What’s sketchy about walking half a mile on a sidewalk that’s set back an appropriate distance from the curb?

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:40:39 +0000

We’ve experienced this, too. Always great care, good doctor communication, easy on the up-sell. Only complaint has been the counter experience, though I’ve never been able to pin down whether it feels dismissive or just disorganized. We used to go to Emory, which ended up having the opposite problem — very attentive desk service but then an on-call doc who failed to respond to our weekend “dog’s dying, what should we do?” message.

Given those two choices, I’ll take the good care and hope the customer service experiences are just hiccups (they’re intermittent rather than constant).

By: East Lake Ira

East Lake Ira — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:01:58 +0000

Thanks J_T – our/my issues are with the front desk folks as well… always seems to be a large clusterf*&^ trying to pay and leave as well as checkins…