Terms and Conditions

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Welcome to Farm First Veterinary Services. This letter details our practice Terms and Conditions. Some aspects of the Terms and Conditions may not be relevant to you and we request that you ask for further explanation/clarification if required.

 

Conditions of Registration

By registering you agree to our terms and conditions of business.

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With your permission, we will request clinical histories from your previous vets so that we have details on previous work done and issues identified.

 

Surgery Opening Times

 

Monday to Friday: 8.30am – 5.30pm

Saturdays: 8.30am - 12.30pm (during the spring lambing and calving period only)

 

24 Hour Emergency Service

One of our veterinary surgeons is available for emergencies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When the surgery is closed, you should call us on the usual telephone number Tel: 01873 840167. Your call will be forwarded to a specialist call handling service who will contact the on-call vet leaving them your contact details. The vet will return your call as soon as possible. If the vet is already out attending an emergency, they may not be able to respond immediately. If you have not heard back after 10 minutes and it is a genuine emergency, please call again and the call handling service will pass the call on to the second on-call vet as necessary.

 

Fees

All fees and medicine charges are subject to VAT at the current rate. A visit fee and a charge for the vet’s time will be invoiced along with the medicines and consumables used. The time charged will be based on the time taken to treat the case/animal and the procedures involved. Should it be necessary for you to require the on-call vet outside of our normal opening hours, an emergency charge will also be added. You can request an estimate before any visit, but please bear in mind they can only be approximate. All visits not canceled within a reasonable time before the vet arrives on-farm will be charged for.

 

Prescriptions and Repeat Prescriptions

All Veterinary Practices are required to adhere strictly to current legislation. Your veterinary surgeon may only prescribe POM-V's for any animal under their care. It is a legal requirement that before we can prescribe medication to your animal/animals, we must ensure that we have seen them within the last 12 months.

 

Should you require a repeat prescription, please telephone the office, giving a minimum of 24hrs notice of your requirements. Our staff will check your records to ensure that we have seen your animals within the required period, and either arrange to dispense your medication, or refer you to a vet for further discussion/visit.

 

We endeavor to be as competitive as possible on the price of medicines that we supply. We regularly compare our prices with the Farmacy website to ensure we’re giving you good value for money. However, you may buy vet-only medicines (POM-V) from alternative sources (another veterinary surgeon or online) by requesting a written prescription. Written prescriptions are available from this practice, but there will be a fee for this service. Please call the surgery for a quote.

 

Return of Medicines and Vaccines

Due to Government legislation, we are unfortunately unable to accept any unused medicines or vaccines for refund.

 

Discounts

Every registered client is eligible for discounts provided their accounts are kept within our standard account terms. Clients who maintain standard account terms are offered the option to receive a 10% discount on many of our medicines if payment is made at the time of collection. There are further discounts available for certain drugs and quantities, so please ask at times of purchase.

 

Overnight Care of Hospitalised Animals

If your animal is kept in overnight, it will be kept in a pen in the sheep room. There is no-one on the premises overnight, but your animal will be checked as often as the case vet feels in necessary. If the animal will be better off at home, they will ring you to come to collect it (this may well be after our usual working hours).

 

Procedures for Second Opinions and Referrals

We at Farm First Vets work closely as a team. Should you feel you would like another opinion on your animal’s condition or health from within the team at any stage please don’t hesitate to ask . We are happy to arrange a second opinion with other vets within the practice or a referral to a specialist outside of the practice. If such care is appropriate for your animal, we will recommend and discuss the costs/benefits of referring your animal. The fees incurred at Referral Practices remain entirely the responsibility of the owner and must be paid either directly, or via insurance to the practice/university concerned.

 

Settlement Terms and Methods of Payment

To qualify for the discounts your account must remain within our standard terms:

Our standard terms are 30 days- i.e. payment before the last day of the month no matter when the invoice is received. If for any reason an account is not settled in full by the following month, without prior authorisation an invoice will be sent incurring an additional £5 accounting fee in respect of administration costs. Should your account be overdue more than 90 days a 2% surcharge will be applied monthly. If your account remains overdue your credit facility will be withdrawn, and you will be required to pay for all treatments and visits at the time. You will also be referred to our debt collection department and further charges will be levied in respect of costs incurred collecting the debt (these included, but are not limited to the production of reports, correspondence, phone calls, home visits, court fees, attendance at court etc).

 

Please be aware that clients accounts are split into two categories, Commercial Clients and Small Holders. Clients with less than 50 breeding ewes, 10 cattle, pigs, goats, or alpacas will be classed as Small Holders, so will be required to pay for vet visits and medication at the time of purchase.  All new clients must pay for all treatments and call outs at the time (there is a 3 month probationary period). New commercial clients can set up monthly accounts at the discretion of the directors.

 

We are constantly striving to operate our accounts department as efficiently and effectively as possible and urge clients to contact us if they have a query or dispute regarding your account. We aim to answer queries and deal with disputes as quickly as possible so invoices can be paid on time.

 

You can settle your account using:

 

CASH, CHEQUE, CARD and BACS Account number: 69135487 Sort Code 516102 (Please include your account number and Farm address or surname as a reference).

 

Any cheque returned by our bank as unpaid, any credit card payment not honoured and any cash tendered that is found to be counterfeit will result in original account being restored to the original sum with further charges being added in respect of bank charges and administration costs.

 

General

Farm First Vets may contact you either by letter, phone, text or electronic means in order to advise you of an outstanding account, treatments and any marketing offers that might be of benefit to you. Please inform us if you don't wish to be contacted in these ways. However, please be aware that this will remove the ability of the practice to send any beneficial communications.

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Reminders are provided as a complimentary service to our clients. Farm First Vets accept no liability for any loss, damages or costs which may result from the failure of a client to receive any reminder.

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No addition or variation of these conditions will bind the practice unless it is specifically agreed in writing and signed by a director. No agent or person employed by, or under contract with Farm First Vets has the authority to alter or vary these conditions in any way.

 

General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)

Your personal information will be protected in accordance with the data protection act 2018. The purposes for which we collect & store your data can be found on our website: www.farmfirstvets.co.uk or a hard copy provided upon request.

 

Complaints Procedure

We hope that before you complain formally you will give the practice a chance to put things right. Most problems can be sorted relatively easily and quickly, often at the time they arise and with the person concerned. If your problem cannot be sorted out in this way, and you wish to make a formal complaint, we would like you to let us know in writing as soon as possible- ideally within a matter of days or most a few weeks because this will enable us to establish what happened more easily. Regretfully, we are unable to investigate complaints made more than six months after the event.

Please include the following to assist us in investigating the problem.

Why- the nature of the complaint/problem

When- the problem occurred

Who- which staff were involved

What- you are hoping for as an outcome

 

Please address your complaints to the Office Manager ‘Miss Natalie Parsons’ or to the directors ‘Mr Robert Smith’, ‘Miss Jane Anscombe’ or 'Miss Victoria Fisher'.

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We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days of receipt, informing you who is dealing with your complaint and when you can expect to receive a reply. In most cases we hope to give you a full reply within fifteen working days, but if it is going to take longer, we will get in touch to let you know what is happening. We will then be in a position to offer you an explanation, and/or the results of our investigation.

When we look into your complaint, we will aim to: find out what happened and what went wrong, make sure you receive an apology, where this is appropriate and identify what we can do to make sure the problem does not happen again.

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If you’re still unhappy with the outcome we hope that you will use our practice complaints procedure. We believe this will give us the best chance of putting right whatever has gone wrong and is an opportunity to improve our practice. This does not affect your right to approach the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons if you are dissatisfied with the result of our investigation.

 

Kind Regards

 

 

The Farm First Veterinary Services Team

 

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