Rees Fruit Farm

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 14, 2016/08/16) */
Ms. [redacted] brought a dog to our clinic on the 26th of May 2016. She told us it was a stray dog that she took in. Later she told one of our employees that she knew who the dog belonged to and took it anyway since the owners where not...

taking proper care of the dog. On another occasion, she told a different story about the dog. Several versions with some conflicting information were told to us by Ms. [redacted]. During the initial appointment, she agreed to pay for services to have the dog treated for a medical condition. We administered treatments and we also agreed to board the dog during the recovery period which she also payed for. After receiving the expensive treatments, the dog was claimed by its rightful owner and we were advised by law enforcement and our attorney that we should give the dog back to the owners of the dog. When we informed Ms. [redacted] of this decision, she immediately became very hostile and threatened us with legal action, complaints to Revdex.com and many other threats. It was when she realized that we would not give the dog to her that she started saying that we treated her rudely and were not treating her right. She did say that if we refunded her money she would be satisfied. We offered to refund part of the boarding fees, but the medications could not be refunded since they were already administered to the animal. We did make every attempt to settle this with Ms. [redacted] directly. She thought we should either give her the dog, or refund the entire amount of the bill. We could not do either one of those things since we legally were bound to give the dog back to its owner and the cost of the medical treatments was too high to give away, not to mention she had agreed to pay for them.
Initial Consumer Rebuttal /* (3000, 17, 2016/08/18) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
Those are not the facts. I found the dog at [redacted] resort restaurant begging for food. I was notified by a patron of the restaurant that the dog was negelcted, always there begging for food and they didnt know if it had an owner. It had a tag and no collar. The dog followed me down to my boat at the restaurant's dock and jumped on the boat. I took it to the vet, notified them it was not mine but it clearly needed help.
A few days later, I was notified that the owners were in restaurant looking for their dog. I called them. They were rude. Wanted dog but didnt want to pay for treatment and hung up on me.
The vet mgr called me 2 weeks later. Very rude to me. Stated I lied to them about not being the owner...until she got her facts straight and read the notes. Also told me I put her between a rock and a hard place. Very bad customer service exemplified. I paid the bill and the agreement was for me to pick up the half dead dog after lifesaving treatment on June 24th. The vet clearly did not live up to their agreement. Bad business practices!!
Final Consumer Response /* (4200, 25, 2016/08/31) */
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
I was told by Dr. [redacted] at one point that he would credit half the money back to me....that did not happen either. I feel that the vet should be partially responsible for the charges, since #1) They promised me the dog on June 24th and did not deliver their promise. #2) They did not question the negligence of the owners of the dog as medical professionals in the healthcare system I work in would have. #3) They didn't even know or help develop laws in the county they serve to help protect the animals they treat.
Hospitals have certain laws and rights they adopt and operate by to protect the consumers of their services. Since Dr. [redacted]'s [redacted] clinic did not know or have specific laws in place, perhaps he should be liable for half the cost and work on adopting such laws to protect himself and his consumers. Wouldn't that be more fair???
Final Business Response /* (4000, 23, 2016/08/31) */
We don't think the information about how Ms. [redacted] came to possess the dog is relevant to this discussion. The pertinent facts are tied up in what Ms. [redacted] claimed to be the agreement between us which she referred to in her rebuttal. She feels we didn't hold our end of an agreement by not returning the pet to her (please refer to the last 3 sentences of the rebuttal). Her wishes on this matter were impossible for us to fulfill since we would have had to break the law to comply with her wishes. She desired for us to return the dog to her, but the law clearly requires us to return it to its rightful owner. Surely by taking in a stray animal, Ms. [redacted] should have known there was a possibility that said animal could be claimed by its owner after she had payed for and we had delivered medical or other care. If Ms. [redacted]' primary desire was to care for an animal which needed help, she should be satisfied that she did that and did it very well. Hopefully she can understand that we were just trying to help the animal as well and we followed the law as required.