Friday 29 January 2016

A spoon full of "free" helps the medicine go down!

Back in September we ran a Birthday Survey. One question in this survey was something that we'd long wanted to know for certain - how much are people actually paying for their prescriptions.


The price of a veterinary prescription is important, because it is another cost barrier in the way of your cat or dog getting the medicines they need to keep they healthy or make them better. At Pet Drugs Online we've always taken care of the other end of the equation by keeping our prices as low as possible.


For a long time our customer call team had used the figure "between £5 -£10" when asked the average price of a prescription; but we knew this figure was increasingly anecdotal and decidedly less factual. Hence the question in the survey, and we were a little surprised at the results.






While 23% of customers paid £9 - £12 for a prescription (which seems reasonable) 12% paid £13 - £15, 11% paid £16 - £20 and 13% paid a whopping £26 or more! That is a lot. You need a prescription to purchase one our best selling drugs, a tube of eye ointment and a £26 prescription fee would double the effective price!


So we had a think, and a chat and come up with a cunning plan. It is not perfect and it can't help everybody, but it is a first step in the direction of cheaper prescriptions. Our plan is this: if you pay for a consultation with one our 200+ partner vets, then they will write a prescription for free. That's precisely £0! Of course you may not want to change vets, and while UK-wide, the network of partner vets is not yet comprehensive (eg there is little coverage on M4 corridor, but loads in Southampton).


The Vet Finder tool


The full details of the service can be found on our site and there's a funky little "enter your postcode to find the nearest partner vet" tool too. Have a go on it, you never know what may be around the corner - just across the road from the post office.


We'll look to do more, but it is a start...
Cheers,
The Pet Drugs Online Team

No comments:

Post a Comment