VCA Animal Hospitals

This place is HORRIBLE! AVOID THEM!
Waited over 3 hours to see a Vet to check out what's wrong with my Chinese Shar-Pei eyes and all he (Dr. Schmid) said was just guesses and suggested us to go see an Eyes Specialist in Tustin - Eye Care because he's not sure what's wrong. All he could do was to prescribe a broad spectrum anti-biotic to see if that helps and then charged us $95 for consultation fee! REALLY? He doesn't know what's wrong and still charge $95 for consultation fee?

Here's my whole story:
We had the entropion surgury done for our 7 months old Chinese Shar-pei, Bella, at Brookhaven Pet Hospital in Garden Grove (Dr. Tamura) on Tuesday 7/14/2015. On the morning of Saturday 7/18/2015, we noticed in our Bella's left eyes, there was a big red dot (about 0.25" in diameter) bulge out in the center of her cornea. Off course, we were freaked out, but we couldn't bring her to our Vet to check it out because they close on the weekend. So we decided to take her to VCA in Fountain Valley.

We got to VCA, around 4:30pm on Saturday afternoon, they immediately took our Bella into their holding area, then had us filled out some paper-works, then they put us in an exam room to wait for the doctor at around 5:30pm. We waited in the exam room for almost 1 hr 30 mins (until 7pm). We were so irritated and couldn't wait any longer so I came out to the receptionist to ask what's going on. She responded that the doctor, who was gonna see us, had to take care of some emergency that came in when we waited in the exam room, so they don't know how long we will have to continue to wait. At that point, I told them that I'd like to have Bella back and come back the next morning because we're very late for a wedding reception. Then quickly responded that we go back to the exam room & give her a few minutes to see what they could do. Amazingly, 5 minutes later, Dr. Schmid came in along with his assistant's bringing our Bella from the holding area. He looked at Bella's eyes a few times and basically he said that he's NOT SURE what is wrong with Bella's eyes exactly and made a few guesses (like it could be an allergic reaction to the gentamicin & atropine drops that Dr. Tamura prescribed after the surgery, or a sutures from the surgery scratched her eye, etc..) Then he ended up saying that he could prescribe her a diff anti-biotic drops (ofloxacin) to see if that helps & told us to bring her to an Eye Specialist in Tustin - Eye Care to be sure. He also said that we should take her to see the specialist as soon as we could so they can do surgeries to fix it because it could be very bad and she could go blind & worst, the longer we wait. Then we got charged $95 for the "CONSULTATION" fee for that "AWESOME" observation from Dr. Schmid.

After that ordeal, we thought it would be best to wait until Monday's morning to see Dr. Tamura because we didn't want another iffy observation from any other Vet. We brought Bella into BrookHaven Pet Hospital on Monday morning. There were quite a few people waiting in the office already, but Dr. Tamura let us into the exam room & saw us within 10 mins. She checked Bella and then explained that the big red dot on her cornea is normal because after the entropion surgery, it opens up her eyes and allow the cornea to breath & chance to heal, so there are more blood flow going to the cornea to repair the tear on her cornea. She said that once her cornea is repaired (about 2 weeks), the red dot will go away. We were so relieved to hear that.

In short, at VCA, we waited 3 hrs, then the Vet spent about 10 mins to give a very vague diagnosis & basically scared the hell out of us, then charge $95 for the visit. We felt very cheated by the service offered by VCA in Fountain Valley. I'll never ever bring Bella back there.