Terms of Business
This page details our Practice Terms and Conditions. Some aspects of the Terms may not be relevant to you and we request that you ask for further explanation or clarification if required.
Terms and Conditions — Farm Clients
Thank you for entrusting the care of your livestock to Belmont Farm and Equine Vets Ltd.
Conditions of Registration
By registering you agree to our terms and conditions of business.
With your permission we will request clinical histories from your previous Vets so that we have details on previous work done and issues identified.
Prices and Charges
Our pricing system is designed to encourage the most efficient use of our expertise and services so that we can give good value for money to our clients.
Our charges consist of:
- Professional Fees — visits, time and procedure charges
- Medicines and Supplies
- Laboratory fees
The Veterinary Surgeons and staff will be pleased to discuss likely costs at any time — please don't hesitate to ask.
Visits
Our visit fees cover the time spent in the car by the vet and the associated costs of running that car. There are increased fees out of hours to cover the additional costs of providing this service.
Professional fees
Our fees cover the cost of employing qualified vets and the associated costs of providing a 24/7 service including all other fixed costs of running the business. A large amount of time is spent by our vets and support staff working on problems, analysing farm data and providing free telephone advice — this is included as part of the overall package that we provide.
Most fees are charged on a time basis with adjustments made for slow working such as newer graduates or for when we have students with us.
Some fees such as Caesareans and LDA operations are fixed so that standard procedures come at a predictable price with no variation for the speed of work.
Medicines
We strive to ensure that our medicine costs are fair against the market, including internet prices. The sale price of medicines includes their cost price as well as a mark-up to cover the costs of obtaining, storing and dispensing them.
Farm medicine prices are regularly compared with the Farmacy website to ensure that we are giving you good value for money.
Prescriptions
Prescriptions are available on request and will be charged for.
You may obtain Prescription Only Medicines Veterinary (POM-Vs) from us or ask for a prescription and obtain these from another veterinary surgeon or pharmacy.
We are only able to prescribe POM-Vs for animals under our care. To be under our care we must have been to your farm and seen your animals in the previous 12 months.
A prescription may not be appropriate if immediate treatment is necessary.
You will be informed, on request, of the price of any medicine that may be dispensed for your animal.
The general policy of this practice is to re-assess an animal requiring repeat prescriptions every 6 months, but this may vary with individual circumstances.
Further information on the prices of medicines is available on request.
Discounts
We run a fair and transparent discount system; every registered client is eligible for discount provided their accounts are kept within our standard account terms.
Clients with an up-to-date account and good payment history can achieve an additional 10% discount on many of our medicines provided that these medicines are paid for at the time of collection from one of the branches. Medicines eligible for this discount will be marked with a 'D' on your invoice.
There are further discounts available for certain drugs that are bought in their outer boxes rather than having to be split down to individual bottles. This reflects the fact that larger volumes of medicines are cheaper to provide than smaller items.
To qualify for these discounts your account must remain within our standard Terms of Business.
Standard Terms of Business
Payments can be made by BACS, cash, card or cheque made payable to 'Belmont Farm & Equine Vets Ltd.'
Our standard terms are 30 days — i.e. payment before the last day of the month no matter when the invoice is received.
No further discounts will be applied to accounts which have an outstanding balance of 60 days or more.
Accounts that are 90 days or more overdue will have a 1.5% surcharge applied per month to any sum 90 days or more overdue.
For accounts that are not kept within our standard terms we reserve the rights to remove all credit terms and to no longer provide any routine veterinary services. Emergency work will still be carried out on a pay at the time basis until the outstanding debt is cleared.
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 the original account being restored to the original sum with further charges added in respect of bank charges and administration costs.
If payments are not made and it is considered necessary to refer an account to a debt collection agency, any fees incurred will be added to the account being pursued.
Inability to pay
If for any reason you are unable to settle your account as specified, we ask you to discuss the matter as soon as possible with one of our Office Managers, Michelle Harris or Sybil Legge.
Arranging visits
We will endeavour to meet your requirements in relation to routine visits but in order to plan our working day and meet your time scales we ask if you could provide us with as much notice as possible. Emergency treatment will always be treated as a matter of urgency and dealt with accordingly.
At the end of each visit the vet will present you with an advice sheet to check and initial. One copy is for your records and will show a record of medication given, batch numbers and work carried out.
Out of Hours
We provide a 24hr out of hours emergency service for our clients. By ringing any of the normal telephone numbers you will be able to select to speak to the on-call Farm vet who will arrange to come out to your premises if required.
If the on-call vet cannot answer your call you will be diverted to our answering service who will take your details and contact the on call vet.
Ordering of drugs
In order for us to provide you with medication for your animals, your animals must be under our care. You will need to register your premises and livestock with the practice. All drug requests must be authorised by a Veterinary Surgeon — to avoid having to wait for drugs to be authorised and then put up we would ideally like you to ring your order through 24 hrs in advance. We realise that this is not always possible or convenient and will try to accommodate you as much as possible. We can give written prescriptions on request. There is a charge for the vet to do this and we require 48 hours' notice.
Drugs on special orders
Any items that we do not normally keep in stock require at least one working day's notice.
General
Belmont Farm and Equine Vets may contact you either by letter, phone, text or electronic means in order to advise you of outstanding account and any marketing offers that might be of benefit to you or your livestock. Please inform us if you wish no contact to be made. However, please be aware that this will remove the ability of the Practice to send vaccination reminders.
Reminders are provided as a complimentary service to our clients. Belmont Farm and Equine Vets accepts no liability for any loss, damages or costs which may result from the failure of a client to receive any reminder.
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 Belmont Farm and Equine Vets has the authority to alter or vary these conditions in any way.
Terms and Conditions — Equine Clients
Thank you for entrusting the care of your horse to Belmont Farm and Equine Vets Ltd.
Conditions of Registration
By registering you agree to our terms and conditions of business.
For clients transferring from another practice we require a full clinical history. Please ensure you allow enough time for your history to be obtained before arranging any visits.
Prices and Charges
Our pricing system is designed to encourage the most efficient use of our expertise and services so that we can give good value for money to our clients.
Our charges consist of:
- Professional Fees — visits, time and procedure charges
- Medicines and Supplies
- Laboratory fees
The Veterinary Surgeons and staff will be pleased to discuss likely costs at any time — please don't hesitate to ask.
Visits
Our visit fees cover the time spent in the car by the vet and the associated costs of running that car. There are increased fees out of hours to cover the additional costs of providing this service.
Professional fees
Our fees cover the cost of employing qualified vets, the associated costs of providing a 24/7 service including all other fixed costs of running the business. A large amount of our time is spent by our vets and support staff working on problems and providing free telephone advice — this is included as part of the overall package that we provide.
Most fees are charged on a time basis with adjustments made for slow working such as newer graduates or for when we have students with us.
Some fees such as vaccinations are fixed so that standard procedures come at a predictable price with no variation for the speed of work.
Medicines
We strive to ensure that our medicine costs are fair against the market, including internet prices. The sale price of medicines includes their cost price as well as a mark-up to cover the costs of obtaining, storing and dispensing them.
Prescriptions
Prescriptions are available on request and will be charged for.
You may obtain Prescription Only Medicines Veterinary (POM-Vs) from us or ask for a prescription and obtain these from another veterinary surgeon or pharmacy.
We are only able to prescribe POM-Vs for animals under our care. For animals to be under our care they must have been examined within the last 6 months.
A prescription may not be appropriate if immediate treatment is necessary.
You will be informed, on request, of the price of any medicine that may be dispensed for your animal.
The general policy of this practice is to re-assess an animal requiring repeat prescriptions every 6 months, but this may vary with individual circumstances.
Further information on the prices of medicines is available on request.
Discounts
We offer discounts on full boxes of some regular medications as long as your account is up to date (see Standard Terms of Business below) and payment is made at the time of collection.
Insurance
We do not accept 'Direct Payment' claims. All accounts are to be settled by the client who will then claim on their insurance policy for reimbursement of funds. Belmont Farm and Equine Vets will accept no liability for an Insurance Company rejecting a claim.
Standard Terms of Business
Payments can be made by BACS, cash or card.
To qualify for the above 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.
Accounts that are 60 days or more overdue will have a 10% surcharge applied per month to any sum 60 days or more overdue.
For accounts that are not kept within our standard terms we reserve the rights to remove all credit terms and to no longer provide any routine veterinary services. Emergency work will still be carried out on a pay at the time basis until the outstanding debt is cleared.
Any credit card payment not honoured, and any cash tendered that is found to be counterfeit will result in the original account being restored to the original sum with further charges added in respect of bank charges and administration costs.
If payments are not made and it is considered necessary to refer an account to a debt collection agency, any fees incurred will be added to the account being pursued.
Inability to pay
If for any reason you are unable to settle your account as specified, we ask you to discuss the matter as soon as possible with one of our Office Managers, Michelle Harris or Sybil Legge.
Arranging visits
We will endeavour to meet your requirements in relation to routine visits but in order to plan our working day and meet your time scales we ask if you could provide us with as much notice as possible. Emergencies will always be treated as a matter of urgency and dealt with accordingly.
At the end of each visit the vet will present you with an advice sheet to check and initial. One copy is for your records and will show a record of medication given, batch numbers and work carried out.
Out of Hours
We provide a 24hr out of hours emergency service for our clients. By ringing any of the normal telephone numbers you will be able to select to speak to the on-call Equine vet who will arrange to come out to your premises if required.
If the on-call vet cannot answer your call you will be diverted to our answering service who will take your details and contact the on call vet.
Ordering of drugs
In order for us to provide you with medication for your horses, your horses must be under our care. You will need to register your horses with the practice. All drug requests must be authorised by a Veterinary Surgeon — to avoid having to wait for drugs to be authorised and then put up please ring your order through 24 hrs in advance. We realise that this is not always possible or convenient and will try to accommodate you as much as possible. We can give written prescriptions on request. There is a charge for the vet to do this and we require 48 hours' notice.
Drugs on special orders
Any items that we do not normally keep in stock require at least one working day's notice.
General
Belmont Farm and Equine Vets may contact you either by letter, phone, text or electronic means in order to advise you of outstanding account and any marketing offers that might be of benefit to you or your horses. Please inform us if you wish no contact to be made. However, please be aware that this will remove the ability of the Practice to send vaccination reminders.
Reminders are provided as a complimentary service to our clients. Belmont Farm and Equine Vets accepts no liability for any loss, damages or costs which may result from the failure of a client to receive any reminder.
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 Belmont Farm and Equine Vets has the authority to alter or vary these conditions in any way.
Belmont Farm and Equine Vets Ltd · August 2024. Our complaints procedure is set out on our Complaints and Standards page.