Banfield Pet Hospital 101 Community Street, Charlottesville, VA 22911

"The one star is only for the lovely front desk lady who is the only redeeming thing about our experience taking our pets to this place. Seems like the vets favor “nicely” behaved pets—which is ridiculous because these are animals who will do animal things and won’t be on their “best” behavior all the time. Each time I go to pick up my pets, I wait over an hour. The vets are so nice to dog people and coo over all the pups, and I guess they hate cats because all they ever discuss with me during pick-up is how “badly behaved” my cat is. By the fourth time I was made to wait (over) an hour, I was done. Ridiculous time management for paying customers. Never coming back and will take my pets to smaller cat-specific clinics. Beware to other cat owners!"

"Hope no one has to deal with the cooperate office. They are the RUDEST people to deal with. God forbid if your on the wellness plan and your bank rejected the payment like me NO ONE there will make a courtesy call to you to tell you what happened to correct it. NO They keep charging your account and then send you to collections. HOW DUMB of them no contacting you, they got your number and address and STILL NOTHING!"

"I signed up for the annual puppy wellness package and I’m very disappointed. They don’t tell you there are additional charges for services until you check in. They also postponed my pets spay three times, and I took her today and they are charging me additional because she gained 2 pounds. Will never use again."

"Dr. Dombrowe is a truly wonderful veterinarian! She is extremely compassionate, knowledgeable, & personable. She listened to all of my concerns, answered each of my questions in detail, & truly took the necessary time to care for my cat. I really believe Dr. Dombrowe cares for each of her patients as if they were her own pets. My boyfriend recently found a cat outside of his place of work & we decided to take her home. She was covered in fleas, had a severe ear infection & mites, & was malnourished. We called Banfield Pet Hospital the following day & I expressed my extreme concern for this cat. We were seen the same day, within 4 hours of calling. Once we came for the appointment, the front staff & veterinary techs were so helpful & kind to us. Dr. Dombrowe completed each of the necessary tests for our cat & found that she had anemia, a gallop heart rhythm, & a severe ear infection & mites. She took all the time she needed to completely assess our cat as well as answer all of our questions. Her treatment plan for our cat was so effective by her second appointment (2 weeks after the initial appointment) her ear infection, mites, fleas, gallop heart rhythm, & anemia were all gone!! We feel so blessed to have had her as our veterinarian as I truly believe she saved our cats life. Thank you Dr. Dombrowe!"

"We visited the Banfield Pet Hospital inside PetSmart at Forest Lakes on 5.25.19 because a day or two before my mother had noticed that our 10 year old Brussels Griffon, Juju was just not acting her normal self. I woke up that morning with a text for my mother asking me to keep an eye on her, due to her not acting right. This being a dog that the second you take a step is right on our heels is suddenly not moving at all. So I immediately called Banfield to see if they had an opening or when was the soonest they could see us. They were able to see us that afternoon, we were hopeful... We arrived for our appointment, no one seemed to know why we were there, even though I had given explicit detail when making the appointment. While waiting to be seen Juju had used the restroom all over me. She hadn't been eating or drinking, at least not that we had seen. Who I assume was a Tech decided to take her to the back, she said they were going to do blood work. That is all we were told. She was then brought back, someone else walked into the room - she never introduced herself. They proceeded to tell us that they took a fecal sample along with blood and it would take about 10 minutes to get the results. Once the results were done they said that their primary concern had been her liver or her kidneys, but that they were fine. Everything else on her bloodwork was all over the place though. They told us she probably just got into something - which we highly doubted - and it was irritating her gut which was why she wasn't eating or drinking so she was just very dehydrated. They gave us 3 options - take her somewhere that could do continuous IV fluids (Bc a 'Pet Hospital' can't do that?), give her subcutaneous fluids, or euthanize her! Needless to say the last option was off the table. We went for the subcutaneous fluids and antibiotics and hoped for the best because they didn't seem too concerned, and after all they were the professionals, right? Well this went on for 2 more days. We couldn't get her to eat or drink. We managed to get some fluids in her only by force feeding her with a syringe. So by Monday afternoon (Memorial Day) I'd had enough and we went to the Emergency Vet. Before even running a single test they knew what was wrong. She wasn't showing any of the classic symptoms but they suspected that she had an infected uterus, which was life threatening. The worst part for us at this point was realizing we had already taken her to a vet and they completely missed this! They charged us $300 and did absolutely nothing. They did an X-Ray to confirm, which it did along with a mass. So her life was a risk and she needed emergency surgery. At this point she was so weak she would most likely not have survived the surgery. So we had to make to horrible decision to end her suffering, even though it was the hardest thing for us. I have waited this long to write a review for Banfield because I have been very angry. They claim to be a Pet Hospital, yet when we really needed a pet hospital they got it totally wrong and maybe if we had known what the real problem was sooner we might have had a chance to save our sweet girl. I write this as a warning. Make sure you trust the vet you take your animals to, I can promise you we will not be taking any of our pets back to Banfield and if I could give a negative rating I would."