Payment Plans

So, this is kind of tagging along with the last post which talked about people crucifying vets for requiring people to pay for their services.... often in a lot of these instances, people pay the required amount at the beginning... and then never pay the rest.

I've only had one experience with someone wanting to do a payment plan (deposits and that sort of thing excluded), back maybe 4ish years ago.  They wanted to get four chins, which I believe amounted out to the $300-400 range, and they wanted to pay so much per week until the chins were paid off.  This person also wanted to take the chins home early on, but that wasn't happening.

Anyway, they were supposed to send me the first payment that Friday, and then the payments would follow every so often, starting after that.  Friday came and went, no payment.  I sent this person an email, asking if they still wanted the chins, as I hadn't gotten their payment as agreed to.  Yes, they did, but something had come up, they wouldn't be able to pay until next Friday.  Naturally.  So, next Friday rolls around.  No payment.  Sent them another message, this time specifying that I would not be holding the chins for them any longer (I had been), if I did not receive payment.  Oh, they'd had an unexpected bill, but could I hold them a couple more days?

Mind you, this wasn't just one chin, this was four.  Anyway, they said they'd have the payment by mid-week, and I didn't have any appointments scheduled for people coming to look at chins, so I didn't actually have any opportunity to tell people whether they were, or weren't on hold.  You guessed it!  I never received payment, never heard from them.  I didn't contact them after that.

I have occasionally heard back from this person, always inquiring about chinchillas (though, not four lol).  The last time they inquired, they specified that they wanted to adopt a chinchilla that was in a foster home, and I specified that we would need an appointment set, before I would bring the chin here.  Knowing this person's track record, I was also going to require a deposit on the chin, before bringing it from the foster home (that's actually pretty standard, so we're not transferring chins and then having them not get adopted).  She said setting the appointment was fine... and then never responded to my following message.  I messaged again, twice actually, prior to when the chin would have been transferred, to remind this person, that if she wanted the chin here to adopt, we needed to  (among other things) set an appointment.  This was on facebook, so I could see that she read the message... and never replied.

That chin was later adopted by someone else.

The point is, see what happened here on a payment plan.  She never paid the initial money, and never took the chins home... but if she had taken the chins home on the promise to pay... see how much effort I had to extend to try to get her to pay (and yet, she never did).  Does a vet's office have time to do that?  Heck no.  Heck, do I have time to do that?  Heck no.  And, further, the same person that was super flaky on the payment plan, also was flaky later on with another chin she wanted to adopt.  Not saying everyone is like this, of course, but this just gives you an example of what can happen.... and that's why most vets (and we) don't accept payment plans.