Blogs · July 2026

Why do pet owners keep asking what it costs, and how should you answer?

Because they cannot find out. Most practices do not publish prices, the CMA has now acted on it, and every unanswered price question becomes a phone call.

The short answer: owners keep asking about cost because too few practices show their prices clearly. Fewer than 40% of UK veterinary practices publish prices on their websites, so the phone is the only route left, and your front desk absorbs every one of those calls. The fix is not to get better at deflecting the question. It is to answer it consistently, everywhere, so it stops arriving as an interruption.

The question is not going away

The Competition and Markets Authority has spent years examining the UK veterinary market, and its findings are blunt. Fewer than 40% of practices publish prices online. Fewer than half of owners received pricing information in advance of non-routine treatment, and of those who did, only 29% got it in writing. Fewer than half of owners at a large group even knew their practice was part of a chain.

The CMA has concluded its investigation with reforms aimed squarely at this. Whatever your view of it, the direction is settled: owners are going to get more information up front, not less.

Why this lands on your phone

Affordability is now one of the profession's defining pressures. In the RCVS 2024 survey, 46% of vets named the affordability of veterinary care as a top work-related issue, up from 30% in 2019. That is a sixteen point jump in five years, and those conversations do not happen in a policy document. They happen with whoever answers the phone.

Meanwhile owners are making decisions on very little information. 51% considered only one practice when choosing a vet. If your price is not findable and nobody picks up to tell them, you are not being compared with anyone. You are just being skipped.

Why "ring us for a quote" is costing you

It feels safe. Every case is different, the honest answer is "it depends", and you do not want to be undercut on a number that means nothing out of context.

But look at what it does in practice:

  • It converts every price-curious owner into a phone call, at a front desk that is already full.
  • It filters out the owners least willing to ring, who are often the ones most worried about cost.
  • It makes you look like you have something to hide, at exactly the moment the regulator has decided the sector is not transparent enough.

What to do instead

Publish your routine prices. Consults, vaccinations, neutering, dentals, health plans. Ranges are fine. "From £X" is fine. Silence is not.

Explain what drives the variation. Owners are not unreasonable. They accept that a complex case costs more. What they cannot accept is being told nothing at all.

Answer the question the same way every time, on every channel. The price an owner is quoted on the phone at 9pm should be the price on your website and the price your receptionist gives on Tuesday. Inconsistency is what destroys trust, not the number itself.

Get the answer out of people's heads and into one place. If your fees live in three spreadsheets and one nurse's memory, you cannot be consistent, and you certainly cannot be consistent at 9pm on a Sunday.

How HealthCentre handles it

One knowledge base holds your services, your fees, your policies and your hours. Every channel answers from it: the phone, the website chat, the inbox, your social messages. So an owner asking what a dental costs gets the same answer at 9pm as they would at the desk, in your practice's voice, and can book the consult there and then.

It answers on price, not on treatment. It repeats the fees you have published, and explains what you have said drives the variation, then books the owner in. It never guesses what a case will cost, never gives clinical advice, and never tells an owner what their animal needs. Anything clinical, or anything urgent, goes straight to a person on your team.

That is the honest split: money and admin, an agent can handle. Medicine belongs to your vets.

Frequently asked questions

Should a vet practice publish prices online?

Yes, and the CMA's reforms are moving the sector that way. Fewer than 40% of practices currently do, which means publishing puts you ahead of most of your market rather than behind it.

What if the price depends on the case?

Publish the routine work, give ranges for the rest, and be clear about what drives the variation. Owners handle "it depends, and here is why" far better than silence.

Can an AI agent quote prices to owners?

It can quote the fees you have published, consistently, on every channel. It does not invent a price and it does not advise on treatment.

Will publishing prices mean we get undercut?

The CMA found availability, not price, was the top reason owners gave for preferring a large group practice: 55% named appointment availability. Being reachable and having a slot matters more to owners than being cheapest.

Sources

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