23/02/2023
Hey everyone! Hope you all are doing good. We wanted to address something that came up recently and wanted to clarify before this owner decides to continue slandering our business.
So we received a notification this evening about a comment posted under one of our pictures. In summary, the commenter claimed we gave their dog ringworm due to unsanitary conditions in our van, and that they addressed it with us, only for us to send them $1,000 bill.
I'd like to go ahead and get ahead of this by giving our side of the story. I've attached screenshots but have crossed out names for the privacy of those owners, but this is a very serious accusation and issue so I felt the need to address it publicly.
These clients had been repeats of ours for quite some time. Up until their most recent two appointments, there had never really been any issues outside of the occasional late payment, which most of you know that we're pretty lenient on but we have recently instituted a policy in which those of you who receive invoices must pay within 3 days or there is a $25 cancellation fee. You can scroll down and review some of our posts because we address this at least twice. It is also stated clearly in the invoices, and we do give the courtesy of continuing to be lenient (especially with our repeat clients) of sending reminders before adding those fees.
We serviced these clients on the 2nd of October and again on the 30th of October, trusting that they would pay their first invoice from the second of October and still going ahead and moving forward with completing their appointment on the 30th of October.
When we reminded them of the two appointments that they had yet to pay for, we received a message back indicating that they had every intention to pay, but wanted to address an issue that came up with their dog. They stated that we cut the dog, although this dog is a short-haired dog and we don't use any sharp objects on these types of dogs. They also stated that they said this happened at least once before but they apparently never addressed it with us. We gave them our best explanation of why the spot was there, as it is common in the dog grooming industry to see these kinds of hot spots quite often with bully breeds, such as English bulldogs and French bulldogs. After we provided a possible explanation, we heard heard nothing back after that point. We did ask to be updated on the dogs condition as we do care about our clients very much.
Please keep in mind, we are not veterinarians, we just gave an opinion based off of what we experience very commonly in the grooming industry, not necessarily within the company.
After hearing nothing back, we sent several reminders for payments on the two appointments that they hadn't paid for. We received no responses, no updates, and no further concerns, however our payment system does let us know every single time that someone looks at their invoice, and we did see that they looked at their invoice a few times, just didn't pay it.
So we went ahead and committed to our new policy of a $25 a day late fee. This resulted in quite a large amount. We followed all legal procedures to include sending them a certified letter in the mail advising them of their overdue invoice, to which again, no response. This letter did advise that if they did not respond or pay their invoice, they would be sent to collections.
They continued to ignore their invoice, again never raising any further concerns with us, and so we did exactly as the letter advised them we would: we sent them to collections.
We suppose the collection agency probably informed them of their invoice being sent to collections, as we suddenly received this comment today regarding apparently giving the dog ringworm from unsanitary conditions. And as you can see by The screenshots provided, this was never something that was addressed with us. They thought we nicked the dog, we explained that there was no way for us to nick the dog, but to keep us updated, and after that they never brought to our attention that their dog allegedly received ringworm from us. No other pets that we have taken care of and no employees have ever received ringworm while in our vans/care and since ringworm is an extremely contagious fungus, it would be quite difficult for it to be limited to only one pet and not even the groomer who took care of the pet. This comment came as a big surprise to us, and we would have appreciated being told at some point, as this would have resulted in a full shutdown of the vans and a major deep clean.
The sanitizing spray that we use is medical/veterinarian grade and designed to kill all types of fungus, covid, bordetella, parvo, etc. We use the sanitizers during appointments if there are any accidents or to clean our equipment, during the appointments, between appointments, and every night at the end of the shift. I have attached a link so that you can see exactly which cleaner we use.
https://store.ryanspet.com/best-shot-256-to-1-disinfectant-fresh-gallon?gclid=CjwKCAiAl9efBhAkEiwA4Torit74PIWyBuPSkEpNhiOMRyYlczyaSlyL7r0Y3nnJhcUQ0B6GAoscoBoCIqIQAvD_BwE
While we completely understand being upset with a $1,400 bill, especially as a result of one's own negligence to pay the original $110 (approx. $55/appointment), to attack a small business with what appears to be questionable accusations is not fair to the business nor the employees. We rely heavily on our reputation, especially since we have always pretty much been word of mouth. Kristina and Cici have always worked very hard to take responsibility when responsibility was needed to be taken, pay vet bills and be upfront if there is an injury that is caused on our vans, and most importantly, be extremely transparent with our clients.
When a consumer makes accusations that are questionable, especially without any provided proof, what they don't understand is that they may be reacting out of anger, wanting to hurt someone else because it is difficult to reconcile with being faced with the consequences of their own actions (such as receiving a $1,400 bill from a collection agency), what is really being accomplished is they are willingly and maliciously attempting to destroy the livelihood of several people. We are a small business; we have employees that need to feed their families, that have their own bills to pay, and when someone feels the need to attack a business like this they often forget that there are actual real people whose lives are affected should their misleading information go viral or otherwise be shared widely.
We have removed the comment and blocked the profile of the commenter, and should they see this message, we still welcome and encourage them to reach out to us and provide us their veterinary bill, as we would love to have a discussion with the veterinarian about how they determined our establishment was where this dog allegedly received ringworm.
I've also attached an informational photo about ringworm and how contagious it is; If any of our clients ever suspect that they or their animals have ringworm, we ask that you notify us immediately as we will need to reschedule your appointment or, if it was discovered after an appointment, we will need to shut down the vans to do a deep clean as well as treat our employees with the topicals needed to take care of the fungus.
As always, choose kindness. Please remember that even though a screen or phone can make someone feel a disconnection with a business and the people on the other side of that screen, leading to comments like these in which the severity of those accusations seems to escape the mind, your words do matter. And they can affect very real people in a very negative way.
Give your pups an extra belly rub for us tonight, as contrary to the beliefs of this commenter, we really do care and love our clients.
Thank you❤️
