VCA Emergency Animal Hospital & Referral Center

Reviews

• AJ

  Angeles Jones

  3 days ago
  1.0
  WORST Vets in san diego Horrible way to not treat patients Ego maniacs vets that wont talk to you, just send the tech or make you talk to their person on the phone Carol horn Dr hernandez Dr parks Dr huston All of them are WORTHLESS IF YOU WANT TO SPEND THOUSANDS AND HAVE UR DOG DIE, BRING YOUR DOG HERE VCA IS THE WORST IN SAN DIEGO.
• AK

  Anna K

  Oct 25, 2025
  5.0
  Five stars for Dr Andujal! She was absolutely amazing. My cat has been losing weight and we were referred for an urgent ultrasound. While we didn’t walk away with a diagnosis- we have way more info and have great next steps with an internal specialist. The best thing about Dr Andujal is she literally spent 35 minutes on the phone with me after his ultrasound breaking down the findings and an immediate treatment plan until we could see a specialist. She answered every single question I had and mentioned that there were a few tests I could opt for but she didn’t think were necessary to spend excess money on given other recent tests we did. We love an ER vet who isn’t just trying to get all of the tests run. Just for this vet, I’ll always come back here if I have an emergency.
• KH

  Katie Hamilton-Connellan

  Oct 8, 2025
  5.0
  Not all vets will perform humane euthanizations on wild animals, but this one does. I was able to bring a small wild friend who had been in an accident in to have her pain quietly ended. I appreciated the kindness of both the woman on the phone and the man at the front desk. Thank you for helping.
• TB

  Thomas Brushel

  Oct 6, 2025
  1.0
  Response to owner: Actually YOU DID OVERCHARGE US! BY $1,600 WE HAD TO CATCH IT BY LOOKING OVER THE ITEMIZED RECEIPT. WE CALLED AND GOT REFUNDED THE MONEY WE WERE OVERCHARGED. DO NOT LIE. YOUR RECEPTIONISTS NEED TO DO BETTER - POINT BLANK. We brought our 11-year-old cat here when she was struggling to breathe, and ultimately she had to be put down. Unfortunately, our experience at VCA was extremely disappointing. From the start, the receptionist showed little empathy. The atmosphere felt unprofessional — staff were walking around laughing and making jokes while people in the waiting room were clearly distressed, some even in tears. Instead of compassion, we felt a constant push to upsell services and treatments, even during such a difficult time. On top of that, we were overcharged by $1,600. Thankfully, we caught it and were refunded, but if we hadn’t carefully gone through every receipt, we would have unknowingly paid it. For anyone reading this: double-check your receipts before you leave. Overall, we went $10,000 into debt only to lose our cat, and at every step it felt like there was a payment wall between us and basic information about her condition. Phone updates during the day were vague, but when it came time to process another payment, they broke down every detail with complete clarity. That says a lot about their priorities. I would not recommend bringing your pet here. In our experience, there was minimal care for the animals and far more focus on money than compassion. Also - STOP RESPONDING TO PEOPLES NEGATIVE REVIEWS ABOUT THIS AWFUL ESTABLISHMENT WITH GENERIC RESPONSES THAT SOUND LIKE THEY WERE WRITTEN ON CHAT GPT AND DO BETTER!!! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED. I AM TRULY DISGUSTED WITH THIS MONOPOLY OF A BUSINESS.
• GJ

  Gavin Cutshall (just_gavin_here)

  Sep 24, 2025
  2.0
  Brief preamble: if you have an actual pet emergency, this is as an appropriate place as any to handle it. When time is of the essence, and if VCA is close to you, then by all means, take care of your animal. If the matter is less urgent, I would suggest going anywhere else. This review is specific to Mission Valley, but as a chain, I assume their behavior is endemic across a broadly diseased organization. With that said ... The most essential component of care is a capable vet. VCA has these. One in particular was especially compassionate and kind. The second star you see in this review is for her. Others were proficient, if less communicative. The rest of the support staff was seemingly recruited from party animals who maybe dropped out of the greek system for being too loud, and also somehow got fired from being auto finance managers because their sales tactics were seeming too brutal, coercive and heartless. Imagine for a moment that you have a beloved pet in the active process of dying, and the woman at the front desk refuses to discuss the next steps of a care plan until you literally show her, on your phone, the EXACT amount your CARE Card credit line was approved for. You know, because can you really afford to keep something dear to you alive for the next 24 hours? How would you like a phone call informing you that an oxygen cylinder is about to run out, and would you like another? If so, what's the last four digits of your credit card again? Brutal, dispassionate, completely lacking the empathy required by the emotional weight of the situation. My personal favorite was sitting in a care room with family while saying goodbye to a beloved family pet while the staff was seeming having a sing along dance party outside for 20 minutes. Delightful. Does VCA deserve to be compensated for their very difficult work. Absolutely yes. No question. What they do is important. But I've seen more dignity and respect given to people at a circus tent brimming with clowns than what I witnessed over 48 hours at this VCA. Organizationally, I would encourage the management of VCA to do some soul searching and decide how much loss of humanity is worth it to extract their current level of value. Other vet clinics seem to be able to operate in the green without such heartless and manipulative approaches. EDIT: a review of the bill found an $1,604 error for measures that were changed for, but not taken. Did VCA perform this review? Of course not. Would they have kept it had we not pointed out that the chart and the bill were in disagreement? Give you three guesses but you’ll only need one.

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