Banfield Pet Hospital reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
The app for the Banfield vet-clinic chain — booking visits, pet medical records, paying the Wellness plan — where nearly every owner loves the in-clinic doctors but hates the app itself, which barely loads and breaks after updates.
What users love
The in-clinic doctors and staff are genuinely loved
Against the hatred of the app, the Banfield clinics themselves draw warm 5-stars: doctors and techs treat pets as their own, call back after visits, are gentle with anxious and "spicy" animals, and support owners through the hardest goodbyes.
They are wonderful. Professional,attentive and knowledgeable. Easy to get an appointment.
they treat your pet with tenderness, love and care. They truly treat your pets as their own.
Plus Dr. calls and explains any issues, solutions and says when pets are ready for pickup.
When it works, a handy hub for records and booking
The minority for whom the app launches value the concept: everything in one place — records, visit history, booking, med refills, specialist chat. Booking without waiting for the clinic to open and 24/7 access to data are genuinely convenient.
This makes it convenient to access all my pets records, schedule appointments, talk to a specialist, and view what needs to be completed with their optimum wellness plans.
Such an easy app to use. Everything is simple to find and I never have any lag or freezing issues like you can with so many other apps.
The app is great, loads quick even with unstable connection, makes setting up appointments and keeping records very easy.
What users hate
The app crawls: every action takes minutes
The single most common pain is brutal slowness. Opening hangs, taps register after 15-20 seconds, and booking a visit that should take three minutes stretches to 15-45. People say it's faster to just call the clinic than wait for the app to respond.
The app is so unbearably slow, takes forever to navigate any menus.
It will literally take you 45 minutes to accomplish anything through the app.
What should take all of 3 minutes to open and make an appointment takes me well over 15 minutes to do.
White screen of death: the app just won't open
For a huge share of users the app simply won't launch — a blank white (sometimes black) screen appears on tap and nothing else. Reinstalling, clearing cache, restarting the phone don't help; the only fallback is the website.
App doesn't load. Uninstalled and reinstalled. Doesn't load. Blank white screen.
every time I open the app it gets stuck on a white screen and never shows any information
all you will get is a white screen
The update broke everything: what worked, stopped
Many pin the breakage to a specific update: appointments vanished, records won't open, buttons stopped responding. The refrain is "undo the update" — it used to work, and the redesign killed it.
The update made everything not work. It claimed appointment availability the office didn't have. Made it useless.
undo whatever was done so this app works the way it did
It was bad before but it at least WORKED. How they managed to completely break it is beyond me.
Buttons hide behind the Android navigation bar
A textbook layout miss: the app's bottom nav sits underneath Android's system buttons (Pixel, Samsung, Motorola). Profile, calendar icons and the chat box are physically covered — untappable, leaving the app half-dead specifically for Android users.
App navigation is hiding behind the Android navigation bar on Pixel phone. This makes the app not useable. Defective navigation.
the bottom bar icons are rendered unusable by the three navigation buttons on Android
bottom navigation bar is unusable. Designers did not account for androids bottom bar so they sit on top of each other
Endless password reset: login is impossible
After the update the app repeatedly demands a new password, then rejects every compliant one with "something went wrong." People do 4-5 resets and give up — there's simply no way into the account.
no matter what I put as my PW within the constraints, I get the message "Sorry, something’s not right. Try again with a different password."
asks to change password over and over again. After about 4 resets I gave up.
Every time I log into the app, I have to reset my password. It's frustrating.
Records and documents unavailable right when needed
The core feature — the pet's medical history — fails: records often don't display, and downloads sit "pending" for a day then reset to nothing. The absurd result: to learn your own pet's data you still have to phone the clinic.
when trying to download medical history or documents it says pending for a day and then just resets to nothing
never loads, impossible to get records from app
the app doesn't store your after visit summaries or the receipts for payments made above the plan coverage, so you have to request them and wait.
Booking collapses at the final screen
Even when it loads, booking itself is unreliable: it offers slots that don't exist, can't find the right clinic, freezes on the last step or throws "something went wrong" — and the clinic later says the booked slot was never open.
App is very slow and appointment booking constantly give an error "something went wrong, please try again."
Allows you to schedule appointments for times that the vet then says aren't available when you get there.
App frooze while scheduling, allot riggt on the final screen.
You can't pay the plan in-app — it bounces you to the website
Many keep the app for one thing — paying the Wellness plan — and that's exactly what fails: the pay link goes to the website, which links to another website. After the update in-app payment vanished entirely, leaving only autopay.
Download the app to make a payment but the payment link goes to the website anyway. Then what the hell is the point of having the app??
newest update makes it so you cannot pay in app, the website the app links to, or the website THAT website links to.
unable to sign in and pay my wellness plan online since the update
You can't properly edit the pet profile
Basic editing is missing: you can't fix a birthday, weight or microchip, add a new pet by ID, or remove an ex's name from the account. The app also keeps deselecting your pet on the dashboard and forgetting entered info.
It's super annoying that you can't edit a pet's profile after making it. If you try to remake it, none of the old info or documents carry over, so you just lose everything.
every time I choose one of my pwts to have them displayed on my dashboard, it switches it to off
change address New don't work. old address same again 😤 same thing my dog Coco wrong birthday date
The Wellness plan: a great idea with a dark side of cancellation and charges
The Optimum Wellness Plan is praised as a cheaper alternative to insurance, but cancelling becomes a trap: charges continue after autopay is turned off, owners are billed for the "rest of the year" — even after the pet has died. Some flatly call it a scam.
we cancled the auto-renew over the phone AND IN THE APP. They still charged us when the plan was done.
My dog passed away at Banfield 6 months ago and I get a bill for the wellness plan out of the blue today for $65. Absolutely ridiculous.
I had to pay Banfield the rest of the years program for a senior dog because he had 1 blood draw, over $300.00 dollars, for 1 blood draw