Veterinary practices across the country are to display their prices where customers can see them, after the Competition and Markets Authority concluded a long investigation by confirming something most pet owners have understood since roughly 1994. The measures include published price lists, limits on prescription fees and a requirement that people be told what something costs before, rather than after, it has been done to their animal.

Graham Pettifer, 52, a warehouse supervisor from Stockport, encountered the new regime on Tuesday in a waiting room, holding a laminated A4 sheet with the expression of a man reading the terms of his own mortgage. He had come in because Nigel, a Syrian hamster bought eleven months earlier for £4.50, had seemed a bit quiet.

The list put a standard consultation at £63. Mr Pettifer took a pen from the reception desk and worked it out on the back of an appointment card. A consultation, he established, cost fourteen hamsters. Nigel had a projected lifespan of two years, a wheel that had so far proved his only appreciating asset, and a total lifetime value which Mr Pettifer put, generously, at about £11.

A little look

The receptionist explained that the vet would just have a little look. Mr Pettifer asked what happened if the little look turned into something larger. She said that in that case they would pop him under. He located the relevant line on the laminated sheet. Anaesthetic, small mammal, £94.

"I’m not a man who minds paying," said Mr Pettifer. "I just hadn’t expected to be paying the equivalent of twenty-one hamsters for one hamster to have a nap."

The CMA said the price lists were intended to correct a market in which consumers frequently had no idea of the cost of treatment until they were handed the bill, and were in no position to shop around, being at the time mostly in a car park holding a cardboard box.

"Our review found that people were being asked to make financial decisions at moments of considerable emotional pressure," said Helen Marchbanks, a senior director at the authority. "We would describe this as a market failure. We understand that many of the public would describe it as Thursday."

The wider arithmetic

The published figures have prompted owners of other species to consult their own sums. A goldfish won at a fairground, typically costing about £1.50 in the form of three throws of a ping-pong ball, can be seen forty-two times for the price of a single consultation. Mr Pettifer’s daughter owns a stick insect called Gerald, acquired for £2.50. The list classes Gerald as an exotic, with a consultation fee of £88, or thirty-five stick insects and a bit of one.

Pet insurance did not simplify matters. Nigel’s policy had been quoted at £11 a month, which over his expected lifespan comes to £264, or nearly fifty-nine times his purchase price. Mr Pettifer described the figure as educational.

Priya Raghunathan, a practice manager in Reading, said the profession had broadly welcomed greater clarity. "We’ve always been happy to discuss costs," she said. "People tend to ask once the animal is on the table, which is a poor moment for a comparison. A list means they can be upset in the waiting room instead, which is better for the carpet."

Nigel was eventually seen for around six minutes. The vet found him to be a healthy hamster who was tired, a condition the vet noted was common in hamsters at eleven in the morning. The bill came to £63 plus £9 for sundries, which Mr Pettifer did not query, having been advised by the laminated sheet that sundries were an established part of the process.

On the way out he asked whether he might take the price list home. He was told it was for display. Nigel, in his box, had gone back to sleep, which Mr Pettifer observed was something he could have established for nothing.