A lawsuit filed by Tevra Brands claims web sites and retail dealers like Chewy, PetMed Express, 1-800-PetMeds; Drs. Foster & Smith, PetSmart, and Petco have been taking payola from Bayer Animal Health (now called Elanco) in exchange for NOT selling or listing generic versions of topical flea and tick medications Advantage II and K9 Advantix II
The result: massive price-gouging of their customers.
Tevra Brands claims it lost tens of millions of dollars because Bayer Animal Health (aka Elanco) conspired to maintain its monopoly by incentivizing companies to not carry their generic product.
Regardless of the outcome of this suit, my suggestion for dog owners is to save money and get excellent results with a simple pyrethrin dip.
1 comment:
That's horrifying. I thought a lot of the generics I was seeing on alternative pet-med sites were made overseas, and was wondering about the larger proliferation of those obvious generics with the same ingredients as brand-name products in retail stores (e.g. Walmart, farm & fleet stores, TSC, etc).
Granted, Tevra does not have a great reputation according to Google reviews, but given that any individual animal can spike a reaction to any ingredient for absolutely no reason and people are much more likely to leave negative reviews than positive ones, I'm skeptical of the accuracy. I guess I'm more curious about their (and other generic brands) guarantee and ability to stand behind their products in the case of inefficacy or adverse reaction. "The customer is always right" is a terrible way to do business, but if someone is going to pay good money for a treatment that is otherwise unaffordable under a different package design/name, "caveat emptor" should not rule as the be-all-end-all as it does with the unscrupulous people who sell a dog, cash the buyer's check and effectively washes their hands of responsibility for that which they have produced.
Hopefully that word salad makes a degree of sense!
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