See, you've found a great way to save on the basics already like his flea prevention. I do agree flea prevention can be quite costly but definitely not something to skip in my opinion. Its all about finding cost saving opprotunities without skrimping on the essentials.
I do agree that some vets do charge quite a bit for their services and sometimes a lot of them are unneccessary but the good thing about your vet is that she offered you the choice of doing something about it or not.
Before couponing our one cat got very sick and it was going to be over a $1000 we were so poor at the time we could hardly afford gas in our car or groceries in our fridge. We were having to consider putting her down only because it was the cheaper option. We didn't have credit cards at that time. The point is the vet freaked out on us and told us that she had to be admitted to their hospital and hooked up to fluids + a million other things at once no matter what because of the condition she was in. This was wrong. We could not afford it, the vet knew it and she knew we were having to make the painful decision of whether to put her down or not because of the costs.
Luckily the story has a good ending and we were able to borrow money from a family member and it turned out that while she was in bad condition to begin with she came around very quickly and her long term condition wasn't as serious as the vet claimed. Its now been 5 years and we still have her.
This same cat has a cyst on her back, she has had it since not long after we got her and it has slowly gotten larger over the years. Our new vet offered to have it removed but she was honest and told us it wasn't life threatening since it was an under the skin cyst and chances are it would just come back after being removed anyways so we've left it. Plus at her age and the cost of it all and trying to recooperate it wouldn't be very bright for her so it just isn't worth it. It doesn't bother her. And now of course we've found another one not far from the original so if we did have the original removed we would have just had to have this one removed too.
a lot of animal/pet topics are very controversial which is why most people stay away from giving their input unless it is something very serious like not taking an animal to the vet when we (but not your family) feel it is necessary. I bet lots of people agreed with you though and would have done the same thing but its still good idea to let your vet know what happened so that they can have it on file for later reference because if a true emergency ever does happen you may not remember this situation in frantic panic.