Hi I have a two year old golden retriever who 12 weeks ago started shaking her head and scratching at her ear. I took her to the vet who prescibed antibiotics, gave injection of dexafort and fuciderm for the wet patch under her ear .
12 weeks on , a further 5 visits to the vet at a cost of £350,( thank goodness she is insured !) we are really no better off, the foul smell in her ear has gone but the wet patch under her ear is still present. I am now going to try bathing the wet patch and applying antiseptic  cream to see how that goes , Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions as i think d=going to the vet quite frankly is useless and extremely expensive!!

I really think you are better sticking with the advice/treatments the vet is giving, it is very difficult to give advice when we cannot see the problem.

However if you are determined to try something else, I have had success with the following. Clean the area with an anti-bacterial wash such as Hibiscrub, then apply Daktarin which an anti bacterial/anti fungal powder used to treat athlete's foot (available from any chemist).

Has your vet done a swab test of the area?  Might be a yeast infection or an allergy of some sort maybe.  You may just have had antibiotics that the problem is resistant too.

My Goldies have the occasional patch and I now use a weak solution of hibiscrub several times a day and 'touch wood' I haven't had to take one to the vets with it for years.  The knack is to catch it early and clean reguarly.  I do sometimes use a cream, but the others tend to lick it off so now I don't bother!
Hope it all clears up soon. 

For wet areas you need a powder to dry the area, not a cream which will keep the area wet and probably make things worse.

This does sound like a fungal problem.
Go back to your vet and get them to check the area and give you something to dry the area and heal it.

One of mine has terrible problems with her ears - They were always full of terrible black gunge - Several trips to vets and they gave me some ear stuff which would work when I was using it but as soon as I stopped, her ears would gunge up again.

I now clean out once a week with hibiscrub and then wipe over with colloidal silver. The day after when everything is dry I apply Thornit ear powder. Don't have any problems now.