So my experience with Smile Time dates back to its previous incarnation, SmileCare, a large…read moremultistate corporate owned practice owned by Coast Dental.
Smilecare exited the CA market and sold their northern CA location to Smile Time.
Initially, Smile Time provided decent care at a low cost, if you had the right dental plan.
But over time, they got rid of the great front office staff that Smilecare had in place, and replaced them with a surly, rude office manager. In my exprience with her, she claimed there was no one over her. I found the owner of the practice, got in touch, and managed to get the care I needed.
If, in spite of all the bad reviews, you choose to go here anyway, one thing you must know: They pad EVERY SINGLE SERVICE they provide.
Examples: My plan covered PFG crowns, which are perfectly serviceable crowns, and cost about $350. But on the care plan, they (without asking) upgraded to $2000 zirconia crowns. (And just for reference, it takes LESS dentist time to prepare a zirconia crown than a PFG, and the cost of the. zirconia crown and the PFG crown at the dental lab is almost identical: One is about $50, the other about $90. Yet the PFG crown that requires *more* work costs $1700 less than the zirconia.
Oh, and (this during Covid) THEY TRIED TO CHARGE FOR MASKS AND PPE FOR THE STAFF, $15 per visit... even though these costs were directly being paid by the federal government.
Another time, I was getting a deep cleaning, which my plan covered at a cost of $140. But they wanted to charge me another $200 for "topical anesthtic." When I again pointed out that any such service was included as part of the covered benefit, they backed down.
In short, every visit had unnecessary add-on charges I refused to pay. Had I not read the detailed charges very carefully, I would have paid thousands more.
But then I needed crowns over recent root canals. Even though my dental coverage covered root canals done by the general dentist, Smile Time didn't do this, in part because it likely wasn't adequately profitable. So I got the root canals done elsewhere, and returned to Smile Time for the crowns. At SmileCare, everything is paid up front, so I paid for the crowns before the procedure started.
When the first set of crowns came in, they didn't fit. The dentist fitting the was not the one who prepared them, and refused to do the work to prepare new crowns, so I had to come back for another appointment with the original dentist.
I came back, and the original dentist started preparing them, and said they;d have to add posts or something. There was a brief discussion, absolutely no mention of any additional cost, and they proceeded, and I got the crowns placed.
Then, a couple weeks later, I was coming in to get another procedure done, and was told that I had a balance from the previous care... which was incorrect, as I had paid in full. But apparently, when they discussed the posts, they were supposed to tell me there was additional cost for them, but did not. I took the position that since I had paid in full, and there was no discussion of any additional cost, I was not interested in paying any additoinal cost. After a lengthy and contentious argument where I offered to involve the state dental board to determine whether it was appropriate to provide care without disclosing cost, they removed the charge.
I made my next appointment online, and a day before the appointment, Smile Time called to tell me that the would no longer treat me... abandoning my dental care in the middle of a treatment plan, not offering any referrals, and not offering any reason for why they were "inviting me to find another practice."
It is also worth noting that before all of this happened, I needed to get an extraction, which my dental plan covered at a cost of $10. Smile Time told me they could not do it, and I needed to see an oral surgeon. They sent me to a different practice, which they claimed was completely unrelated, called Make A Smile Dental. I saw their oral surgeon, who quoted an outrageous $2800 for the extraction. Needless to say I declined. (I also decided to do a little digging, and discovered that the oral surgeon they had on staff had a suspended license in MD and in IL, and had previously run a practice in MD that was so egregiously poorly run, with cleanliness so bad that the MD dental board shut it down. This, of course, was not disclosed.)
Oh, and it turns out that Smile Time and Make A Smile are owned by the same guy... though they do everything possible to convince you otherwise.
The $2800 extraction was eventually done, after I left Smile Time, by a general dentist for a total cost of $40.
So... stay far, far away from these folks. Shoddy care, patient abandonment, egregiuosly gouging prices, deceptive representation, and doing work and attempting to collect for it without ever disclosing the charge.
