Advertised as a female cosmetic surgeon in my area (keyword and tag search on both google and realself returned her website and I confirmed this when called to book appointment as I only wanted a female as my clinician for my cosmetic procedures). I went in for a consult with surgeon and female aesthetician, each of which I paid for separately and am not disputing, those services were as advertised and were received as expected.
After consult, I gave a $500 deposit to be able to select a date for a hair restoration procedure, and then paid for the procedure in full separately. I was given a weekend date for my procedure and given some documentation about the procedure and told any other questions afterwards to reach out, no problem. In reading the documents closer to my surgery date, I noticed I could not seem to find any information on who was doing my procedure, after calling multiple times and then subsequently sending many texts back and forth trying to get further information and details (which I do have all the copies of) I find that it is a man who is doing my procedure, and he and his assistant do not even work for the practice, they are traveling subcontractors, with no medical license, he is not a doctor of any sort, has no board certifications, and the plastic surgeon will not be any part of my surgery or even present.
I NEVER would have booked anything with some form of traveling "subcontractors" with not even a website or way to see their work or even know if they ever worked with my texture hair, especially with them only meeting the morning they are going to do my transplant. (I have a specific hair texture that has specific considerations for hair transplantation) and never could provide any relevant documentation to my requests for even just evidence they had worked with my hair texture before to assess their success and skill.
Again, I NEVER would have given any deposit to this practice for this procedure had I known any of this information at the time of deposit. I would have known to ask different questions before booking had it been made transparent that no one working actually for their practice was doing the procedure and it was not someone with medical licensing. I made this clear in my texts and was told my refund would be forthcoming, no problem at all, they understood my position.
I saw the balance of my payments credited to my accounts, but did not notice until now they did not refund my initial $500 and while I understand this would likely usually be considered 'non-refundable', this was a bait and switch situation, NONE of my paperwork that day of deposit indicted IN ANY WAY an unlicensed/non-board certified male subcontractor would be traveling in from places unknown to do my procedure and then leave again, who I would never even meet until the morning of my hair transplant, and who would not be available for any questions or provide any evidence of work relevant to me. All of my paperwork simply had the Dana Goldberg MD information on it, never anywhere a single mention of a traveling male subcontractor, their name, nothing at all to indicate the person doing my procedure would not be a member of the practice and not board certified in hair restoration. I NEVER would have given ANY deposit for ANY procedure had these facts been made transparent at the time they took the 'deposit' to 'look at dates' for my surgery.
I have all the text messages with Melissa, after my phone calls to the practice the week prior trying to get more information from them about the details missing in my take home paperwork. She was very nice and I had hoped this was somehow an oversight, as I would hate to think it was purposely kept despite knowing the lack of transparency and upfront notice of the use of non-board-certified traveling subcontractors the practice is using prior to taking people's money and the fact that no surgeon is even involved in the hair transplant surgery they advertise, but it turns out this is a thing that they do, and hide the whole outside subcontractor and not the surgeon you thingk it is angle entirely on their website. read more
