I'm not the type of person who often goes online to complain about a business. I feel like mistakes happen and, especially during the age of COVID, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.
However, I'm extremely unhappy with what transpired between me, Emergency Dental Services, and Dental Design. On Saturday night one of my teeth broke while I was eating. I immediately began looking for an emergency dental office that could get me in as soon as possible. I found Dental Design courtesy of a company called Emergency Dental Services. I paid a $25 fee to reserve an appointment with Dental Design. I received a confirmation email and all seemed good. The morning of my appointment I again received text and email confirmations stating that my appointment was at 9am.
I showed up to Dental Design at 8:45am and called the office to see if I should come in or wait in my car until they called me. Imagine my surprise when they told me they didn't have me on the schedule. I explained to the receptionist what happened and told her I had email and text confirmations of my appointment. She put me on hold as she went to talk to the dentist and returned a few minutes later to tell me again they would not be able to see me that day. There I sat in my car, broken tooth in hand, and no dental appointment.
I initially posted a 1 star Yelp review explaining what happened. Within an hour or so of my review being posted I received a conference called with Dr. Gelman from Dental Design and one of the co-owners of Emergency Dental Services. To their credit both companies apologized for the misunderstanding. Dr. Gelman explained to me that according to their arrangement with Emergency Dental Services (EDS), EDS is not allowed to book patients on their behalf and that all appointments need to be confirmed by Dental Design. In my mind that arrangement makes no sense and had I known that up front I would have continued to look for a dentist that could see me on a Sunday. Instead, because I was lead to believe that I already had an appointment I stopped looking for another dentist. Of course by the time I found out that Dental Design wouldn't honor the appointment I booked through EDS it was too late to get in somewhere else. At least EDS was willing to refund my $25 booking fee.
During the conference call one solution that was proposed by EDS was that Dental Design could possibly try to fit me in today. Again Dr. Gelman reiterated that he couldn't do that.
The only reason I'm not leaving Dental Design a 1 star review is because they were courteous enough to call me to apologize. But like I explained to them over their phone an apology won't put my tooth back in my mouth. They shouldn't be advertising emergency dental services if they can just deny you an appointment if they don't happen to already have an opening. The nature of emergency services is that they are unpredictable and therefore cannot be booked in advance like that. Of course Dr. Gelman could have kept his office open a bit longer that afternoon in order to see me and at least stabilize what was left of my broken tooth until I could come back for a more permanent treatment but he was unwilling to do that. Instead, I was sent away with a broken tooth and have to time time off work to go elsewhere to have my tooth repaired. read more