Dr. Arun Garg knows a lot about dental implants as he has an amazing curriculum vitae surrounding his experience of this art and science. His seminar business, however, leaves a lot to be desired.
I took his classroom course, which supposedly costs less money than the average dental implant course (according to Dr. Garg). Ok, fine, but also a lot less personal instruction. Then, to expound on the didactic course, a live patient course in the Dominican Republic (which is heavily pushed) is offered to help you gain confidence to get going with the procedures in your practice...at an additional $15K for just three days of instruction. I had trouble digesting how that price could possibly be justified, but I realized I was not ready to start doing the procedures without more training, so I bit the bullet and bought the weekend trip.
Now I feel confident placing many implants in my practice. That is great and definitely worth mentioning here. It was not, however, without some major frustrations I experienced regarding the lack of organization at their facility. I will not go into detail on those issues here, but suffice it to say that a lot of my time was wasted for nonsensical reasons when I could have learned a lot more for the steep price he charges.
My biggest complaint, though, isn't even the frustrations I allude to above, but rather their sheer lack of customer respect. Given the exorbitant cost of this weekend and the frustrations I experienced, I found it very appropriate to offer some feedback on their product, even though they didn't offer a survey. When I inquired about giving feedback, I was welcomed to reply to an email that someone named Cristina created with the subject line "Suggestions for Live patient program" specifically for me. After a lengthy, honest review of my $15,000 experience, which acknowledged all the good things as well as details of the not-so-good things, I was not even given the simple courtesy of an acknowledgement for such feedback, let alone any gratitude for taking the time to help their business improve. I even stated that I might be interested in their second tier of education!
After I made THREE polite follow-up attempts to see if anyone gave a flying duck about my concerns regarding the trip, I still got absolutely nothing. How unbelievably rude! Cristina apparently chose to ignore me rather than address any of my concerns. These unanswered inquiries also included a question as to when I should expect to receive a disk of photos taken by their professional photographer that I was promised...which never came.
I thought to myself, "Maybe Dr. Garg has one bad employee." But then, as I tried to register for his symposium in Chicago, I was dealing with yet another bad employee (Fiorella Samaniego) who was insisting that Dr. Garg did not offer a special incentive to attend the symposium. I tried to explain to her that I was sitting right in front of Dr. Garg when he announced the deal, and even though she wasn't there, she wouldn't even bother to check with him to see if it was correct. She was incredibly rude on the phone with me during this discussion.
I would have spent the paltry money to attend the symposium, but I was quite disenchanted that they not only wouldn't honor their special incentive, but were very rude about it to boot. I gave them a significant amount of leeway, resigning to the thought that perhaps "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing," but even after folding (knowing I was right), I eventually consented to allowing the incorrect charge. Then they didn't bother themselves to communicate with me about said consent until it was too late, which would have been really nice, considering my summer weekend plans would have been significantly different. Gee, thanks for the lack of common courtesy...again.
Also, I even pleaded for Fiorella to see what the heck happened to Cristina's sudden drop in communication with me (which "mysteriously" occurred right after I sent my candid feedback), and...nothing. Nothing at all. Wow. I could excuse one bad employee, but after two of them, I am convinced that it is a culture of arrogance that Dr. Garg himself must foster.
Oh, and another gem: Dr. Garg has a penchant for making derogatory remarks about gay people for cheap laughs. Yep, even in today's climate he apparently thinks it's just fine to crack those types of jokes when speaking to groups of doctors, as witnessed on multiple occasions. Shameful. read more