Incompetence? Malpractice? A conman? Or all of the above?
I always had a great dental experience, but things took a turn for the absolute worst when I naively trusted them with Invisalign. Giving them a 1-star rating is still too high for them.
As I started getting closer to my treatment end date, I noticed my bite started to misalign. When I expressed my concern, they said this was strange and that this isn't something they see in all their other Invisalign patients (which I think is a funny thing to say given that they havent even seen enough Invisalign patients to show up on the Invisalign website) and that it's probably because of stress. Strange thing to say but they were the professionals, so I continued to believe their excuses & gaslighting, continued to trust that they knew what they were doing and were providing me with the best of care. I went through 3 revisions over the course of ~8 months to 'fix my bite' with no improvement at all. I was unable to bite on one side, with the impact of my bite landing on my front teeth, for almost a year while under their 'care.'
I finally ended up having consultations with several orthodontists who were platinum level Invisalign providers to review my current 'treatment' and all of them said the same thing: 1) bite misalignment is very common esp. with adults, 2) my bite misalignment is because there was not enough room in my mouth for my teeth to move to in the first place, 3) an IPR (interproximal reduction) should have been done before I even started wearing the aligners. One orthodontist guessed that Michael Rolfes was most likely just shifting my teeth around during the revisions in the hopes that something would eventually click and fix my bite. Several clarified that 3-4 revisions for a pretty straightforward bite misalignment case like mine is an absurd number of revisions.
Each orthodontist said I would need at least 8 months for them to fix everything. It would have to be a whole new treatment. There was nothing to even continue from the 'treatment' I was currently receiving from Michael Rolfes.
I was disheartened and upset that I basically suffered for nothing, and the bite problem was not my fault in any way despite having been made to believe it was.
Was Michael Rolfes 1) incompetent: that he wasn't even competent enough to identify the problem and know the solution or 2) negligent: that this was malpractice and he was being careless with how he handled my case or 3) a straight-up conman: that he's solely offering Invisalign as a means to take people's money & doesn't care what happens?
Despite having already paid $5800, I transferred my care to a platinum level provider and paid for a whole new treatment instead of doing a 4th revision with Michael Rolfes. I had enough of him messing around and ruining my teeth for almost a year now and after what I learned at my consultations, I'd end up with revisions indefinitely with nothing ever getting fixed. With my new provider, my bite corrected within a matter of weeks.
I reached out to Rolfes's office to tell them of my disappointment and that I didn't understand why they continued with revisions when it wasn't going anywhere. This case was clearly out of scope for Michael Rolfes yet instead of putting his patient's well-being first and acknowledging this, he continued with the needless revisions, prolonging my suffering & putting so much strain on my teeth and gums. I paid $5800 for a service to fix my teeth and that service was not provided. In fact, he made things worse. I asked him to do right by me and he decided to give me a measly $350.00 refund, with no apologies or acknowledgement of what he put me through.
There isn't much else I can do so I will be reporting him to the Board of Dentistry and writing reviews of my experience wherever I can, hoping that those reading my review will learn from my mistake. I figure if he's capable of this kind of behavior and this is how he treats a patient that he has wronged, he is capable of doing it again to someone else that may have the misfortune of being on the receiving end of his incompetence/malpractice/con. read more