I am really sad I can not write a good review of north berkeley dental arts. First of all I will say this review is only so high because the doctors are excellent. I haven't been the best dental patient (I hate going to the dentist) but they have been extremely patient with me and they have never tried to get me to do any unnecessary procedures. I really trust their diagnoses and in all the years I've seen them they've never claimed I have a cavity over small shadows on my Xray like I've experienced in the past. They are friendly and caring and I would definitely recommend them.
If it wasn't for insurance I wouldn't be leaving as a client. If you validate your insurance covers them and you are on top of checking with your insurance (not North Berkeley Dental Arts) when any plan changes occur, you will have no issues going here, and again, I'd recommend them. But I am leaving this review because of the front staff and how my insurance change was handled as a long term client. I am ridiculously upset right now. I'll back up a bit and say my experience with the front office has always been fairly neutral. They are usually very busy, on the phone or on the computer when I interact with them and our interactions have been short. Also in general I don't love calling, but if you go here I'd highly recommend that you do. I tried emailing several times over the span of several months to get billing info and book an appointment and never got a response. This was after I'd already been going here for years. While I did call, when I didn't get a response the first time I didn't try any further, so that was on me, but I'd expect them to after months get back to me at least once over email. Now I was more than fine with letting this go, after all, like I said the dentists are great here and they do answer the phone most of the time. I really should have called but I avoided it and it was ultimately my fault that I was super late for a needed appointment, which the dentist was very gracious about.
What brought me close to the edge was my last visit early this year. I go into the office and the end of my dental work I speak with the front desk. She tells me I owe them around 500 dollars for my previous visits and that I need to pay. I am baffled by this, because normally pay a small copay or nothing for preventative care. Moreover when I had asked them at the start of my plan year about checking my insurance because a lot had changed with my plans and I wasn't sure about dental, they tried to dismiss it. I insisted they check they said oh yep you have guardian you still have coverage with us! So when I heard that for one Xray and dental cleaning I owed over 500 dollars I was really shocked. Not only this but these were all done half a year ago! I told the front desk, that it would have been nice to know sooner and that I had asked about my insurance before. She replied, well we haven't seen you since then! Excuse me? How is that reasonable at all, I don't have any voicemails or letters as would be expected. It's possible I missed these communications, but from the way she replied it seemed like she knew there had been no follow up. She did apologize which I appreciated but unfortunately it doesn't solve anything.
Even worse was when I asked to pay in installments she actually said, well, this is really overdue. Of course it was overdue, I was never told about it.
Today I finally accessed my insurance online, which I'm kicking myself for not doing earlier. I can see all the submitted claim dates and payment dates and my insurance was regularly replying to their claims within 7 days. So what she said about me not having come in since I owed them money is categorically false. I had gone in 6/30, my insurance paid 7/7 and I went back in on 7/26. At that time I would have already owed over a couple hundred dollars. If I had been properly billed at that time I would have rethought going back for another cleaning within the plan year since clearly they are no longer in network.
To be honest, I don't even think they were trying to be deceptive, I think they just aren't great at managing the office and they don't truly care about making sure everything is correct with insurance. Sort of like 'hear no see no evil' and turning a bit of a blind eye because it benefits them. I think it was a combination of that and me being unlucky. Maybe other patients have had completely different experiences around billing and insurance and I somehow fell through the cracks, but this was my experience.
I've learned a valuable lesson through this, which is do not trust medical offices to give you correct information about your insurance. Always check with your insurance, they can reliably tell you what and who is covered. read more
