TLDR; Unprofessionally shamed and berated by the office manager after asking reasonable questions about dental treatment plan / costs. Doctor went MIA, never following-up on poor experience, and ignored multiple follow-up emails to have patient files sent to an alternative dentist. We were eventually able to obtain most files, however the office repeatedly sent partial dental files making it difficult for us to move to another office. I strongly recommend people avoid this dental office.
THE GOOD
The wife and I are newish patients and I wanted to share feedback on our experience. I selected this dental office based on it's positive online reviews (google/yelp) and our initial visits were positive. The office took appropriate COVID-19 precautions, the hygienists were friendly and Dr. Petrie performed fast and thorough work with a sense of humor. The only minor complaint we had was that the doctor spoke a little too fast for my wife, who speaks English as a 2nd language, but no big deal since they allowed me to attend each of her visits to help make sure she understood the work being performed.
THE BAD
Fast forward a few visits later... The wife had some fairly major, but not unexpected, dental work that needed to be done so after x-rays were taken and the doctor had a chance to review everything we visited the office to go over potential treatment options. The doctor explained the treatment plans and one of the office staff went over financial information (costs, insurance, etc.) which in total was about ~$10k. The doctor and his staff were friendly and both encouraged us to review the information and come back with any questions.
THE UGLY
This is where things took a sharp negative turn...
As a prudent consumer that is faced with a significant purchase that involves our health, I took the treatment plan home, reviewed it in detail with the wife, researched the costs of each of the dental codes against the averages for the area using public information (fair health website) and came up with a list of questions. A couple of the questions were focused on her treatment plan as there seemed to be a lack of coordination between Dr. Petrie and the oral surgeon (not unexpected given it was still early in the process) and one question was around costs for two of the dental codes, which were much higher than the norm for our area (one of the codes just happened to be the most expensive single line item that showed-up multiple times on the treatment plan).
I received a phone call the next morning from the office manager who immediately began berating and attempting to shame me by accusing me of 'shopping for the cheapest prices' and 'disrespecting the doctor and their office' by even asking any questions about prices, making unhelpful comments like I can pay 'full price' instead of the lower insurance negotiated prices if I wanted, and that they were doing me a favor my charging me the negotiated insurance prices for charges after my dental insurance maxes out. The phone call was extremely unprofessional and not once did the lady provide me any concrete reason why the costs were higher than the norm for the area or address my non-cost treatment questions.
I followed-up with a polite email explaining my disappointment in the tone and approach taken on the phone call and immediately decided to find a backup dentist given this experience (hopeful we could still reconcile my concerns, but knowing we are getting closer to year-end and the ability to utilize our insurance). I fired off a second email shortly after finding a backup dentist asking Dr. Petrie's office to send over my records to the new dentist along with a few other requests. Several days passed and there was no follow-up.
I eventually called the office and the staff that answered the phone was nice, but claimed they never received my emails (ugh - I triple checked that the email address was correct). She sent our patient files over to the new dentist and myself (using the email address I had sent all my emails to), however the files were incomplete and I had to follow-up two more times to get the near complete set (we are still waiting on a few files).
I also reiterated my concerns to the office staff and asked her to relay them to the doctor, however he has yet to follow-up with us directly. The doctor has had multiple opportunities and sufficient time to reach back out to us to resolve the negative experience, however he has decided to ignore us so we've decided to take the time to write this review to warn others of our experience.
THE CONCLUSION
I would NOT recommend Dr. Petrie's office given their lack of professionalism. It's inexcusable to not be willing to answer customer questions, to attempt to shame a customer for asking questions, and to not make any attempt to respond to customer emails or reach out to them to attempt to resolve concerns. read more