Absolutely horrible experience at Singleton Smile. If I could give zero starts I would.
I wish I could comment on the actual dental experience, but I never got to experience it because their administrative system is a complete mess.
I found Singleton Smile through yelp and decided to go with them because of the great yelp reviews. Their yelp page links to their zoc doc profile for booking -- fine I have seen this many times before. I made an appt for Tuesday the Thursday before. Everything seemed fine!
I get a call, without caller ID, at 7:30 am the following day, Friday. The caller leaves a voicemail saying that they just need more info to confirm my insurance. They didn't say anything to make me believe my appointment was at risk of cancellation. This seemed totally normal and because my insurance requires me providing my social to the office to identify me, I decided I would rather provide this in person. Worst case scenario, I planned to pay out of pocket for the cleaning. I have done this countless times at dentists, including for my wisdom tooth surgery, without issue.
Okay so Tuesday morning, the morning of the appointment, arrives. I have been getting zoc doc notifications every day saying things along the lines of "get ready for your Tuesday morning appointment at singleton smile with Dr. Pham!" The morning of, zoc doc prompts me to do my online check in to speed along my appointment, which I do. Everything points to smooth sailing.
I arrive to the appt 15 mins early -- mind you I had to rearrange my schedule and miss a meeting for this appointment -- to check in and clear up my insurance confusion.
Well, this is when everything turns sour. The administrator says that there is no appointment for me. I'm like what are you talking about? I just got a text five minutes ago telling me my appointment is about to start?!
She then asks if I have a certain type of insurance; I say I do. "Ohhh we are not accepting clients with this insurance, there's a waitlist". I'm like well can I just pay out of pocket? Apparently this office has some sort of slimy, special deal with this insurer where if someone with that insurance wants to pay out of pocket, they have to turn them away. This is how she describes it at least. This is ridiculous because I could have just as easily never stated my insurance at the time of booking and not been treated this way.
Furthermore, it was never communicated to me in any way that my appointment would be cancelled. In the call that I mentioned earlier, they already knew which insurer I had and stated that they just wanted "more info". If what the administrator at the front desk said is true, they never would have accepted my appointment with this insurance. So when they called me on the phone, knowing what insurance I had, why didn't they tell me that they were canceling my appointment?
So, they went ahead and cancelled my appointment.
My frustration and disappointment is around this:
1) If my insurance was a problem, this should have been clearly communicated to me over written communication via text or email, which I provided at the time of booking. This way, I could have cleared things up or at least known my appt was cancelled before taking time out of my day to show up.
2) I was getting multiple notifications a day from Zoc Doc confirming that I have an appointment. Considering that Singleton Smile's yelp LINKS YOU TO ZOC DOC to make the booking, they should be making scheduling updates through zoc doc. One of the most frustrating parts of this experience was the administrator telling me "well Zocdoc confirmation isn't a real confirmation." If this is the case, then you should not have zoc doc be the only booking system YOU link to make an appointment. She was basically discrediting Zocdoc and the validity of appointments made through Zocdoc, but the practice literally links you to Zocdoc to make appointments. It all seems so hypocritical.
3) If my appointment was never validated through your office, you need to reach out to me directly and tell me that instead of wasting my time and letting me come here at 8:45 am on a workday. I don't care if you provide that information through Zocdoc or through contacting me directly or leaving a voicemail where you explicitly state you are not taking my appointment, but you need to inform me of that ahead of the appointment. I just don't think that it's an acceptable way to do business to waste people's time like this.
4) Lastly, I don't know what kind of insurance scheme they have going, but it seems really ridiculous to me that I can be a customer ready and willing to pay for a service and they still won't provide it to me for no other reason than that they have a special deal with my insurer that states that they won't accept out-of-pocket payments, but then they also will not accept patients with this insurance because there's a waitlist. read more