Scandalous fees
Referred to Happy Teeth by our dentist for our 5 year old as she was too young for nasal sedation (she was having awful trouble with a tooth). We knew the fee was 250 euro, but on arrival we were sent for an X-ray which wasn’t included in the fee and had to pay an additional 70 euro.
Treatment plan was done up and (wait for it) came to over 4,500 euro, our insurance would cover the hospital fees and some of the Anaesthesiologist fee leaving us with a fee of over 3,000 euro (remember we had come in as an emergency we were told, because of 1 tooth, even getting a next day cancellation) and now they wanted to put crowns and fillings all around our 5 year olds mouth.
We questioned this and were told ‘we have an ethical obligation to treat all dental issues’, after discussions and questioning the amount of work they wanted to do to a 5 year old, a new treatment plan was drawn up, it was at this stage we were informed of the practices ‘minimum fee of 1500’ for general anaesthetic dentistry (my neurosurgeon doesn’t even have a ‘minimum fee’), now this minimum fee doesn’t include the fore mentioned hospital/ Anaesthesiologist fees.
We reluctantly agreed to the treatment as we thought we had zero options for our 5 year old, HOWEVER we never heard from Happy Teeth again despite being told we were ‘being booked in’,.
It worked out for the best though as we ended up taking our 5 year old out of the country(another parent from school advised us) and got the work done for a fraction of the cost (booked low cost midweek flights and then pre sent all our X-rays).
It’s easy for a practice to charge what they want when they are the only ones providing such a service and parents feel like they have no options.
26 mars 2024
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