1 /5 Sabrina Lee: I usually don’t make reviews like this but originally my mother and I decided to ignore the negative reviews here because we were referred here due to my unique situation with the position of my wisdom teeth and wanted to value health and safety over everything, HOWEVER, after the horrible customer service and treatment we have received from this dental clinic, we have decided to cancel my appointment all together.
It all started when my wisdom teeth were deemed by my dentist as needing to be removed and he referred me to an oral surgeon, Dr McDonald in Pinole, CA. Dr. McDonald took some X-rays and decided to then refer me to UCSF due to the fact that one of my teeth were very close to a nerve and said “they were the ones who created the procedure for this exact situation”. After we got the referral my mother was concerned about the bad reviews here and was hesitant but after some thinking we decided to continue with visiting the office and having a consultation. After the consultation I made an appointment that same day with their office before leaving.
A couple weeks later they abruptly called me saying that they had to push my appointment, because the doctor I was scheduled for (the one I saw for my consultation) was suddenly going on vacation. The only alternatives for my rescheduled appointment was something as short notice as a week later or something as far out as three months later. I couldn’t do a surgery that would take me a week to recover on short notice because I was already scheduled that week for work. So I took the appointment that was months later. Throughout the next few months they would call me whenever they had a cancellation but it was always on a short -notice week-later appointment, again, I HAVE WORK.
Another reason why I couldn’t do such short notice is that they have still not given me an estimate for how much the entire procedure would cost me and how that would work with my insurance. Finally, today they tell me how much it would cost but not before telling me a convoluted explanation for why I have to pay the entire procedure and then have my insurance reimburse me. Now here is the part where I feel like I should mention that my family are immigrants and I have grown up struggling with these kinds of situations where both me and my parents have to figure out the healthcare system and how to afford things like this.
I won’t get into too much of my personal unfortunate circumstances regarding my insurance, but basically I had some consecutive phone calls with someone in their office and asked all of the questions me and my parents had regarding the way they were going about billing us and our insurance. During this phone call, this particular person responded to what I thought to be a normal question, since I and my parents were very confused, but laughing at me and saying “that’s insurance fraud” with a condescending and accusing tone. When I tried to further clarify that I was just confused and relaying my parents’ questions, she then proceeded to accuse my dad of having some kind of bad intent after I mentioned that my dad was confused why it had to be done that way. When I tried to defend my dad by saying that my whole family is just trying to navigate this whole thing and figure out how we are going to pay it, she then reasoned that she worked in pediatrics and “understands”. I was beyond shocked and upset and just ended the call as politely as I could. I’m not sure what she meant by her last comment but I don’t really care to dwell on it and think about more than I have to.
I just wanted to write this to warn other people of my experience. I hope this review was clear enough, I’m still upset and don’t want this to be any longer than it already is.