Gentle Dental

First, a bit of background information. I was a happy customer of Gentle Dental. My prior dentist was actually a fraud. In four years of going to his office he never once looked in my mouth. Each time I went there they just had hygienists give me a cleaning. I had great insurance and a great job then, and I wanted to get real work done. I was already a patient there when his father used to run the office but he retired. His father was very ethical, and we had a plan for crowns etc. which we had already begun, but the son ignored that plan and was just milking my insurance policy for cleanings. I finally asked him one day "hey, what is the plan here?" and he I'll never forget what he said. "My plan for you, is to just let your teeth rot out of your head". I resolved to get a new dentist at that point.

After that, I went to Gentle Dental, and they did more for me in one visit than the prior guy had done in years. I was so totally happy with Gentle Dental, and I've told them so more than once. Gushing approval really is what I'd call my attitude. I directed my wife to become a client there as well.

A couple years back Gentle Dental said I needed an implant and told me I needed to have a molar extracted. That was fine with me and we had the molar extracted. What they didn't tell me until after they pulled out my molar that it would be six months at least until the implant, so that was a surprise. Unfortunately my job as a computer contractor ended before then so I lost my insurance and had to wait until I had coverage again. In the interim I saw a commercial for Clear Choice that offered a free exam for an implant, so I took advantage of that. During that exam, they notified me that Gentle Dental had left me with an abscess that needed to be dealt with. I went back to the Gentle Dental office to let them know about the abscess, and they said they would get me a referral to a dental surgeon. That referral took maybe a year to happen. The abscess was getting larger and larger and I could feel it with my finger, and could actually see it bulging out above my front tooth in the mirror.

I had to finally call them and say that this was getting worse and this referral process was taking too long, after which they immediately gave me the referral and that was taken care of in short order. I sort of think that somehow they just forgot about me. But.. things happen. I was just happy to be making progress again.

In the meantime, I had gotten insurance via AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) but they required me to pay a year of premiums before I could get any sort of major treatment, so that is why the whole procedure took so long. That brings us to the current moment.

Bottom line, I have been a patient with Gentle Dental for years, I liked them, and we have been eagerly looking forward to this surgery for a long time.

However, I experienced an uncomfortable incident with a bullying employee at their Mill Creek dentist office location (noted below in the next field) on October 15th, 2020 when I went in to have "pictures" taken prior to the procedure.

The key point of it was that he insisted that I wear a mask to walk the ten feet down a corridor to the chair, and I told him that I breathed with difficulty, ( asthma and allergies, a condition I notified them of on their intake form that day) and I was not supposed to wear a mask. He insisted, so finally, I put on the mask, walked the ten feet or so to the chair. On the way, just sort of thinking out loud, I said something like "this is the dumbest thing in the world". I wasn't really talking to him, but he decided to start lecturing me. I told him I wasn't interested, and asked him to please leave me alone. He kept going and on, and the conversation was something like:

Him: Look, I'm not going to argue with you

Me: You're arguing with me now.

Him: No I'm not.

Me: Yes you are. I don't want to hear it.

I had to ask him repeatedly to leave me alone, quit badgering me, and I finally had to raise my voice and I said something like "Look, I said I don't want to hear it. Leave me the (expletive deleted) alone, and get about doing your job". He just made me feel so uncomfortable with his condescending and argumentative attitude. I've never experienced anything like this in about 60 years of going to the dentist. Dentists always talked to me like I was an adult when I was a kid, but now I'm 64, and this guy is lecturing me like I'm a bad child.

After this fellow finally left, the actual technician came in and everything went well, and I wasn't even thinking of filing a complaint. Someone actually came in to see if there was anything she could do, and I said no. We all have bad days, and I wasn't looking to make trouble for anyone. He just made me feel uncomfortable. As far as I was concerned, everything was fine at that point. I never gave it another thought.

The technician, she told me that there wasn't really any reason for me to wear a mask, and she escorted me right back out into the same hallway we had just traveled through to a machine, where she took some x-ray (or some other technology) pictures of my whole head to help with the surgery.

After this appointment I had a second visit that day to their Everett office to meet the surgeon who would be doing the implant so he could examine me. Everything went well there and we scheduled my surgery for Wednesday October 28th. I was totally happy at this point.

Then, on Friday October 23rd, someone called my wife (why they called my wife instead of me is a mystery) while I was sleeping. My wife handed me her phone. Someone was calling to notify me that they have unilaterally decided to cancel my scheduled implant procedure this next Wednesday October 28th. I don't actually know the name of the person who called. I was just waking up, and they were talking so fast that I missed who it was.

I tried to tell them about my experience with their bullying employee, but they weren't interested in anything I had to say, she just talked over me whenever I tried to tell them what happened, and told me that they were pulling the plug on my surgery and basically to just to away. She also told me that she had taken statements from a bunch of people who hadn't actually witnessed the bullying, but who had only overheard me raising my voice, telling this fellow to leave me alone, and gotten them to agree that I was at fault.

I just retired, and sold my house so I'm currently staying in a hotel in Bothell Washington, so I can get this done before I move away to another city on the coast, at a cost of about $600 a week. I can't tell you how awful it is to be treated like this after a two year ramp up to getting the work done. I've been in the hotel about a month now so that's around $2400 out of pocket.

It was unethical for me to be attacked and harassed at my appointment, but it is even more unethical to have them cancel my surgery five days before the event after pulling out my tooth, taking x-rays, scheduling a surgery, and then totally refusing to take my complaint or even at the very least to listen to what I had to say about my experience. This has to be just about as unethical as things get. At the very least I would expect that they would make some effort to find out from me what happened. They called my wife, not me.

The resolution I seek is just to complete this procedure. As I said earlier, I'm actually moving away as soon as this is completed. I'm only waiting here for that to be done. They have already extracted my molar, I've done the healing process, had the pictures taken, met the surgeon, and scheduled the surgery. I just want them to finish the job.