My wife and I were a little concerned when the dentist didn't poke around using his dental tool like other dentists had. He said to me that he didn't really need to poke around unless he saw something on the x-ray. I'm not a dentist, so that may very well be true. I just found it unusual based on my (and my wife's) experiences.
The real issue was with billing. I received composite fillings on two molars. All of my other teeth have composite fillings, and these were the last two that needed replacing. The doctor said that my insurance would cover their replacement because they were so old, but I suspected that they would only cover it partially because many plans won't cover composite fillings on molars, just amalgam fillings. The problem was that the Dentist received (and accepted) the payment for an amalgam filling, but didn't apply the provider-negotiated rate for an amalgam filling. This seemed wrong to me. I believe the honest thing to do would be to charge me the difference between an amalgam filling and a composite filling (plus my co-pay of course). This seemed like a reasonable position to me. In fact, I could have been convinced otherwise given the right approach. Unfortunately, the person in the billing department (Linda) was rather rude with me. She started off polite enough, but when she called me back after retrieving my information from another office, she had a different attitude. She started off by telling me that the doctor explained to me how the composite fillings might not be fully covered (which was not entirely true, but I already suspected anyway and is immaterial to my point). She then proceeded to talk over me a good 50% of the time. I couldn't really get in a word until she started telling me how I had a lot of amalgam fillings in my mouth. This was certainly not true, and I said that I had only 2 amalgam fillings before I came in, and now I have none. She the proceeded to tell me how I was wrong, and actually pulled out the X-ray. It seemed like she was trying to catch me in some sort of lie -- like I could somehow lie to my dentist about how many fillings I had and what kind they were. I explained to her that I had one crown, and zero amalgam fillings in my mouth now, and that they were all composite. I have no idea what her point was or why she even brought up the subject. She proceeded to tell me how they ""expected full payment"" in a rather rude tone, and at that point I just gave up the fight and told her I would not be back. I'm a pretty reasonable person, and I think I had a rather reasonable question about my bill. If they had just been more polite about it I probably would go back to them, but I don't have any need to give anyone with that kind of attitude my business. To be fair, everyone else in that office was exceptionally polite when I was there.
Pros: Location & Politeness of most of the staff
Cons: Had a bad experience with billing
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