Here is New York

Does this smile look like it needs $36,000 worth of dental work?

The story of this “Dental Cult” begins with my wife’s toothache.

Her tooth began aching on a Friday (of course…don’t toothaches always happen on Fridays, the day most dentist leave the office early?) and, rather than drive all the way to her regular dentist in Staten Island, she decided that she needed someone right away and right close. Her regular dentist referred her to a woman dentist (who he was friendly with) who worked on Madison Avenue, the Gold Coast of Manhattan dentistry.

This dental office was unlike anything my wife had even seen. It looked, she said, more like a high-end spa than a dental office and the entire staff appeared to be entirely comprised of EST or Mindspring graduates.

In my wife’s words: “I felt surrounded at all times and catered to in a way that was a bit much. They must have all taken some hyper customer service training.  From the receptionist to the office manager, they all shook my hand, told me how happy they were that I was there.  I felt like they were going to form a circle around me and chant that they loved me.  It was really weird.”  

And the flattery didn’t end there: “[The dentist] told me I looked like I was in my 30s!  I’m in my 50s and know that I look my age (which I’m fine with) but that sort of low level pandering, false flattery stuff was quite odd and disingenuous.  Made me question her judgement. ”  

But after that initial visit, my wife agreed to a follow-up “deep cleaning” (that wound up feeling very much like a run-of-the-mill cleaning) and an examination of her mouth to see what other work she might need.

“While I was waiting in the chair, at least three employees came into the room, introduced themselves and asked how my cleaning was….like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.  It was a cleaning, for God’s sake!   I have many more similar stories, all experienced in just two visits!!  The dentist also called me for two or three consecutive days following my first visit, to see how my tooth was.  Nice, but a bit excessive.”

Then came the moment of truth. The dentist was prepared — on yet another $150 visit — to give my wife an update about what her teeth needed done. Turns out, they needed quite a bit. Her mouth, the dental cult reported, was riddled with root decay, rot and, honestly, it was nothing short of a miracle that her teeth had not just dropped out of her head.

But not to fear — there was good news: it could all be fixed with $36,000 worth of dental work.

“And as I was leaving the “consultation”….the office manager followed me to the door, praising the dentist, saying how important it was to have the work done, how I could join their payment plan and pay just $670 a month!

I pointed out to my wife that, for that amount, we could lease a top of the line Mercedes Benz for a few years.

Now, my wife is scrupulous about going to dentists and does so regularly and so was understandably suspicious (whereas I just would have begun laughing hysterically had I been presented with that bill.) She immediately reported back to her regular Staten Island dentist what had transpired. One can only imagine his shock at having somehow overlooked $36,000 worth of work.

Here is what he had to say: