Private dentists–

Well, I went along to the dentist on friday – my first visit since they went private

Nothing much has changed with the place – same staff, same dentists, same old mags in the waiting room. In fact the only thing I noticed new were the fliers attempting to get me to sign up to the new 12 quid a month scheme that means I get a “free” check up each year and a 20% discount on any treatments I need.

As usual I was in there for about 10 mins max. A quick check reveals nothing wrong as usual and as always he does a quick polish and scrape around in an attempt to justify his existence. Back when I was nhs this used to cost me about 22 quid I seems to recall. This time it was 48 quid – 22 for the check up and 26 for the polish. Bargain.

Again they tried to sell me the “great value” insurance plan. I pointed out that at 120 quid a year I have to be looking at a fairly substantial bill to make the 20% discount (that I would effectively be paying £70 for…) worthwhile. Not only that, but it only makes sense if you get a large dental bill *every* year. Given I’ve never had anything done at the dentist this didn’t strike me as the great value deal that they were pimping. A short pause after pointing this out and I then got “so I’ll put you down as pay-as-you-go then shall I?”. Yep…

I wouldn’t be so annoyed if a) they didn’t keep on about this thing as if it was some really good deal and b) they had their secret pay-as-you-go tariff listed on the letter of options. They seem to deny it is an option in the hope that you sign up to the stupid insurance that I’m sure for 99% of patients is certainly *not* the best value option.

Of course I could just change dentist….but I actually *like* my dentist. That and the fact that nhs dentists are about as common as rocking horse shit I think I’ll stick with it for now :-/