We went to Western Dental to get braces for my daughter. At the time we were enrolled in Delta Dental of California (a dental discount plan). On January 13 we were led to believe that our Delta Dental would cover $1,000 of the braces and our portion would be $2,537. We signed the agreement made our down payment and started treatment.
After two years of treatment and making all of our scheduled payments our daughter's braces were removed. Then the office decided to tell us that our insurance wasn't accepted and that we still owed $1,000.
As I investigated the details I found out that they never take Delta Dental since it's a HMO and a discount plan not actual insurance. There isn't any way the office manager who is a trained professional didn't know this.
I contacted the local branch (Western Dental has offices all over California) to resolve the issue and they referred me to corporate. When I called corporate they told me I had to talk to the local branch. It seemed like a well rehearsed strategy on their part.
I decided to write a letter to corporate and state my case expecting them to do the right thing and own their part of the problem.instead they wrote me a lengthly letter claiming that the grievance committee looked over my claim and that since I had signed the agreement which states that if my insurance doesn't pay I was responsible.
They went so far as to say that they investigated the coverage that Delta Dental offered if they did accept if and claimed that it would only have provided $600 in coverage so they would apply that to what I owed. That almost seems reasonable except for the fact that inflated the amount of the bill so that we still owed almost $1,000.
I replied to that letter and pointed out the mistakes that they had made in their logic and they agreed to lower the amount owed to approximately $400. But further communication has had no response or results. Now they are threating me with collection.
One of the things that really bugs me is the fact that we asked them if we had to keep the Delta Dental plan the whole time our daughter was being treated and they said yes. They told us that if we dropped it our portion of the bill would go up. So we paid $225 per year to Delta Dental for coverage that as it turns out they don't even take.
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