No Lasik for me...
Apr. 21st, 2005 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hdsqrlAwhile back, I'd posted that I might be having Lasik surgery done. I've since canceled my appointment.
I got to thinking about the cost of it, and about the number of monthly bills I already have, and I decided I'd rather postpone the surgery date by a couple of months, so that I could save more money, and would be able to pay for the whole thing instead of having to finance it. So yesterday morning, I called and rescheduled my appt from the end of April to the end of June. Not a big deal, I thought. Apparently, I thought wrong.
Last night I got a call from one of the ladies at LasikPlus. I guess when I'd called them to reschedule, I'd actually been talking to their call center, and they'd just gotten the message that I was rescheduling. Okay, keep in mind that when I made the appt, I had to put down a $50 deposit, but was told I could reschedule as much as I needed to, but if I canceled, I'd forfeit the $50. In addition, the data from my consultation was good for 6 months, before they'd need to redo the consulation exam. That told me I could have pushed it off until August or September, if I wanted to.
So this lady calls and tells me that in order to get the special deal (they were going to give me the "custom" surgery, which is the top of the line one, for the mid-level surgery's price), I would have to have my surgery done by the end of April. Hmm. Well, as I had no intention of getting it done next week, and as NOT having it done next week would then increase the total bill substantially, I told her that we better just cancel the appt, and that I'd take some time to save some money and would reconsider having the surgery next year, maybe. The lady got kind of desperate sounding, and said that she hadn't yet talked to the corporate office, and that she'd call them to see if they could extend the discount out a little longer for me. She said she'd do that, and that I should look at my finances, and to call them back. I said okay, and she very curtly said, "Fine!" and then she hung up on me. WTF? I shook my head, and thought to myself that there was no way I was going to call them back, but whatever.
Not 5 minutes later, they called me again...this time it was a different lady on the phone, and she told me that they'd looked back over my chart and that the doctor said that I'd be okay getting the "basic" surgery, at less than half the cost of the mid-level one. Huh? When I was in the office, he went WAY out of his way to tell me how I DIDN'T want that surgery, and how it would cause haloing and glare for me, as my pupils will dilate to 5.5 cm, and the basic surgery really only works for people whose pupils go to 4 cm. So why now, would they say that surgery was good for me? I asked the lady that, and she said I could talk to the doctor if I wanted to. Sure, I said. Put him on.
The doctor got on, and tried giving me the same story as the lady had given me, and I asked him the same question. His response was that he doesn't do very many of the basic surgeries because the other ones are so much more superior, but that he "knows of" some people who have had good results with the basic version. Note that LasikPlus is a NATIONWIDE franchise...there's probably 3 people in Maine who have had good luck with it, and no one else. I told him that I thought I'd prefer to just wait, and save up enough money to get the GOOD surgery done, and if that meant waiting a year or two, that was okay. It wasn't like I HAD to have Lasik anyway...was just a want. Then the DOCTOR got pissy, and said, "Fine!" and hung up on me.
W...
T...
F...??
Since when did making the sale of a surgery become more important than what's in the patient's best interests?
So, yeah. I'm not going back. Instead, I took a good chunk of what I had saved up and plunked it down into one of my credit cards.
Take that, you LasikPlus assholes.
I got to thinking about the cost of it, and about the number of monthly bills I already have, and I decided I'd rather postpone the surgery date by a couple of months, so that I could save more money, and would be able to pay for the whole thing instead of having to finance it. So yesterday morning, I called and rescheduled my appt from the end of April to the end of June. Not a big deal, I thought. Apparently, I thought wrong.
Last night I got a call from one of the ladies at LasikPlus. I guess when I'd called them to reschedule, I'd actually been talking to their call center, and they'd just gotten the message that I was rescheduling. Okay, keep in mind that when I made the appt, I had to put down a $50 deposit, but was told I could reschedule as much as I needed to, but if I canceled, I'd forfeit the $50. In addition, the data from my consultation was good for 6 months, before they'd need to redo the consulation exam. That told me I could have pushed it off until August or September, if I wanted to.
So this lady calls and tells me that in order to get the special deal (they were going to give me the "custom" surgery, which is the top of the line one, for the mid-level surgery's price), I would have to have my surgery done by the end of April. Hmm. Well, as I had no intention of getting it done next week, and as NOT having it done next week would then increase the total bill substantially, I told her that we better just cancel the appt, and that I'd take some time to save some money and would reconsider having the surgery next year, maybe. The lady got kind of desperate sounding, and said that she hadn't yet talked to the corporate office, and that she'd call them to see if they could extend the discount out a little longer for me. She said she'd do that, and that I should look at my finances, and to call them back. I said okay, and she very curtly said, "Fine!" and then she hung up on me. WTF? I shook my head, and thought to myself that there was no way I was going to call them back, but whatever.
Not 5 minutes later, they called me again...this time it was a different lady on the phone, and she told me that they'd looked back over my chart and that the doctor said that I'd be okay getting the "basic" surgery, at less than half the cost of the mid-level one. Huh? When I was in the office, he went WAY out of his way to tell me how I DIDN'T want that surgery, and how it would cause haloing and glare for me, as my pupils will dilate to 5.5 cm, and the basic surgery really only works for people whose pupils go to 4 cm. So why now, would they say that surgery was good for me? I asked the lady that, and she said I could talk to the doctor if I wanted to. Sure, I said. Put him on.
The doctor got on, and tried giving me the same story as the lady had given me, and I asked him the same question. His response was that he doesn't do very many of the basic surgeries because the other ones are so much more superior, but that he "knows of" some people who have had good results with the basic version. Note that LasikPlus is a NATIONWIDE franchise...there's probably 3 people in Maine who have had good luck with it, and no one else. I told him that I thought I'd prefer to just wait, and save up enough money to get the GOOD surgery done, and if that meant waiting a year or two, that was okay. It wasn't like I HAD to have Lasik anyway...was just a want. Then the DOCTOR got pissy, and said, "Fine!" and hung up on me.
W...
T...
F...??
Since when did making the sale of a surgery become more important than what's in the patient's best interests?
So, yeah. I'm not going back. Instead, I took a good chunk of what I had saved up and plunked it down into one of my credit cards.
Take that, you LasikPlus assholes.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-21 09:13 pm (UTC)