prepaid dentist, missed appointment been charged for the whole amount

unholyangel

Toothsmith wrote: »

I would like to see the back of the fag packet you worked this one out on.

No fag packet necessary, I dont smoke and have a friend who has their own dental practice and I do his books for him.

Nice to see you're not an adult and have to resort to insults.

unholyangel

brook2jack wrote: »

Isn't it just fairer to charge those people who don't phone to cancel appointments rather than make other people pay for their mistakes?

Providing those costs are actual then yes. Charging for materials that weren't used is just taking the mickey. What would you do if the customer refused to pay? Remove them as a customer and take them to small claims? Well done. You know what a small claims court will award you? ACTUAL loss.

I don't think anyone has said they shouldn't charge something, just that it should be a genuine figure based on actual loss and not a "freebie".

I'm not saying dentists (or most of them anyway) don't do a good job.
If you don't like the business you're in, you're not forced to stay in it you know. I'm pretty sure if dentists (bearing in mind I know what my friend earns and he only has a practice in a small-ish town) were borderline poverty like a few posts on here seem to imply, that the dentist industry would have an awful lot of vacancies!

brook2jack

Most practices work on a basis of mutual trust and consideration with patients. Most people keep their appointments or give notice when they can't attend . If they make an odd slip we don't charge. They also know because we don't double book and leave space for toothaches they will be seen on time except when ,as can happen, unexpected problems occur during treatment.
However some people are regular repeat offenders. So we fine. If they don't pay we don't see them again. That way we and the other patients don't have the problem of them missing appointments . The problem is some people persistently don't turn up or turn up late. it is a problem not just confined to dentistry.

We charge at a set rate according to the amount of time failed. As explained before it doesn't reflect the true cost of the missed appointment as it is so expensive to run a surgery. As you may know a dentist who doesn't own a practice (70%) will have practice costs of on average 72% of earnings. The majority of these are fixed costs.

People fail appointments at hospitals, book restaurant tables , hairdressing appointments and don't turn up. All of these missed appointments cost money. People who are employed often don't appreciate that if like a hairdresser you are self employed if someone doesn't turn up you don't think yippee an extra long lunch hour , you worry how you are going to pay your bills and employees.

The op paid 50% of their bill in the end. My point is the practice still probably paid out more than that to cover the fixed costs incurred during that lost time, but the op is very unlikely to miss another appointment which is the point of the charge.

unholyangel

Charge? Yes. Fine? No.

As I said, I do believe any business is entitled to recoup actual losses for a breach of contract. However, you need to be very careful what those charges are as you may find yourself falling on the wrong side of contract law.

Specifically Unfair Contract Terms......
Consumers should not have to pay more
compensation than is really needed to cover
the damage they have caused. As well as
being potentially unfair – see Schedule 2
paragraph 1(e) – excessive penalties are
unenforceable under the general law.
Penalty terms can also be unfair if they could
mislead the consumer into thinking the
supplier is entitled to more compensation than
is really the case, or if they leave the supplier
to make a charge at a level he himself
determines.

brook2jack

As I said the amount will probably not cover the expenditure for keeping the surgery open for the time the op missed.
Those who posted it was nice to pocket £100 to sit for an hour or more totally misunderstand running a business. It is quite possible that even with the half the money the op paid , their missing their appointment will still have cost the practice money. In other words even with them paying the money the practice owner may still not have recouped the total cost of the missed appointment.

Phone calls cost very little, there are very few circumstances when you cannot cancel an appointment in plenty of time. The op made a mistake writing down an appointment. There are no other businesses where the business is expected to take financial responsibility for a similar mistake.

Dentists and patients develop a relationship and as toothsmith has said before regular patients we have known for many years would not be charged as it would be a very very rare occasion they failed to turn up. A dental surgery would not be financially viable if it ran on a substantial amount of failure charges. They do not make a profit. A surgery is viable when it has patients who happily use its services and can book appointments at suitable times and won't be kept waiting. A surgery can only operate an efficient appointment book when people keep appointments. Those who persistently fail appointments affect everyone and can choose to pay to offset the costs or go elsewhere.

unholyangel

And it is also possible that the £100 not only covered the losses but also gave some profit.

Its not about whether you can afford to run a practice on failed appointments (although if the majority of your appointments are failing to turn up personally I'd be looking to see whether there was a underlying issue). You should only charge them for actual loss. As above, excessive penalties are generally unfair and not enforceable.

But like any business, you can choose who you do business with.

And of course, dentists should be upfront about what fee's will be incurred for failing to attend/cancel an appointment by writing this into their T&C's.

brook2jack

As the department of health, the specialist dental accountants that most practices use as dental accounts are very complicated , the BDA, the Inland Revenue all estimate the hourly running costs of an NHS practice to be well in excess of £100 an hour and as the quote was for private treatment and again all these bodies quote running costs per hour to be much higher in private practice then the likelihood of making a profit on a 50% failure charge would seem to be very very small if not impossible.

To repeat a failure charge of this magnitude by the reckoning of virtually all bodies who have insider knowledge of what it costs to run a practice would not have made a profit. In short the dentist whose time was not used would not have been paid for the time the op didn't turn up and indeed the practice and in effect other patients may have had to subsidise the shortfall.

The op was originally going to offer "a small amount" as a gesture. Many of the other posters are of the opinion the £100 is straight profit and goes directly into the dentists pocket without realising that while it is open and no one is physically in the chair there is still a consuderable cost per hour to run a practice.

unholyangel

At the end of the day its a moot point.

As I said in an earlier post, the costs of running will vary more than £120-200 per hour. Some will cost less and some will cost more. If there are half a dozen or so sharing the same practice.....then they will have shared costs and individual costs. This would obviously make overheads (on a individual basis) less than perhaps if there were only 2 sharing.

The dentist in question will know what his costs are, he will know whether the £100 is enough to cover the costs or not. I imagine if it was not, he would have adjusted the "settlement fee" accordingly.

I imagine that regardless of above, the fee has had the effect it is ultimately intended to.......the OP will likely take more care when scheduling appointments (and possible a few viewers of this thread). Its also a good idea to call a few days prior to your appointment (whether it is doctors, dentist, hairdresser etc) and double check the day, date and time. That way theres no confusion with regards to getting the day or time wrong and if it is going to be impossible for you to attend, you can inform with in enough time for them to give the appointment to someone else.

Toothsmith

unholyangel wrote: »

No fag packet necessary, I dont smoke and have a friend who has their own dental practice and I do his books for him.

Nice to see you're not an adult and have to resort to insults.

Unless 'fag packet' has some different meaning in Scotland, I'm at a loss to see any insult there?

The hourly rate that a dental practice runs on is the running costs of the practice (Wages, heat, light, power, disposables, materials, lab costs, registrations and regulation compliance, equipment repair/replacement, building costs, continuing education course fees for dentist & staff, etc) and then you divide that by the time the practice is actually open. That would be 52 weeks minus dentist holidays (Because the practice won't be earning then, yet the overheads are still there) Minus time spent on courses (These often need a day off per course - particularly in remote areas and there is a minimum yearly requirement.) Minus the odd bit of sickness (Much less for the self employed!) and the ever increasing admin time necessary.

If your mate is then coming out at an hourly rate much less that £120/h I'd be wanting to know what corners he's cutting - 'cos I've not been down at that level for over 10+ years.

Although, admittedly, I do spend money on a proper accountant who understands such things.

unholyangel

Toothsmith wrote: »

Although, admittedly, I do spend money on a proper accountant who understands such things.

I understand fully about overheads and I have the qualifications to prove it. Perhaps it is you that fails to understand that not all dentists will have the same running costs even if they do have to pay for the same things. Location can be a huge factor in this for any business.

You're on the consumer rights board. I suggest if you want to rant about how much it costs you and about how people not attending booked appointments affects your business, you take your posts elsewhere.

You're (supposedly) a professional. Try and act like it please.