SmileCare – San Leandro

I was so happy when I found out that I have dental coverage from my work place. They assigned me to smile care dental. But it turned out to be the worst thing ever. On my first visit, they did X-​ray and exam for me. Then they told me I need to do deep cleaning and some fillings. Total cost after insurance coverage was over $ 3,400.00. What the heck???
I know dental work is expensive, but never realize it could be that much. They also offered me their financial plan, which was open a new credit card for the payment. I said, thanks but no thanks!
Long story short, I went to another dentist, got the exact same dental work and I only spent $ 1,200.00 for my plan. That’s way less than what smile care offered.
So people, please do yourself a favor. Do not come here! They just want to rip you off.

They are all about the money. They’re running neck and neck with western dental. A payment plan is like filling out a credit card application

In general I always read reviews very critically because people often complain unreasonably, but sadly in this case I have to agree with what was said here. Just as the other reviewers stated, there was very long wait to get into a treatment room and then I was told I needed a deep cleaning at an additional charge of 500 dollars. I was also asked if I wanted to pay another 60 dollars for the cancer screening. (It seems to me that this service is often included in a basic visit.) Additionally I was given a full month X-​ray and told if I wanted to leave with the X-​rays that I had to pay an additional 18 dollars, which I did so that I could take them with me. (And yes, the X-​Ray machine did look out of date.) Ultimately the basic cleaning was not delivered so I left dissatisfied. What upset me the most is that I usually get my teeth cleaned THREE times a years so I was quite surprised to learn that they are in such bad shape. The only reason I went there is because my previous dentist has stopped practicing and I wanted to take care of my teeth. Next time I will shop around and read the reviews first. I have learned a lesson.

This dental place is operating unethically. They pretty much tried to force unnecessary services on you and rip you off. I booked an appointment on 3÷16÷16 with them since they took my HMO plan and boy it was a mistake going there without checking out Unilocal reviews. The doctor said all the back quadrants were in need of deep cleaning and I also need an urgent removal of my four wisdoms teeth. The lady came back later and gave me a quote for the deep clean and an antibiotic flush of almost $ 600 and $ 160 for a follow up procedure. I would also need to reschedule for the wisdom teeth exam for a quote from a surgeon (probably going to be about $ 300 each teeth removal base on what other people told me). The dental assistant told me my insurance wouldn’t cover for a deep clean AT ALL so I would have to pay out-​of-​pocket. I asked if I could just get a regular cleaning and she told me it would be against policy since deep clean was what the doctor said I need so it had to be done. I refused their services and left feeling infuriated. Called my insurance the next day, and my insurance said a deep clean with be covered with $ 83 co-​pay per quadrant, max would be $ 332 if I needed all four quadrants done. I ended up going to a different dental office the next week and the doctor said my teeth were healthy, and a regular cleaning would be sufficient. My wisdom teeth wouldn’t need to be removed because they didn’t make any contact with my regular teeth and as long as they were not bothering me. I am glad I walked out of this horrible dental office… If they keep this up, they gonna lose more customers and may even get sued pretty fast…

The firm provides services,(X-Rays) when not asked, they took me from the waiting room to x-​ray, didn’t say anything and started shooting X-​rays and gave no warnings at all. firm up sells services when not medically necessary, (Oral Cancer screenings at $ 60.00 out of pocket, they sneek this in with all the paperwork that is passed out and you have to sign to decline, otherwise your billed for it), (Deep cleaning, as I regularly get my teeth cleaned and brush 2x day floss 1x day), (I refused the deep cleaning and said I wanted the regular cleaning and the dentist stated it is against their policy to do the regular cleaning since the hygienist stated i needed a deep cleaning, of course my insurance covers the regular cleaning, but that provides no out of pocket money for the firm) yet they state the deep cleaning is necessary, and want to include an antibiotic flush for each tooth, $ 100 each. the majority of these services are not covered by insurance,

Stay away from here.
They will give you a list of everything you «need» and once you go see another dentist they will tell you that you don’t need half of that stuff. They just want $. They don’t care about your teeth! Stay away!

thanks to Dr Munjpara and her wonderful staff!!! Great dental service got an exam, cleaning and two extractions done for my step son, he was super scared !! Dr Munjpara and her assistant keep him calm and were very patient with him. He walked out laughing and smiling !!!

Run and run quick, far and away from this place!!! That’s what I did. If could do negative stars, I would do just that!!! This place is all about the dollars. Their equipment and environment is out of date and they try to make you spend money.
I was diagnosed with needing five crowns just as some other Unilocal reviews stated. I knew something was wrong as this was a new place and my old dentist Sam D. Tan had never given me an indication of such a need.
The cost was going to be $ 3000, I couldn’t believe it and is when I looked at others Unilocal reviews and saw they two had a similar experiences. Plus, my dental coverage should have been no cost. I left and ended up going to Sam D. Tan, I just left his office today with two fillings at no cost. Don’t support Smilecare, they don’t care for your best interest and I never give bad reviews!

These people lied to me, tried to pressure me into procedures my insurance doesn’t cover, and I was stonewalled by a manager when I started asking questions. I’m not going back. They’re basically vampires, as far as I’m concerned.

This place sucks! They will try to intimidate you into thinking you need procedures which aren’t really necessary! They are not satisfied with what your insurance will pay, they will try and bleed you for more money, if you refuse, they will simply just state that they can not work on your teeth without you paying out of pocket for their BS recommended services! Quite simply, it’s either you play their way, or they won’t work on your teeth. I’ve been to a bunch of different dentists, because my insurance is always changing, but by far, SMILECARE is the worst of the worst. I agree with the other reviewers, i really think the staff here has been coached to gang up on you and to try and scare you into paying out of pocket for their BS services! My visit there went like this. I went in and had xrays taken, they came back and told me i needed a whole bunch of work done and that my insurance company wasn’t going to cover any of it! They gave me a statement totalling over $ 2,000 bucks, saying i would have to pay ifor it myself! I called my insurance company from their office and had everything on that list confirmed that it was covered by my insurance, so after i brought that bill down from over $ 2,000, down to $ 0, here comes more BS, i was then told i needed antibiotics shots into my gums to prevent infection and that this was also not covered by my insurance and that i would have to pay around $ 500 – 600 bucks for this service. After i started getting mad and turned down all the services that wasn’t covered by my insurance, i can see that the dentist was also getting mad and frustrated in dealing with me, so at this point, i just got up and left… I mean, who the hell wants an angry dentist working in your mouth!!! The dentist i dealt with is the bald headed one, can’t remember his name, but he’s the only bald headed dentist there & i’m not trying to be funny in stating this!!! This happened over a year ago, sorry for the late review, but after reading all the recent negative reviews, i felt i had to chime in, seeing that nothing has changed since my last visit there, over a year ago!!!

How to Lose Business
by SmileCare
Step 1. Receive a referral from a patient’s dentist to a periodontist.
Step 2. Make sure it’s hard to get an appointment (periodontist is only there on Mondays).
Step 3. A few days before the appointment, leave a voicemail with no information as to why you’re calling.
Step 4. Have the phone number you call from belong to a bewildered courier service.
Step 5. Have the business number not have any business info on it so patient cannot confirm it’s SmileCare. Keep ‘em guessing.
Step 6. Don’t return voicemails.
Step 7. Tell the patient who is on his way to the office that they haven’t received a referral and can’t see him without a referral. Which was actually sent weeks before. Tell patient he will need to wait an hour upon arrival until they can get it from his dentist (currently on lunch break) and cannot see him without a referral.
Step 8. Take a cue from politicians: blame it on the patient for his lack of communication, and disavow all responsibility.
Step 9. Patient is now no longer patient — nor their patient. Takes business elsewhere rather than deal with that $%&#.
Step 10. Office chooses to keep incompetent employee manning the phones, so that patient has no idea if the doc is good or not.
Great job, SmileCare!

This is one of the worst experiences I have ever had. The workers are highly unprofessional, the office appears to be in disarray, and I strongly encourage anyone considering this practice to reconsider — NOW. If you call the number, they do not answer and hang up the phone. They should not be allowed to practice dentistry.

Dr Voung is great and she knows what’s best for me! She’s gentle nice and makes you feel comfortable PLUS she understands your needs! She doesn’t throw a lot of tx at once she understands that sometime you can’t do everything but she will let you know what’s more important first.

I should have done research before i did my deep cleaning there.
I have to blame on myself for that. Because it is my first time changing my insurance to HMO. I had to pay out from my own pocket 1300 for deep cleaning. I think it is too much. I ask around the doctors afterward they said it is too expensive for a deep cleaning.

I went here since my dental insurance listed this as a place and also because my dad was going here. He made an appointment for me one day when he was there. He made it for 10AM since he knows I start work at 1:30PM. When I got there at 10AM they told me my appointment was not until 1PM and I even had a card to prove the time that they wrote on the card but they said they have a meeting and will meet with me after they are done. When I finally got called in they did my x-​rays and took me to a room to wait for the dentist. The whole place felt dirty but especially the room I was put in. I didn’t even want to sit on the chair but I did. When the dentist or hygienist or whoever came in and started poking my gums and said I have deep pockets. They also claimed I have 12 cavities but failed to tell me. They just put that on the paper quoting how much everything would be. After I saw this I asked to speak to someone and show me the cavities. When the dentist came in to show me on the x-​rays I could not even see them. I immediately felt this was a place that was just after money.
I decided to change dentists and when I told them what she said he was stunned because he said my teeth were in decent shape for not seeing a dentist for so long and that I did not have 12 cavities.
The new dentist wants to get my x-​rays and so I had my dad go in to Smile Care and they said they can’t give it to him but I can come and pick it up and also said it would $ 18. My new dentist office told me they may try to get me to pay and I knew they would because they are only after money. However, I should not be charged since my dental insurance already paid for it all.
I don’t know what type of business this is but DO NOT GO HERE. YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED AND WASTE MONEY!!!

I have been using Unilocal mainly for restaurants, but I never thought about using it for my dentist. Also my Delta Dental plan defaulted me to use Smile Care. So I went there like a regular Dentist office. They rushed to get my X-​ray which made sense to me because they had never seen me before. Then they wanted to give me a oral cancer screening which is not covered by my insurance which was going to cost me $ 60 out of pocket. Using his car salesman approach to convince me to do it, I agreed also because he is a dentist, so he can’t be a con-​artist.
The hygienist checking around my mouth called out numbers to the dental assistant to notate in my record. they told me I had «deep pockets» around some of my teeth and I would need «Antibiotic injections». They told me my insurance will not cover all of it, so it is going to cost me $ 100 per Antibiotic injection out of my pocket, a total of $ 800 for antibiotic injections.
They told me one of my teeth was going to need a crown which would cost in the thousands and my other tooth would need a root canal. I would need to come back at a later date to see a root canal specialist and seeing the root canal Specialist would cost me $ 90 out of pocket plus the cost for the root canal. I set an appt. for a later date.
After I went home, I read the Unilocal reviews for SmileCare and I was outraged. I got conned by my dentist. I called Delta Dental Insurance to file a complaint on Smile Care and to change my dentist to the top dentist on Unilocal that accepted Delta Dental Insurance and that was still accepting new clients.
My research pointed me to Andy Q.V. Le.DDS.
Le Chabot Dental
1600 150^th Ave
San Leandro, CA 94 578
My new dentist is great. He told me I did not need a root canal or a crown. I just needed 2 fillings which cost me a total of $ 180.
How could SmileCare charge me thousands of dollars when I only needed 2 fillings that were fixed for under $ 200? Because they are scam artists.

The four stars are for Tanya Zaghi, D.D.S., who did my root canal, and the other staff I dealt with. She was great. Very straight to the point and efficient. I had an overall good experience here, but I can see where the other complaints on here come from. The place gives a pretty run-​down/​worn feeling. In the X-​ray room there were tape on the floor along the wall to keep ants from coming in! That’s the kind of stuff I expect to find in a poor, developing country, not in one of the richest countries in the world. It’s a testament to how health care works here. If you got the money…
I also want to add that I came from a horrible experience with dentist Andrew Cheung up in Oakland who did a really bad job with my teeth, so this was a relief after that.
To sum it up: my experience here was really good this time, but if I had the choice (which I do have now with a PPO dental plan), I would not go back. I would like a place with a more modern, clean feel.

Scam artists who should be shut down for fraud.
This place was the default dental provider that my insurance, Blue Shield, signed me up for since I apparently didn’t choose a place. Since it was conveniently located, I decided to try it out. Wow, I so regret it.
These people shuffled me into the X-​ray room as quickly as possible to take a full mouth set and max out their insurance payout. For how lazy and poorly dressed the receptionists were, I was surprised at the expediency of the X-​ray tech. I later realized why.
My first real tip-​off that this place was a pump and dump shindig was when they sat me down in the exam room and nonchalantly handed me an Oral Cancer Screening authorization while waiting for the hygienist. I read the scare tactic one-​sheet and asked if this was covered by insurance and they said no but they were running a «special» of $ 10 off so it was only $ 50 or $ 60 – can’t remember. I declined. I reminded them that I was only there for a cleaning and exam and they then said that they would «examine» me to see «what type of cleaning I need.» This smelled like bad juju.
The hygienist went poking around my mouth calling out numbers to the dental assistant to notate in my record. It turns out that I had «deep pockets» around my molars and would need a «deep cleaning» with antibiotics to resolve the issue. This would only cost $ 2000 of which my insurance would pay $ 1200 and I would pay $ 800. Are you kidding me??? I told these scam artists that I appreciated the suggestion but I wanted a regular cleaning and would consider a deep cleaning at a later date. They REFUSED TO CLEAN MY TEETH.
The hygienist stated 3 times that they were «not supposed to do that» meaning to give me a regular cleaning. The dentist had come in and given my mouth a brief once over and said that everything looked fine. So, I basically spent 2 hours of my valuable time and left with no work done while providing SmileCare’s accounts receivable with at least $ 500 in billing for uneccessary x-​rays.
I left this place and immediately called Blue Shield to lodge a complaint. I’m so angry at the treatment I received. I plan to look further into exposing this place for fraud and having them audited by state health care providers oversight at a minimum.

Chose this place because it was close to my house and in my new insurance network, went once and that was my first and last visit. Long wait (even tho the office seemed empty), employees had poor english and were hard to understand, I was unfairly charged for something and when I argued the charge they said I signed a paper approving it. Yes I did sign the paper so It is my fault for not reading, but they made me sign dozens of pages and I just wanted to get out of there since it was running long as it was. Not to mention the «yes I authorize this» box was already checked.
The facility seems dirty and dingy, definitely not a great feeling for a dentist. I could go on for days about storming out of this place and having the worst dental experience of my life, but you get the idea. GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!
Don’t even get me started on them trying to charge me close to $ 1000 on the future things I needed done, when I called my insurance they said it was only $ 45. Did they want to check with them first before hitting me up for a grand?

NO NO NO NO DON’T GO !!!
This place is run down and DIRTY !
I take my elderly mother here since this is the only dentist that will take her dental plan «Delta Dental» in the San Leandro Area. Thank God she has no major problems with her teeth. Just in for cleaning and checking on her partials.
They gave her a $ 50.00 credit if she refered a new client (ME). And I would get $ 50.00 off any treatment. It has been over a year so I thought I would give them a try since things have gone well with my mother.
I scheduled a check-​up /​cleaning (yearly exam). I arived with the forms filled out and was the only one in the waiting room. That should have given me a clue right there. Appointment was at 10:30 — Arivied at 10:15. Was called in at 11:10.
They took a couple of x-​rays. Then I waited some more. Dental Hygentist ??? probed my teeth for pockets. Told me I needed deep cleaning in the back and was handed a invoice for how much it cost. He also wanted to give me a «Oral Cancer» exam that would be a out of pocket payment. I refused !
Dentist came in and told me that he needed more x-​rays. So they took 4 or 5 more. He then told me what I already know about my mouth. And gave me options. When I asked him questions about procedures he could not fully answer them. THIS WAS ANOTHER CLUE !
Then the x-​ray girl came in and gave me a run down of all the work I needed to have done. Now my mouth is not great but I don’t have cavities and take care of my teeth.
To make a long story short the bill she gave me was for $ 7,500.00. To top it off she said that «MY INSUREANCE DIDN’T COVER ANY OF IT».
And that was the end of my appointment — No Cleaning What the H++L !!