Stabbed in the back by 1-800-DENTIST

As most of you now know, the FREE DentalSenders site and FREE emailing of Patient Reminders, Dormant Reminders, Birthday Reminders and Monthly Newsletters will be terminated as of February 2011.

Users will be charges $149 per month (preposterous), unless, of course, you are a 1-800-DENTIST member.

This is a ploy by 1-800-DENTIST to sign up more dentists to their referral service, of which they get a fee for services rendered by dental offices for patients they refer.

When I initially signed up for DentalSenders, there was the explicit statement that DentalSenders would be free...no strings attached...FOREVER!

Of course, they have been purchased by Futuredontics...so they changed the rules and now want to ruin a good thing by making us pay a hefty monthly fee or hold us ransom to sign up for 1-800-DENTIST.

I can assure you that I will not cave to such tactics. I am extremely disappointed that Futuredontics has decided to go this route. I have no need for 1-800-DENTIST, but my patients and my office staff like the flexibility of having emailed appointment reminders.

Too bad another great idea gets scuttled by greed.

I began looking into this when I read your message. If you look at the cancellation policy you will see the exact pricing of your package. If you have the ads enabled on your communications to your patients then the service is free. This is just free advertising for Crest and other companies, including 1-800-DENTIST. Only if you select to have your ads disabled or you wish to have live calls then you will be getting into the fees of $149 and up a month.

This is just my opinion and interpretation of what information I have found.
Let me know if it is different.

Yes, that's the cancellation policy AS OF TODAY.

Yesterday I received a letter in my office from Futuredontics that their policy will be changing February 1, 2011.

At that time, unless you are a 1-800-DENTIST enrolled dentist, you will be charged $149 for the current FREE services that have been offered.

Just a ploy by Futuredontics to get more dentists to enroll in their referral service...or make money for what was once a free service.

Personally, I will not enroll. My practice management software (SoftDent) will handle email appointment reminders to my patients. It will take my staff a couple of minutes to do this on a daily basis, since it is not automatic like DentalSenders, and it doesn't have the cool graphics like DentalSenders, but it will get the job done.

Needless to say I am greatly disappointed in this change in policy. Kind of like your cable company giving you free HBO and Showtime...then charging you throught the nose after the initial trial period. Difference is that in this case, DentalSenders stated that this would be a free service, as it was ad supported.

Now, Futuredontics kicks out the other sponsors...then holds us DentalSenders users hostage. Enroll in their referral service or pay up.

Forget it. Not gonna do it.

Thanks for the heads-up re Softdent, we will be looking into that today. There is NO WAY I would want to be associated with 1-800-Dentist in any way. I think I recall that the AGD also has an email reminder service for it's members.

B

There is no way i would pay $149 a month. The service is good, but definitely not close to worth $1800 a year. We can already do email and the only thing they do different is the text. I believe if no one will sign in, they may realize the money they were making from advertising was better than nothing.

I just found out about the charges. i am still confused if this true about charges. May be they will change their mind.

The PracticeMojo offers unlimited text, emails, online customer rating and 100 mailed Postcards each month when the electronic stuff fails to work. Free for 60 days why not try them? 1-800-556-2580

$149 is not alot for what you are getting. Think of the hours each month it will take a staff member to make calls, email and text. I wish they posted on facebook also. The more ways you can reach a patient the better. Plus the campaigns are great. Today we sent out 2000 emails about NTI's. if one patient responds, that will pay for this service for 5 months. Don't be pennywise and pound foolish.