sweet victory

I don't think I've posted about this in the past, but as you saw in my post a few days ago, I recently had my wisdom teeth removed. They were causing intense pain in my mouth and jaw back in September. At the time, I decided that it was time to have them looked at and possibly extracted, depending on what the dentist recommended.

So I ended up booking with a dentist, who from here on out will be referred to only as evil dentist, and getting talked into prepaying for a very pricey extraction procedure only to find out within 15 minutes of booking the appointment that my dental insurance would not cover because of the procedure in question and my medical insurance would not cover because evil dentist is out-of-network.

I then went to a second dentist, oral surgeon to be exact, who ended up removing my wisdom teeth last week Friday. After the initial consultation with second dentist in early November, I learned that not only had evil dentist duped me into prepaying for a surgery my insurance wouldn't cover, but she had also completely misdiagnosed my problem. She had said that all four of my teeth were impacted after looking at the x-rays and not actually physically examined my mouth. I questioned it at the time because all four teeth are fully erupted and not covered by the gum at all, but I was assured that they were impacted. When I went to the second dentist, however, I found out that I had been right and my teeth weren't impacted, not a single one.

I thank God that the evil dentist misdiagnosed my problem because if she hadn't, my dental insurance would have covered the procedure and I probably wouldn't have canceled the appointment. Knowing what I know now, there's no way I would have wanted her to do anything to my mouth. Who knows what type of complications could have happened?

On a financial note, since the original appointment with evil dentist on Sept. 18, I have been fighting the dentist office to be refunded the amount I prepaid for the surgery. I finally disputed the charges with the credit card company and will be reporting evil dentist to the Better Business Bureau.

Last night I finally received sweet victory in the form of this letter from Capital One, which stated:

"Thanks for contacting us about a dispute on your Capital One account. On your Nov 2008 monthly statement, we credited your account $1,575.00 or $1,664.00, which is the amount you're disputing. Unless the merchant resubmits the charge within 45 days of the date of this letter, we consider your case closed."

I win!