Oh, Aspen Dental?
Yeah, AVOID them like the plague, because that’s what they are to the practice of dentistry.
Another vote for avoiding Aspen. The dentist I saw was marginally ok but their billing office was a MAJOR mess. I found out after I’d already fired them that medicare paid for some of the things they billed me for. I pointed out their double-payments and they told me I’d get a refund. I never did. I sent them probably 10 letters but finally decided that money was gone and never mind. Still pisses me off tho.
No, Metro DentalCare. I started going to one location when they only had 3 or 4. Now, they are everywhere in my metro are. They claim their policy is to do only the absolute necessary in the matter of dental pain/surgery. Three months later when your tooth still hurts, they go through another procedure and two months after that, a third. I let them do this to me twice when I really thought we should have gone straight to Plan B or C. Oh no, no need to go that far, they say. They milked me. Plus, their corporate ‘rules’ demand that my friend/family take a whole day off of work to accompany me, when the only problem is after the surgery is complete, not before it starts, is insane.
But at this particular practice, I just felt that I was treated like dirt on the floor so I vacuumed myself out of there.
LSLGuy, I may be who you were thinking of. Used to post fairly regularly but not much lately. Been a practicing dentist over 32 years. The video was a bit over the top but some truth to it. Don’t really have time to go over it point by point. I’d say most dentists are fairly honest but there are some crooks, as in all professions. I think part of the problem is many new graduates go to work for corporations that have quotas and “treatment coordinators” that hard sell you. I think the OP’s dentist was out of line and I wouldn’t return if I was them. I am willing to answer PM’s for people and have done so in the past.
Nice to see you!
Actually, if you turn them in to Medicare, you may get results. Medicare fraud is a Federal crime, and in fact about 10% of their claims are indeed fraudulent.
And a guaranteed salary, health insurance, and the like is probably quite appealing, at least at first.
How do future employers regard Aspen Dental if they see it on a resume’?
You are indeed. I didn’t want to call you out by name, that seemed … intrusive.
But welcome back, and I hope you stay around for both general posting and your special expertise that few others nobody else has.
Welcome! [[Manly hug]]! 
Just an OhByTheWay (as the guy who posted that video):
For those unfamiliar, Cracked is a comedy website and YouTube channel that – maybe like John Oliver – creates a prosecutor’s (ie, highly one-sided) case using humor and pretty well vetted facts to make rather exaggerated points on subjects that could lack widespread familiarity and that may be useful for more of us to know.
You in the Twin Cities? There’s a Metro DentalCare here. I had the same experience.
Yep, that’s the chain/franchise. They started out brilliantly, but now they seem to have selected corporate rules over listening to their customers, as a company. Some locations are much better than others but corporate’s insistence on leveling the playing field across the franchise has leveled it down. But my most recent experience is on a specific location. I now go to an independent DDS, and am much happier.
It could always be worse.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/27/us/minnesota-dentist-dr-kevin-molldrem/index.html
My almost lifelong experience, starting with my own great grandfather, is that dentists can be really, really weird. (Great-granddad used a foot pump drill well into the 1970s, and didn’t believe in novocaine. Somehow, he had patients anyway, presumably masochists.)
The one I recently left also had no particular interest in patient comfort or pain control, which became pretty obvious and increasingly scary. He won’t be seeing the inside of my mouth again, and I’m not even comfortable talking about his horror chamber of an office. But the one I came in here to talk about was my parents’ dentist, who they had me see when I was in high school.
My parents’ dentist had the charming habit of waiting until your mouth was propped open and full of gauze before he started in on the most appalling right wing rants, probably inspired by some proto-Limbaugh on the radio. Just straight-up Hitler levels of racism; my extremely right-wing parents said he was a very nice man and I must be making it up. Would that I’d had the guts, at 16 or 17, to defy them and report the dentist; even at this distance I regret putting up with that from either the dentist or my parents. What kind of person talks like that to someone who literally can’t answer? Foul.
I thought somebody would mention the guy from the Atlantic article posted upthread, who criminally overdid the work on his patients, but at least had the decency to spread out the appointments. He was just grifting people, not trying to kill them! Dentists. My God. If the story is true, that poor woman deserves more than $50,000, and the dentist should absolutely be prevented from practicing again.
Oh, I saw a movie about that guy! Wasn’t Bill Murray one of his patients?
Jack Nicholson
My last dentist was a cheerful guy named Robert. Nobody in the office called him ‘doctor’, as he didn’t like it. He went by Robert. The one thing about him that bugged me is that he called everyone “dude”. Every conversation was littered with “dudes”. Made me grind my teeth, which may have been why he did it, come to think of it.
Exactly what I was thinking 
If you’re going old school.
And the only odd thing I can recall is the dentist telling me I have a young man’s gums, and looking totally blank when I said I hoped he didn’t want them back.