Personal Injury Law

Left Stranded: Allcare Dental Exits, Stage Left

By William Eadie

Allcare Dental Drops Patients, Employees

Allcare Dental offices have closed throughout the country, leaving customers who 'pre paid' in order to secure discounts high-and-dry. They also might have left former employees unpaid as well.

Allcare Dental has left various notes to its aggrieved customers on its message website, but it focuses on patients' records, not their fees. For example, this letter doesn't help patients recover fees from Allcare Dental at all:

Allcare continues to aggressively seek out new dental providers in your area and solutions for copies of your records. Still working through solutions to several locations, but it is taking longer than expected to finalize the transactions. We will be working non-stop throughout the weekend to finalize more transactions. We expect to post more solutions before the end of the weekend. We understand your frustration and are working hard to get this done, thank you for your continued patience.

In the meantime, if you are experiencing a dental emergency, you will need to locate another dentist in your area at your cost, go to the emergency room or call 911. You can locate other dentists by referencing your local Yellow Pages or by contacting your county dental society.

As Janet Cho reported at cleveland.com:

[Ohio] Attorney General Richard Cordray's Office had received 38 complaints about Allcare Dental since Jan. 1, 2010, said spokeswoman Kim Kowalski. The issues included poor service, shoddy work, billing problems, high pressure sales and failure to deliver.

Cleveland-based law firm Spangenberg, Shibley & Liber is investigating Allcare Dentail lawsuit claims, and the possibility of an Ohio or even National class action against Allcare Dental. This proposed class action would include unpaid Allcare employees lawsuit and a dropped Allcare patient lawsuit. Consumer-advocate and Spangenberg partner Stuart Scott explained that simply taking people's money after they deposit it for services is actionable:

Nobody likes being taken advantage of, and Allcare Dental's suddenly shuttering their doors, while taking client's pre-paid deposits, likely violates a number of consumer laws and is probably a breach of contract. There's also the employees: were they warned? Paid? Simply left with no income and nothing to show for it?

We're investigating Allcare Dental as a potential class-action lawsuit. People affected by the closure who are interested in learning more should contact us by going to http://www.allcaredentalclaims.com/.

Do you have an Allcare story? Or another bad experience with a consuder transaction? Leave a comment below and share your story!

Full post as published by Cleveland Personal Injury Lawyer on January 10, 2011 (boomark / email).