Dentist Wouldn't Extract Tooth but Kept My Money
Location: Texas
Today I went in to a dentist appointment to have a wisdom tooth extracted. They prescribed two 0.25mg triazolam pills to take an hour before the extraction in the waiting room. They said it was supposed to relax me to make it easier for them to perform the extraction.
Once the medication kicked in they brought me to the operating room and had me lie down and gave me one of those little nose masks with oxygen and when the dentist came in he said he was adding nitrous to the oxygen to help and then injected a local anesthetic in my gum by the tooth and immediately started shoving stuff in my mouth and scraping at my gum. I said "that hurts" so he gave me a second injection around the gum and left the room. The nurse or PA or whatever she was waited a few minutes and then started shoving crap in my mouth again and asked me if I could feel it. I said I could feel poking and it hurt a little but not too bad and then she left the room for a moment and came back and told me that they can't do the extraction because "the anesthetic isn't working" before having me get up and taking me back to the waiting room to receive a referral for an oral surgeon that was going to charge me $1200 to remove the tooth.
When I was in the waiting room with my wife I asked one of the receptionists about a refund because they charged me about $480 for the whole thing after insurance and they said they were going to refund me $80 for the extraction but not the $400 for the anesthetic. They said I was in the room for an hour so there's nothing they can do about the $400. I left with my wife because I was kind of in shock about the whole situation but decided to call them while my wife was driving me home. When I called about the refund they put me on the phone with someone who was supposed to be in charge of the finances or something and they kept saying they couldn't refund me for the anesthetic and when I'd insist and make a point of "I don't know how you can tell me you can't extract because the anesthetic didn't work but still charge me $400 for the anesthetic." they put me on hold for a few minutes and came back with a much more patronizing attitude telling me that I need to give the phone to my wife or call back in 24 hours because I was still anesthetized and they said they wouldn't talk to me while I was anesthetized. I insisted that I was very lucid, just a little relaxed from the triazolam but they insisted that I was still anesthetized and they wouldn't speak to me.
After my wife and I arrived home I asked her to call them since they were refusing to speak to me because I was "anesthetized" and she did and tried to make all the same points I did and they basically just brushed her off and told her they'd get back to her in 48 hours.
I would like to add to all of this that while I was getting frustrated, I was polite through all of these interactions. I never got ornery or aggressive or mean.
Is there anything I can do about this? I know a lot of people might not think $400 is a lot but I'm a day laborer and that's about a third of my bi-weekly pay. It's not a cost I can just eat.