An aesthetic or dental clinic, like any other business, may end up closing its doors. The difference is that the treatments are usually for large amounts and many times the client has financed it in installments or has paid for it in advance. This is what has happened to hundreds of patients at Ideal centers and several Dorsia franchises that have closed the doors in recent months.
Consumer organizations have received numerous complaints from customers demanding their money be returned or loans cancelled. “These types of closures without prior notice are unfortunately common: dental clinics (SmyDent, Dentix or iDental…) or beauty centers left their clients with treatments, sometimes already started and half paid for,” they assert from the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU).
One of the claimants is Carla Navarro from Badalona (30), who contracted two interventions with the Dorsia franchise in Badalona a couple of months before the closure, which occurred last November. The total bill amounted to 8,200 euros, an amount that Navarro agreed to finance over five years through a consumer loan.
To this day, and despite the fact that the operations were never carried out, he explains that 200 euros per month continue to be deducted from his bank account for the credit. “I lost my job because of the anxiety that the situation generated in me, but I can’t stop paying the loan, because they would include me on the list of defaulters,” she says sadly.
The Agència Catalana del Consum, an organization attached to the Department of Business and Work, has so far received 78 complaints from customers from the Ideal centers closed in Catalonia and only nine from the Dorsia franchises that have closed. In the latter case, the agency does not rule out that the number of complaints is actually higher, since they are also channeled through municipal consumer service offices. Added to this is that two of the closures are very recent – Manresa and Badalona – and patients are still waiting for a satisfactory response from the parent company, owned by the Otsu holding company.
In this sense, the company has offered affected customers the possibility of being relocated to other franchises that are still operational, and assures that it will take legal action for the “irresponsible and negligent” management of the two franchised centers in question, which it assures which gave a margin of one month so that they could complete the pending treatments before ceasing to belong to the brand due to “serious breach of contractual obligations”, according to ACN. From the Agència Catalana de Consum, for their part, they remember that consumers “are not obliged to accept the relocation.”
Navarro finds herself in this situation, who refuses to allow a medical team other than the one that treated her at the Badalona clinic to perform the two surgical interventions she contracted at the end of last summer. “They moved the date of the intervention twice,” she argues, “I no longer trust.”
More than fifty clients affected by the closures have set themselves up as a platform to request a refund of the amounts paid. The parent company, however, argues that it is a different company from the two closed franchises, which are the ones that have kept the money, which makes it difficult to return it, although some of the affected people have been able to recover it, or at least minus one part.
In these cases, consumer organizations and associations recommend collecting all the documentation they have that demonstrates the link with the clinic or service provider, such as advertising, contracts, invoices and budgets. The next step is to contact the clinic with which the service was contracted, presenting a written claim -via certified mail or burofax- to their postal address.
In this document, the client must state that the contract has not been fulfilled and demand the completion of the treatment, “demanding at the same time that they give him all the documentation, such as a copy of the medical history”, in addition to requesting the return of the money. .
If the company does not respond satisfactorily within one month, the claim must be transferred to the financial institution with which the consumer loan linked to the treatment has been signed, “informing of the closure of the activity and requesting both the cessation of the issuance of receipts, such as the return of the part of the financing paid that corresponds to the part of the service that has not yet been provided”, they explain from the Agència Catalana de Consum.
However, these types of requests are not always responded to satisfactorily. If this is the case, the consumer must “go to a public consumer service to file a claim against the entity,” this organization explains. You can also seek advice from a consumer organization or association. However, the OCU reminds that “if the agreement is not met, that credit is no longer payable” and a claim can be filed with the Bank of Spain.
However, when a personal loan has been requested to cover the treatment – therefore not linked to the contracted service – or it has been paid in cash, the claim must be processed exclusively through the clinic. And if within a month they refuse to return the money or do not respond favorably, the only option left would be to resort to judicial proceedings.
The last assumption is that payment for the treatment has been made by credit card and there is, therefore, the possibility of trying to get the bank to cancel the charges. If this route does not have the expected effect, the only thing left to do is to complain to the clinic and, if the case is not resolved satisfactorily, go to court, taking into account that if the amount is less than 2,000 euros “there will be no need for a lawyer or attorney.” “, they comment from the consumer agency of the Generalitat.
