Cancellation, Failed To Attend and Short Notice Cancellation Policy
Here at The Northside Dentist we try to respect your time as much as you should respect ours. Short notice cancellations, failure to attend and arriving late (more than 15 minutes) disrupts our other patients and staff members.
We are not a large corporate dental practice, we do not treat you like a number, and we cannot accommodate the financial strain of missed appointments.
We are a small, personable business who aim to provide excellent quality at an affordable price. One of the ways that we achieve that is by efficient use of appointment time and staff. A missed appointment or short notice cancellation represent a cost to us and represent scheduling problems for other patients looking to book in. Due to the difficulties of filling last minute cancellations we require 24 hours notice.
Please advise us as soon as possible if you need to rearrange an appointment so that we can offer your time to someone who is in urgent need of dental care. As we turn away other patients to hold your appointment time, any missed or short notice cancelled appointment will attract a cancellation fee.
Due to our small business size and high demand for appointments we have the following cancellation policy. All we’re asking for is some common decency!
Our front desk will send you a reminder call or SMS more than 24 hours before your appointment*. Firstly, please read the text to confirm the date and time, then please respond either by calling or replying to the SMS. This saves our staff chasing you up.
Failing to attend, rescheduling or cancelling appointments with MORE than 24 hours notice is absolutely fine and we will be more than accommodating.
Failing to attend, rescheduling or cancelling appointments with LESS than 24 hours notice a fee of $50 will be charged.
If you wish to make a second booking then we require an appointment holding fee of $50 which, if you attend, will be taken off your cost of treatment or refunded if the treatment does not cost up to the $50.
We may also reserve the right to charge the cost of the treatment upfront before making another appointment. This is only if there has been several cancellations and is obviously a last resort. We would hope that it never comes to this.
Procedures that require long appointments, such as Zoom whitening, require 50% deposit at the time of booking.
At The Northside Dentist we reserve the right to ask patients who fail to attend, cancel appointments at short notice, continually arrive late or are simply rude to source another dental provider.
*Please bear in mind that if you do not receive a SMS or phone call, your appointment remains your responsibility for you to attend or reschedule with more than 24 hours notice.