How to raise a treatment or service complaint

If something has gone wrong, the useful thing is a clear route and a realistic timescale rather than reassurance. This page gives you both.

First: symptoms that will not wait

Facial swelling, difficulty swallowing or breathing, a fever with dental pain, bleeding that will not stop, or a sudden severe change after surgery are urgent. Contact emergency dental services or urgent care where you are now. Do not wait for a reply from us or for a flight back to Istanbul. Tell us afterwards, and tell the clinic, but get seen first.

Where to send a complaint

Email info@dentistguideturkey.com or message us on WhatsApp. Either reaches the same team. Email is better if you have documents or photographs to attach and want a record you can keep.

It helps if you include: the clinic and the dates you were treated, what was agreed in writing, what actually happened, what you have already been told, and what outcome you are asking for. That last one is the item most often left out, and it is usually the one that determines how fast a complaint resolves.

What happens, and when

• Acknowledgement within one working day. A person, not an automated reply, confirming we have it and telling you what happens next.
• Facts gathered within five working days. We ask the clinic for the treatment record, the written plan and its account. We tell you if that is going to take longer.
• A written answer. What we found, what the clinic has agreed to, and what we think you should do next. In writing, so you can hold us to it.
• Escalation if you are not satisfied. The complaint goes to a senior review that has not been involved so far, and you get a second written answer.

What we can and cannot do

We are the introducer, not the treatment provider, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. What we can do is real but bounded:

• Put your case to the clinic directly and press for an answer, including where the clinic has stopped replying to you.
• Obtain your treatment records and get them to you or to your own dentist.
• Hold the clinic to the guarantee terms it issued in writing.
• Stop introducing patients to a clinic that does not put things right, and tell you that we have.

• We cannot overrule a clinician's judgement or provide a second clinical opinion ourselves. For that you need an examination by an independent dentist.
• We cannot compel a clinic to refund. We can press, evidence and escalate; the clinic decides.
• We cannot act as your legal representative.

Protecting your position while a complaint runs

Whatever the outcome, these are worth doing now rather than later.

• Keep the written plan, the quote, the guarantee terms and every message. Screenshots of a messaging thread are evidence; a memory of what someone said is not.
• Get an examination by a dentist where you live and ask for their findings in writing, even if remedial work will happen elsewhere.
• Photograph the current state of the work, dated.
• If you paid by card or through a finance agreement, ask your provider what its dispute window is before it closes. Those windows are shorter than most people expect.

Escalating outside us

If our answer is not good enough, you are not out of options and we would rather point you at them than have you assume we are the end of the road. Treatment carried out in Turkey falls under the Turkish health authority's complaints route, and clinics are required to tell you how to use it. If you paid by card, your card issuer's chargeback process is separate from anything we or the clinic decide. If you took finance, the finance provider has its own complaints procedure and a regulator behind it.

Ask us for the clinic's own written complaints procedure and we will get it for you. You are entitled to it.

Complaints about us rather than the clinic

If the problem is something we did (a price on this site that did not match what you were charged, an introduction that should never have been made, a message that went unanswered for days) say so plainly and it goes through the same route. Complaints about our own conduct are the ones most worth having, because they are the ones that change how the site works.

Information only. Urgent clinical symptoms need to be assessed in person where you are now.