Can they do this?

[Anakah]

I've been getting phone messages from my doctor's office reminding me about my appointments. Now, funny this is, I never made any of them. They just penciled me in not even talking to me at all.

I checked my phone messages the other day and it said: "This is just a reminder of your appointment tomorrow..." I was like WTF?

I called the next day and it got kinda sucky:

Me: Hi, I was wondering if I could ask some questions about my 'appointments'

She cut me off in a snarl and was like:

SR (sucky receptionist): Well who is this?

Her tone made me like wth? My voice is hoarse due to my being sick, so I wonder if I sounded worse than I meant to.

I told her my name and she got rather snippy.

Me: I want to know why you guys keep scheduling me for appointments without me saying yes to them.

SR: You were told on the first day of being here!

Me: Well, no I haven't been to you guys in like two months and I was never told about a follow up....

SR: Yes, we did inform you!

Me: (I am getting mad by her tone at this point) Just cancel anymore that you guys have made for me.

SR: There was only this one and you already missed it.

Me: Oh. Well I wouldn't have if you guys let me know about the appointments... (I was getting irritated but tried to stay calm)

SR: Anakah, we DID tell you. You missed it.

Me: Oh well. Have a good day. (I said this really snotty and hung up on her).

I will NEVER return to that place ever again. She was very condesending and rude.

No, they did not set anything up. I am a doctor schedule nazi, I write them down and drill them into my brain. Its the one thing I don't forget especially for a neurologist appointment.
They just lost a customer. And I don't intend to pay the thirty dollar fee that they are going to charge me.

Am I wrong??

[Broomjockey]

Sorry, but I'm confused. You say you got "calls" about your "appointments." And then the nurse said that there was only one appointment, and you'd missed it.

If you are the doctor schedule nazi, wouldn't you have called them about the first message, wondering what it was about? I mean, it is possible that a chart got mixed up, and you were noted down for a follow-up, instead of the person who was supposed to get one, which is where that comes from. But if they called you more than once, you really should have called back sooner to find out what was up. Also, on notice calls, they say the times and dates (unless their practice is radically different than the ones here), so why didn't you try to call before the appointment's scheduled time?

Unless you left out a bunch of stuff, you fell down on your end. You also mention your voice may have sounded worse than you meant it. Isn't it possible it was the same for the receptionist? In a doctor's office, she's probably busy, and needs information like who you are, and can't really wait for you to possibly meander to the point, so she cuts to the quick. Slightly rude, but how many of us just want the caller to get to the point?

Her only real suck is the last bit, insisting you were told instead of allowing for a possibility of error like the one I pointed out up top.

[Hello Kitty]

Ugh, I think they were SUCKY. Who schedules appointments for patients without the patient requesting it? That's weird. And sucky! And if this is standard practice for them, they should AT LEAST give the patients more than one day's notice. It sounds like the receptionist was really rude and not listening, didn't understand that Anakah didn't request the appointment. My old old ob/gyn was like that, the doctor's bitchy wife worked as the receptionist, then was moved to another position. I'm sure because too many patients complained about her...

[powerboy]

They were sucky on their part. They should not be setting appointments without the customers approval. I would not pay that fee either.

[edible_hat]

I've had calls from my optometrist saying "it's been two years since your last appointment, would you like to schedule an eye check?" but never booking something without my knowledge.

(I did once have a work schedule change without my knowledge, but that's a whole other story)

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I had a dentists office who did this regularly. I quit going to them when I realized that no, I wasn't "forgetting" my appointments, they were scheduling them on their own and then calling me the day before to affirm them.

I'm pretty hard core about appointments, too. I keep a daytimer in my purse. I enter important stuff into my Outlook at work and set it up with a reminder alarm. I'm not going to forget an appointment.

Why should she scramble to touch base on an appointment she didnt' make? For all they know, she could be out of town and not get her messages. Some doctor's offices DO do this, for whatever reason; like I said, it's been done to me. It's not cool. I dont think the OP was sucky in the least.

[Misanthropical]

I had a receptionist at my doctor's office who would not tell him when I called for refills on my prescriptions, because in her opinion I didn't really need them and if I did I did not need such a high dose.

I talked to my doctor about her and he had no idea what she had been doing. She never told him I had called. She was fired real fast.

So, I would suggest talking to the doctor about the woman.

[Mr Yuck]

I've had calls from my optometrist saying "it's been two years since your last appointment, would you like to schedule an eye check?" but never booking something without my knowledge.

(I did once have a work schedule change without my knowledge, but that's a whole other story)

My eye dr. does this, as does my dentist, and family physician for yearly exams.
Kind of nice. They never schedule the appointment's though.

The only one who ever did this was, strangely enough, the car dealership where we had one of our vehicle's serviced.
We would actually get a letter stating that "Our records show that your vehicle should have such & such mileage by now, we've scheduled you to come in on this date______". We just ignored those and made the appointment for when we actually needed it.

[Broomjockey]

Why should she scramble to touch base on an appointment she didnt' make? For all they know, she could be out of town and not get her messages. Some doctor's offices DO do this, for whatever reason; like I said, it's been done to me. It's not cool. I dont think the OP was sucky in the least.

I didn't say she should have scrambled, and I didn't mean the OP was sucky, either. But a specialist's appointment is fairly important, and there were inconsistencies that I was trying to get clarified. If there really were multiple calls (re: plural in the first sentence of the OP), then it was in everyone's best interest to get it straightened out as quickly as possible. One phone call returned could have prevented everything that followed. Can you imagine the story from the other side?

A receptionist posts a story about leaving multiple messages for a patient, including the day before. The patient calls up after the appointment has already passed, and sounds snippy from the get-go (Anakah's froggy voice). It's been a busy day, and this person being snippy no-showed, so that threw off the schedule. Now they're being argumentative and saying that they never made the appointment. Well, why didn't they just call sooner if they had no idea what was going on? A little investigation turns up that the note was accidentally applied to the wrong file, which could have been cleared up had the person called in sooner, and not been combative off the start.

That story wouldn't be out of place on this site at all. Sorry, but I stand by my assessment of "As presented, the receptionist was sucky at the end, but the OP's not innocent in the situation."

As an aside, calling the doctor directly to find out what was up is probably the best advice for the situation.

[zzapp the witch]

Scheduling appts without your knowledge? Leaving a message to affirm the day before? Charging you $30 for missing said appointments?

Methinks I smell a scam!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Well, that's fair enough, BroomJockey. I think we've all been here long enough to know that it wouldn't be unheard-of for someone to blow off an appointment, then pretend they never made it to avoid paying the no-show fee. I am sure it happens all the time.

In my case, I actually gave them the benefit of the doubt more than once. I thought, "well, okay, maybe I DID forget." And then they did it to my husband. And then it happened to me again. So I am very wary of this.

They would call the day before or the morning of and say "this is a reminder for your appointment." there was no way to make an appointment that soon without warning. In one case, we'd blown town and missed both the call and the "appointment". Couple that with some other slack and frankly suspicious goings-on in that office, and I started to smell fish.

I think it was an attempt to rack up no-show fees. Not that I paid any of them. But still.

[Broomjockey]

Well, that's fair enough, BroomJockey. I think we've all been here long enough to know that it wouldn't be unheard-of for someone to blow off an appointment, then pretend they never made it to avoid paying the no-show fee. I am sure it happens all the time.

Your case does sound very much like shady practices, and having it done to you once would make you suspicious in similar circumstances (and rightly so, fool me once, etc).

I don't know if it is by any means a common practice, but blowing off no-show fees is probably right up there with late fees for credit cards, etc.

I think in this case though, it's really probably just a case of a wrong note. Unless it happens again. Then yeah, bad. But still "never assume malicious intent where incompetence adequately explains."

[RecoveringKinkoid]

But still "never assume malicious intent where incompetence adequately explains."

"Never chalk up to malice something that can be explained by stupidity." I say that all the time.