SmileCare – Kearny Mesa

I didn’t have the best service here because they made me wait a very long time. I am a very patient man but the wait time was impossible. I’m not too fond of long wait times and this time was enough.

I recently came into this office to get a cleaning and 2 fillings done I read some of the comments, and I’m not quite sure what people like Chris W. and others expect from a visit to the doctor/​dentist. I appreciated the fact that the dentist and nurses were very friendly, always smiling and laughing while being very professional (it made me feel relaxed, in an environment where sharp things are going into my mouth). Also, it would be nice if a law was passed that made all professional services free, however, until that gets done, I expect to pay money when I go to the doctor, nothing in life is free. I recently moved to San Diego and the dentist here was able to get me numb and do all the work while I felt no pain at all. There was a little soreness after the medicine wore off… the soreness lasted about 3 – 4 days, and that was a little irritating, but after that; I felt good as new. Nobody «likes» going to the dentist, but if you have to go; I recommend going to this place. The dentist was great, the staff was friendly and I enjoyed all the «smiling»… they live up to the name :)

They told me I needed $ 1,600 of dental work that my insurance didn’t cover. They also didnt clean my teeth and tried to tell me i needed a deep cleaning (also my insurance didn’t want to cover this, because i didnt need it) I went to get a second opinion from a dentist I have been to before, and nothing was wrong with my teeth. Stay away from this place! They caused me unneeded stress. If there was zero stars I would give them that.

My wife chose this place because it had a good rating on Met life. When I went there the people were nice, I filled out mine and my families paperwork. I was called to the back where I had X-​Rays taken by a nice nurse. Once I was done was brought to a large room with a bunch of dentist chairs as if all the patients are on display. The very young «doctor» came out laughing way to much and basically told me that my filling was cracked I need a porcelain replacement and root canal. She took pictures with some new device to show me. By the time her and the other lady where done with the exam. I needed 3 root canals 4 fillings replaced with porcelain and 2 crowns. I was then made to wait 15−20mins while I hear laughing and them cutting up.
I was then met with a office manager that told me it was going to be almost $ 7k and my portion was almost $ 5k. I see why Met life gives them high stars. They make the insurance company a lot of money. Please avoid this place. This is a prime example of a dentist office just working the insurance game to get rich.

I wish i could give zero stars… Terrible service, unorganized staff, and the longest wait times I’ve ever experienced. Where do I even start? I just walked out about five minutes ago so I’m still ridiculously angry. My son recently turned one and has a bunch of teeth so I wanted to make him a dental appointment. I’m in the navy and tricare gave me a large list of pediatric dentists for him. I chose SmileCare because it was close to my home and it would be easiest to get to because I knew I’d be in a rush coming from work. I made the mistake of not looking them up on Unilocal,which I obviously regret now. Initially I called in early July and made my appointment for August 12 at 130pm. I told them that I was military and wouldn’t be able to make an early appointment. A few weeks after I made the appointment they called and asked to reschedule to 2pm because of some scheduling errors. Mistakes happen, I’m fine with that. They then called me the next week (a week before the appointment) and told me that they needed to schedule me for the morning. I repeated what I’ve said before, I can’t do mornings. The person on the phone said ‘oh ok see you at 2 on the 12^th’. I thought things were settled but on the morning of the appointment they called and said they can’t do 2pm and asked to schedule me for 11. The girl on the phone was very rude, but I told her that was too early. She asked if I could do 1145, I reluctantly agreed and told her I would try my hardest to get out of work early enough to make it. I made it to the appointment on time and checked in, filled out some paperwork, and started to wait. And wait… And wait. After 45 minutes of waiting my toddler was growing very impatient. I asked them if I was still booked for 1145 even though it was now 1230. They finally took us back to the waiting room where we sat again to wait. After 20 minutes I checked their Unilocal page and saw the terrible reviews they had. I decided then to leave. Not once during any encounter with the staff did anyone apologize for the inconveniences they caused. I will never in my life return to this place.

I absolutely LOVE the experience that I have whenever I visit this office! I am a former ortho patient of Dr. Geoffrey Kopecky and he is by far the best in his field in my opinion! He and his entire staff are extremely professional in nature and truly provide a wonderful environment for their patients. As a Vice President and Branch Manager for a local bank, I most certainly understand the importance of providing an unmatched, quality customer service experience, and this is exactly what I have received at this Smilecare location since beginning my treatment over 2 years ago. I never had an appointment cancelled and the staff was more than accommodating to me if I ever had to change my schedule or appointment time. The environment is always extremely warm and inviting and I know many of the staff members by name because they too have taken the time to get to know me by name. I never feel like a number — I am consistently treated as a valued patient/​client. I am still receiving compliments on my now beautiful smile! I have and will continue to recommend Dr. Kopecky to all of my family, friends, and colleagues! (Brittny Ferguson)

I went here knowing I needed my teeth cleaned as it had been seven months. I have Medical (you have a small choice of dentists on Medical) and was looking for a new dentist since the one I had for the previous two cleanings made me wait over an hour.
They only had me wait five minutes and everyone was nice. X-​rays and all were fine and then the doctor did the gum test. Everything was four and fives so at the end she says I need the scaling and my four crowns replaced, one crown less than a year old! So all this cost over $ 3000 from me, $ 100 from Medicare. She wasn’t pushy, but when I asked if they would go ahead and clean my teeth, she said no.
I decided to get a second opinion, and phoned about getting copies of my X-​rays. They said I had to come in to sign a request and it would be $ 34 and take 24 hours, so I went over right away. The receptionist then said $ 18 and 48 hours! I was annoyed about the time but said okay. I phoned 24 hrs later and they were ready, the receptionist who had told me longer was not happy to see me.
I went to a dentist that afternoon where I was going to pay for my service, instead of using Medicare. The gum test was twos and threes, and everything was fine for $ 150.
It’s worth paying for twice a year without unnecessary, painful and expensive services!

STAY AWAY FROM THIS DENTAL OFFICE!!! Once they realize they are not going to be able to STEAL your money they refuse to perform the basic services covered by your insurance, while they admit that the services THEY performed on you 2 years ago might not have been done properly but you paid for them. The dentist DR. Debbie KIM and hygienist Nam Le pretend to be nice until they find out they are not going to be able to continue milking you (after 4 years of doing so) then become aggressive and arrogant and use the shield that they are only worried about your health… true is they are there to sell as much as they can to you and provide TERRIBLE SERVICE. I was exposed to terrible trauma and pain while they performed services before, their gum measurements are a lie and always to their advantage in order for them to assault you. They can have you waiting on a chair for half hour until they start working on you while you can’t be late or the appointment is cancelled. They will try to force you to spend the money on their «suggested» treatments, they care less about your health, its a terrible office that is only good for ortho but nothing more, they have terrible reviews and comments from patients that are stuck with them and have no choice. Although, girls at the front are nice.
By the way if you want a copy of your full file… they want to charge you! yes another small business for them and a way to avoid responsibility. After spending thousands of dollars and being a patient for 4 years you want your file to make a complaint and they make it difficult and want to charge you for it. STAY AWAY !!!

First off, let me just say how two faced this company and their employees are. I chose this office to do my dental work because they were covered by my insurance. I made an appointment and saw Dr. Kim. Before I saw the doctor, I got my X-​rays done by one of the nurses, she was very sweet and kind and the X-​rays went by real quick. Then I go to see the next nurse (I think her name was Pham or something) she was checking the pockets between my teeth. She was nice and courteous but her problem was she was trying to scare me into getting dental work done. She wasn’t the doctor so she really couldn’t give me a whole lot of medical advice but she was hinting at it. Then 10 minutes later I finally see Dr. Kim. She was nice but again she was telling me how I need a deep cleaning and other dental work. I asked her how much and if it is covered by my insurance but she played dumb and said she’ll get the office manager (Tiffany) to give me all the figures. I then asked if she would do a basic cleaning and she flat out said no. I asked why and she said because it’s unethical to do it. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP. My brother has almost the same condition of teeth and his dentist did it. So the doctor looked at my teeth and told me you need work done and Tiffany will be with you to go over payment plans. Another 10 minutes go by and Tiffany finally comes clacking along in her high heels with a stack of papers. She told me that all my dental work was going to cost me over $ 8000. I’m a 21 year old college student, where the hell am I going to get that kind of money?! She told me about the payment plans and talk about ridiculous. The cheapest plan was $ 200/​month for 5 years. That’s a damn car payment for Christ sakes. I’ll end up paying over $ 2000 in interest! So I told her that I’ll think about it. She told me that the only procedure that was covered was the fillings so I made an appointment for that.
Two weeks later I see Dr. Kim again and she is a total two face. When I met her she was nice but on this appointment she had something crawling up her butt. She was hurting me when she was doing the fillings and I told her and she’s like «I’m barely touching you.» She continues and when she puts her tools down (I assumed she was finished) I asked her if I could ask a question and she flat out said no, not now. I’m like okay I’ll wait. She takes the suction thing out of my mouth and said,” what is it?” Really? You wanna cop an attitude with your patient? I was simply trying to ask her how much longer is this going to take? And she said, «why, you have to be somewhere?» Her whole demeanor was so rude and once she finally finished I couldn’t wait to leave. This place is such a rip off and I don’t recommend it!

DONT GO HERE!!! THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER BETTER FACILITIES AND DENTISTS THEN THIS PLACE.
I just got to filling done and I decided to leave this dentist and find another one. The new dentist — Dr. Adina Manolescu, DDS, give me another exam. I found out I did not need the two fillings and they were unnecessary. Dr. Adina is great, so glad I left Smile Care.

I really like this dentistry! I came here for the first time to get my wisdom teeth removed. The dentist did my teeth cleaning and accepted the xrays I had previously taken of my teeth. I came back a few months later to get my wisdom teeth removed. They said they would call me to remind me of my appointment, but they never did. I had to call them to make sure.
The dentist retouched a few of my fillings and filled in a tiny cavity. My dad was hovering around the dentist chair while she was looking at my teeth like a foot away from her, so she snapped at him to stand back and said if he had any questions, he could ask you afterward. Yeah, my dad shouldn’t have been doing that and yay for her for feeling empowered and telling him off, but she could have been nicer about it.
But my experience with my wisdom teeth removal was great! The surgeon only comes in once a month, but luckily I was home from college when he was available. The lady who put the IV in my arm wasn’t sure if she put the IV in correctly, but the surgeon was able to tell that it was in correctly, even if the flow of substance wasn’t a continuous flow. Then he asked me 4 questions and I don’t remember anything after that. Then I woke up and it was done and I couldn’t walk straight but that’s normal after the anesthesia.
Some cons about this place was that they didn’t tell my driver all the directions of how to take care of me after the surgery. They just gave him a piece of paper and I doubt he read it. I didn’t read it until I woke up after a few hours after getting home and read it. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to lay down until heavy bleeding stopped… oh well. The directions didn’t really have specific directions as to how /​when to use cold/​hot compresses and WHY people couldn’t use a draw for 3 days after the surgery. I don’t think the after care was very good; it was like they just wanted to get the surgery over with and then give you some pills and then that’s it.
I had 4 wisdom teeth to remove: the top 2 came above the gums and the bottom two didn’t. They charged me around $ 600 (probably mostly for the anesthesia) and I’m not sure if that’s a good price or what…
But at least the people at this place could speak English, unlike the Vietnamese places my parents picked out for me when I was younger –_​_​–

Good people ladies are very nice docs know what they are doing. i still wish they did saturdays.

I waffled between 1 and 2 stars… but they made me mad, so 1 star it is. In the ‘good old days’ a trip to the dentist was pretty straight forward. You went… they cleaned… you left. Now… it is like a trip to the used car lot.
You come in at your appointed time. Then, let the haggling begin! First you are told, you must have xrays… even though you just had them done 5 months prior at another dentist and brought in copies of the films.
Then, during all this haggle time, you realize an hour has passed and they STILL have not cleaned your teeth!
After a while, you just start agreeing to anything and sign on the dotted line… until that dotted line indicates $ 700…and that is AFTER your insurance has confirmed your benefits. I balked at that. Let the haggling continue!
Such was my experience here yesterday. Being new to the area, I switched from my dentist office in La Jolla, to this place because 1) They are in-​network, and 2) they are close to home. In addition to the deep root cleaning, I was told that I needed a mouth guard because I grind my teeth (news to me). I also needed a bonding on one of my molars (which I knew about so that was legit). So, I agreed to do the cleaning and the bonding on this appointment and save the mouth guard for next year so I could ‘budget’ it into my Flexible Spending budget. I was told to sign — and pay — for the cleaning right then and there…$ 140…which was about what I’ve paid in the past for this type of cleaning. I paid.
As a «mature» woman, I am used to — and comfortable with — being told that I need to have deep root cleaning. After all, I really do want to keep my chompers… all of them! But this time ‘felt’ different. The intimidation started early… I hadn’t even made it to the chair! I was brought back and the xray saga began. I don’t give a crap that my insurance is willing to cover xrays twice a year, I just had them done 5 months earlier. As I stood talking to the xray technician, the dentist came over — introduced herself — and then started bullying me… topping it off with «if you don’t trust me, then you should find a new dentist. I really should have just left at that point.
One would think that if I have a 4 pm appointment time at the dentist in Kearney Mesa, then I would easily make a 6 pm group meditation in Mission Valley… not so. I ended up being at the dentist office until right before 6 pm and missed my group meditation. But, of course, bullying and haggling takes time.
After I FINALLY got my teeth cleaned, and paid $ 140 out of pocket — which they make you pay BEFORE the procedure begins, I was told that I need to come back next week for the bonding ($ 75) and antibiotic ($ 93 per tooth (minus insurance of $ 38 = $ 55 per tooth) and I needed the antibiotic for 8 teeth!!!) They were giving me a ‘break’ and only charging me for 4 of the teeth. Another $ 295 due at the next appointment. I have since learned from my insurance company that although $ 93 is the usual and customary cost for the antibiotic, it should be covered at 80%, thereby costing me $ 18.60 per tooth… NOT $ 55!!!)
Seems very weird to me that an antibiotic would be needed a week AFTER the procedure… but I was told my mouth needed to heal first. Sounds like bunk to me. By this time, the doctor had already left for the day and wasn’t there to do the bonding procedure. I’m inclined to get the bonding done elsewhere and forego the antibiotic all together. I’ve been having deep root cleanings for the past couple of years. NEVER before did I need to come back for the antibiotic. The other dentist offices typically applied the antibiotic ‘wash’ at the time of the procedure. I NEVER had to pay $ 210 out of pocket for this!!!
Upcharging is the usual and customary practice of a used car dealer… since when did it become usual and customary at the dentist office? I truly believe that 1) people with dental insurance are treated differently — like slot machines and 2) the dentists prey on middle aged people knowing we are trying to stave off the aging process as actively as we can (ie appearance/​ego).
This saga doesn’t even begin to review the appearance of this dental practice. It was in a strip mall (not a big deal), but was so shabby and run down inside and appeared to be in a serious need of a make over. I think they were counting on me to finance that… Meh! Me thinks not!
I’ve made an appointment with another dentist for next week for the antibiotic and the bonding. The new dentist I chose has a 5 Star rating. I can certainly understand now why this dental practice has such poor ratings on Unilocal.
Avoid this dental practice.

Okay, so first off this smile care is a brand new staff, so all these bad reviews are probably from the previous staff… So disregard.
Dr. Kim is the best dentist in town, she will take care of yo teeth real good and make all the nasty nasty in that mouth go away. legit.
Nam the hygienist is so awesome, she won’t beat up your teeth and make it such a painful experience, she’s super good and thorough. And give you that million dollar smile!
The office staff: where do I start Victoria and Lety are so welcoming and nice, they will take care of you and make sure your appointment is on point. They won’t sell you crap you don’t need.
The office manager– Tiffany, she’s so cool and nice and gotta say… She’s pretty hot. Great smile to represent smilecare lol! (No pun intended) ;)
Bottom line, most welcoming and approachable staff. Don’t let the smilecare brand push you away from this one! All the staff runs the office independently from each other… By far the best place in San Diego!

This place is terrible. I had an appointment with the orthodontist to get my braces removed. I had just graduated college and had moved to Nor Cal and had to make a special 7hr drive to go to my appointment. My appointment was at 9am and I got a call at 9:01 (as I was walking in) that my appointment was canceled. I explained my situation and they did not seem to care at all. I was so upset and they just kept on saying well there is nothing we can do, sorry. I then had to wait one more month with my braces until I could come back to San Diego to get them removed.
Their dental hygienist is amazing, so I want to give them credit for that but there is just so many issues with their lack of professionalism, organizational skills, and the managements disregard of patient needs that I can never go back there.

RIPOFF. Beware any dentist office that has a «finance manager» (if that’s the right term).
I came in to get my teeth cleaned and get x-​rays after not going to the dentist for a couple years. I know I have a filling that needs to get redone and I do brush and floss. After checking me out the finance woman was quick to jot down some options by hand of what the dentist recommended and didn’t really explain any of them beyond the title of the procedure. All together they suggested about $ 4,500 in crowns and fillings. This cost is beyond what my insurance was willing to cover. I ended up naively agreeing to $ 800 to get a deep cleaning done. She mentioned a «laser treatment» along my gum line was the best way to go for the cleaning. I wasn’t too clear if my insurance was reimbursing me for this at the time.
When I was going over my bill after the fact and saw that $ 600 of the $ 800 I now owed was the OPTIONAL laser portion of it I was pissed. I never would have agreed to that if that was explained to me. I didn’t receive any sort of itemized list until everything was done.
This is the only business I can think of where I left feeling so cheated. I’m still paying off this damn bill and didn’t even get anything fixed! A tooth cleaning that costs as much as a smart TV? I felt compelled to post this after talking to two old friends and realized they had the exact same experience with Smile Care. STAY AWAY.
I should add that I did call back and ask for a refund on the laser portion, which took about 15 min and didn’t cost them any supplies. They said I could apply it to getting all the crowns done but refused a refund.
If I can say anything else to cost this place business let me know.

Will never come back to this place. They just want to sell you services you dont really need and tell you that your insurance will cover it when in reality it wont! They pretty much told i needed treatment for my gums and they couldnt do a cleaning unless i got the treatment, told them i didnt want it and they sent me to another person to convince me. Went to another dentist and they told me i didnt need it and they did my cleaning without the gum treatment. In other words they were trying to sell me this treatment when i didnt really need it. They are just out there to steal your money! Oh an the insurance was not going to cover it becaise they also said i didnt need it

i am not sure how other dentistries work but its safe to say this facility is as good as it gets! The people who work there make you feel welcomed and comfortable without a doubt that you are being taken care of. The atmosphere is great and i appreciate their strive to make it as welcoming as they can by putting a hawaiian touch to it. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in dental work so good luck at the aloha office!

I have never yelled at people who give service to me in my life, but this place made me yell. They refused to get me just regular cleaning, insisting to do some special cleaning (assuming that is very pricy based on othe reviews). I explained everything why i need regular cleaning for now and ill do special cleaning a little later. Bulgarian doctor (I don’t remember her name) said she can’t let me have a regular cleaning because she could be sued by that instead of special cleaning. I spent 3 hrs there until I got the answer I can’t do the cleaning. This place is full of shits and dishonests. Waste of time.

DO yourself or your family a favor by not going to this place.
total chaos, to get an appt for cleaning, its two months out. When you arrive, you will sit there for at least an hour before you seen. basically, for an 3pm appt, you will be out by 530.
they overcharge and receptionist sucks, no customer serviceskills what so ever, speak spanish at the desk like they were in a flea market in tijuana.
SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS
WISH THE DENTIST WOULD READ THESE REVIEW AND MAKE CHANGES