Ep. 12: A Comprehensive Look at Creating a Lifetime Warranty

Part 10:00

This is Podpopuli, podcast for the people. Hello and welcome to another episode of Beyond the Arches. We are today talking about lifetime warranties and what's in a warranty and how do you evaluate a warranty, what's out there. And so naturally we have our warranty person, our point of contact, our quarterback, Erica. Welcome back, Erica. Thank you. We've done a few things with Erica so far, but her baby, and we've alluded to this before, but her baby is the project of the lifetime warranty.

Yes. And what I'm proud to sort of, what we're going to work through here in the warranty scenario is sort of, we'll say explain our side, maybe brag a little bit, but it'll mostly come out of just this. This was probably the best thing. This was probably the best thought out program that we've had. And Erica ended up getting this as her sort of main big project that she's the quarterback on. And that mainly speaks to, we've talked about it before, you make up for a lot of shortcomings that I have and really like to cross the T's and dot the I's.

And so this sort of was the project that fell in your lap because it's very naturally catered to you. And where did that come from? So a lot of offices have some version of some sort of, we'll call it insurance warranty, and we'll talk about guarantee and warranty in a second, but they have some sort of offering for replacement if you have failure or some sort of avenue for getting the patient made whole in some way, shape, or form.

It varies between two years. Three years, five years. Some people claim lifetime. We feel pretty strongly we're the leader in the lifetime offering, but they have some sort of something. And so a big deal for the consumer or the patient is to sort of sort out what's going on here. How do I know what's going to be good and how will I be most protected? Where do I feel the most secure? And all of the things that go into it.

And to that, you know, the other thing that it kind of breaks into is some people have rules that nobody else can touch their work, otherwise you void their warranty. Right. Some people have rules where I've heard of some kind of crazy thing where let's say it's a five-year warranty, right? This is a couple of people locally. Five-year warranty and the implant lasted, let's say it lasted three years. They'll charge. They'll amortize. Let's say it was a $10,000 procedure.

They'll take that and say, well, it's about $2,000 a year worth of use. And so I'm going to charge you $6,000 instead of 10 to redo that. And they kind of like knock yourself, pit yourself against yourself for the timeline. So where do we stand? ▶Well, for years we were five-year, five-year warranty. No questions asked. And you were supposed to get a, you know, a five-year warranty. We get a cleaning once a year. And we said, well, you know, we have a lot of patients from out of state.

So why wouldn't we allow other people to touch them? There's not much to be broken there. So if you're from Massachusetts, why can't you get cleaned there? And as long as you're getting cleaned, if you have a problem, let's fix it. Right? And Erica, what is the problem with that type of, what's the problem? What's the main thing we ran into when it came to that? I would say that the main thing that we ran into when it came down to it is that patients, honestly, were not holding themselves to that standard of going locally and getting that cleaning done.

Exactly. Sometimes they were able to do it and they would have a really kind of tricky time finding a provider who would actually accept it, even though we are more than happy to send them there, more than happy to provide any documentation, any x-rays, any surgical notes, clinical notes. To help them along that way. Some other providers didn't feel comfortable, I guess, touching that prosthesis. Comfortable or just didn't want to get in the mix, which is fine and understandable.

Now, when that patient does that, let's say it's, we'll just keep on Massachusetts. I went and came to see you. You're my person for point of contact for if I have a problem. I live in Massachusetts. I went to the first year, you know, the guy cleaned them. Second year, fine. Third year, you know, I didn't really go in the last 18 months. But guess what? I broke, I chipped a tooth. Oh, yeah. I call you. What happens to done and one in that scenario?

Done and one in that scenario is essentially kind of cleaning up a disaster. Right. Because I didn't do my side, right? Correct. But because of the way that it works and the fact that I gave a five-year warranty, me now being done and one, we would always end up fixing and making it. Which is fine. Absolutely. That patient has no idea that they have walked themselves into a disaster. It's kind of something that we know on our end.

Exactly. And so what we've done here is we've kind of walked down the trail of, at first glance, you look at a three-year and a five-year and you say, oh, great, you know, as the consumer, great, I'm covered. But then generally, especially in a hybrid world, it's really hard to keep and maintain that group. And there's always going to be a group of people that take it, very, very seriously. Let's say a third of the people take it very seriously.

They're only ever going to let us touch it. They make an excuse and come in as a vacation every year. They live local. And so then they're going to get treated here every time. And those people are responsible and they get rewarded for usually having less problems. But done and one was constantly getting pinched. We were, I shouldn't even just call it a done one thing. As a specialty inside of dentistry, hybrid dentistry, dentistry constantly gets pinched and you've cost this person a lot of money.

We'll say wiped their savings or cost them a lot. And so they feel like they've already paid for it regardless of the responsibility beyond. And then the onus is on, the charge is on us to make it right. And that's fine. We did it for years, but devoid of their responsibility, right? Yes. And so when we were coming up with, the lifetime warranty or coming up with some sort of solution that address that, right? The problem is mostly you're not getting any income for cleaning.

You're not getting to see that patient. You're not getting to reinforce the rules and regulations. And so many of these people end up following, if you don't have a good recall program, they admit they mainly end up falling sort of by the wayside, right? And until they have a problem and then they come back and then they kind of get in, in the way or they become a problem again and you have to fix it. Because you also don't want them to go on Facebook and say, well, I had this five year warranty.

I'm not going to tell you that I didn't get taken care of, but now they're saying that they're not going to fix it. Right. And so we, for, for public facing, we would always kind of fix it. So how do we fix that? Well, we kind of went back through and said, you know, if we keep people responsible, then the chance of us having a better result and having that, being able to keep that low cost, is going to be beneficial for both parties, right?

We're going to keep them responsible to the cleaning and we're going to stay responsible to the teeth. Right. And if properly taken care of, I have no problem ensuring it and making sure that that stays longterm. Right. And so that's kind of where we got that from. Right. Right. So I was actually going to ask you too. So why is it so important to get yearly maintenance on these prosthesis? Yeah. So, so actually that's a wonderful question.

So the, when you look at the research, the research is almost like very unanimously, very clear that you almost don't even need to take these out. Right. The problem isn't in the cases that don't need to be taken out. The problem comes in sort of the touch points of a person that's not kind of cleaning properly, or maybe a screw is getting old. Like a screw will wear over time, especially when you're chewing it on every day and maybe a part or a piece is a little bit loose and you can't identify that because the majority of it is still locked down.

And so for the most part, we want to see it cleaned every year, not necessarily for the cleaning and the longevity of that part, but sort of for the touch point and sort of the oil change, if you will, making sure that all of the gaskets and all of everything is running right. And that, you know, your combustion is correct and your fuel lines are good. And so it's more of a touch point and it's more of a reinforcing and it's more of a taking care of things.

So let's see if you can explain why, when we set up the lifetime warranty, why would we make it where it is a monthly relief fee, but including the cleaning rather than be a cleaning program? So while we were creating the lifetime warranty, we decided to make it on in monthly or annual base payment due to the fact that this holds the patients a lot more accountable for actually getting those yearly cleanings done. Because if it was something that you could prepay for, if you could pay it out for the next five years, yet that patient has only come in for one yearly maintenance protocol, that is not our protocol.

That is not what we are enforcing. So we do not encourage that. But at the same time, that patient is not able to come back at us and say, well, I'm covered under a lifetime warranty. You might have this lifetime warranty in your back pocket, but you didn't hold up your end. Exactly. It's it's a, and that's the difference between guarantee and warranty, right? A warranty is sort of that thing that you kind of keep along the way you're, you have a job, you do it.

I have a job. I do it. We work together and we work towards it. Mm-hmm. And it's not like we're going to look for an excuse to kick you out. There's, there are in the paperwork, there are several sort of hurdles that both of us have to go through. We kind of have to put you on warning. We'll probably see you at a closer timeline once, et cetera, et cetera. But it's a hand in hand walking together.

A guarantee would be more like I gave you that cup and it's never going to dent. And when it dents, just send it to me and I'll fix it. Right. You're covered forever. Right. That's my guarantee to you. Because of that. And why is there a difference? Well, it's the human body and it's not a piece of insulated stainless steel, right? Mm-hmm. There's a lot of things that can happen that make it so that if a person doesn't do the job to take care of it, I can't warranty it.

I can't rather guarantee since we're talking about the differentiation, I can't guarantee that that will be for life. And one of the hardest things in being in this like sort of, a marketing niche of dentistry and you see it all the time too, is you have to balance like being super straight forward of, Hey, this can fail. It doesn't fail all the time, but it can, you got to take care of it. This isn't a lifetime solution.

And one of the things I think that we've brought to the table, to the industry, sort of the best, or one of the things I think we do the best is really just kind of being that transparent thing of saying like, well, there's a reality here, you know, like you can go to that guy and he says that it never has a failure, but that's not true. And he's lying through his teeth. Like we'll tell you the percent and the odds will also tell you why we're doing a warranty, not a guarantee.

And, and it has to do with we're involved in this. It's a two way street. It's a relationship. It's a guy and a girl or a girl and a girl and a guy and a guy. Like it's, it's a relationship. It's a significant other. It's, it's what we all have, right? There's, there's work that goes into it, you know, sometimes, sometimes juggling and getting that point across to patients is kind of finding yourself somewhere in the middle of getting the point across appropriately and not scaring them away at the same time.

Exactly. And it's a very hard line to sort of balance. And so I think what I like about this lifetime warranty is, and we also, also we, we do offer two years that's included. Yes. Right now that's significantly less than five years and three years, but it's a, it's enough time for, for a person to have healed, gotten used to it, address their complaints, kind of get their life maybe back together, et cetera. Uh, if they're, if they're concerned from that side of point or point of view.

And so it's a, it's, there's still, it's, it's, there's still something included. I mean, we're still backing up our work, but if you want to take the leap of faith, it's not that much more, you can come along this path with us. And what I like about it is it kind of fits two little parts of the dentistry. You can still get the sort of covered and it's paid for and included. We're still backing up our work.

This isn't a scenario where we're trying to make more revenue on the patients. We're trying to make more revenue on the patients to keep the whole group going forward and keeping them all responsible, which is kind of brings us to the discussion of what happened with, uh, the people that were on five year from the beginning. Uh, and how we transition them over. Right. That was something we didn't have a good platform to kind of come out and say, this is where we stand and this is where we want to be.

And this is how we, we are developing this. So this is a cool discussion because we're able to kind of have a platform to kind of pitch our point. ▶And from our perspective, the way that we handled it is we allowed anyone that was on, whatever point in their journey in the five-year warranty to re-up with a cleaning, get on, get back on track and keep the warranty as intended for the rest of their five years. Anyone who was overdue was allowed the opportunity.

Correct. Yes. Anyone that has slacked off, because again, this is a constant problem, right? Um, this is just as much their responsibility to take care of as ours. And so we, we wanted to sort of have a rectifying point. Good, good, good point there. We had to have a point in time where we kind of trued up the scales. Right. And so anyone that was overdue, be it two years, three years, four years, whatever it was, we gave them the opportunity to come in and get a cleaning or get a cleaning somewhere else, um, with records, get trued up and come and stay on their five year.

Just as if we had signed the paper, just like we did five years ago. Exactly. If they, if they wanted the opportunity to go on to the lifetime warranty, we allowed them a window of opportunity, really like six months, basically to then true up if they were out or stay up if they were in, uh, you know, in compliance and switch over into this new program because we knew that we would be getting phone calls about, I was only ever offered five years.

So we were like, what are you guys doing with this lifetime thing? I want the lifetime and how do, how would we make, we were, um, not concerned, but we wanted, we wanted to treat everyone fairly. Yes. And so we felt like if there was going to be a divide in a split in a division, you can't force everyone down the lifetime road and you can't force everyone to just stay on the five year. If you want to be super fair, generous, understanding, however you want to say it.

And so really we came up, I, we, where this started was sort of how we kind of started to, to pitch it, where it was just, you get a big group that sort of falls by the wayside. You get a group that's super responsible and, and truly like the group that is responsible is sort of covering their revenue from seeing them once a year and cleaning stuff up. It's kind of cleaning. It's kind of like paying for in, in the five year warranty world, the people that are good and responsible end up covering for the people that are not truly, that's really where the funds come from.

Yes. So we kind of wanted to make it where it wasn't anything more advantageous financially, but had a checks and balances in and to reward that. That's, that's kind of how we ended up setting everything up. The model kind of came from, as we've talked about several times in podcasts, I love to golf, my member at a club. And if I want to step out from my relationship as a, at the country club, the minute I do that and don't pay my bill and don't do my side, I have to come in as a, as if I'm brand new, fresh, right.

And you can give them all the beg, plea, whatever. Most of them will generally have like a prohibition time that you can kind of take some, take a sabbatical if you will. But for the most part, when you're done, you're done. And if you want to come back, you can't just come back three or four years later. And that ultimately was sort of the basis. And it's kind of a weird connection to make, but that was sort of the basis of why we said, let's give everyone opportunity.

You're part of the country club. You're already in here. You're paying initiation, regardless of your past of, of the bill that you didn't pay or you did pay, come on in, let's get you trued up and then you can decide. But if you don't want that, if you just want to finish this five year, which was our original agreement, then, then that's the direction that you've gone. And you're a little bit on the outside. Is it because we're totally money hungry and can't handle that?

No, it kind of goes back to your whole thing of where we would then be reinforcing a person to go. Let's say they have three more years left. We're reinforcing them to sort of be able to sort of lax off and then make a decision on whether or not they wanted to make a commitment. Right. And we really wanted to reward, the community that's taking care of themselves. And if you're not going to take care of yourself, that's fine, but there's going to be some consequences involved.

So that's kind of where we stand with ours now from a, we're pretty open when it comes to how you take care of it. Right, right. We're the, the other part of why the cleaning portion is included and why it's really what you're paying for is a lifetime warranty. Is you still have the responsibility of getting cleaned. If you, if you live in Michigan, you still need to get cleaned in Michigan. Correct. Or, or here. Granted, not everyone can come down, but we wanted to be fair and say, Hey, you can get cleaned anywhere.

But I also, we also didn't want to go through where we're an insurance company and have to re reimburse whoever did the cleaning and know whether or not they did get a job or gave it to us or, you know, gave us the records. The patients tell us to give us the records, but, but that fee, if they want that convenience that they don't want to take the time out of their life to come see us, which is fine.

That's an additional, that's going to be separate, you know, and we didn't want that to be a negotiation thing where they said, well, this is a cleaning warranty fee and my cleaning here is $400 and yours is $500. So can you give them the $400 and, you know, right. That would be like opening a can of worms. Total. Worms. And that's, that's kind of where we came to where the cleaning is included. Now on your side, since you put all the codes in and all of that, like tell me what a warranty would cover.

Our lifetime warranty. Our lifetime warranty. I'm good. I'm compliant. I'm seven years out. I'm been on the program for seven years. I've come in six years. No problem. What, what would that look like with me in the one lifetime warranty? Let's say we have one implant fail. I have one implant fail. That's seven years. I've been lifetime warranty. And then how does that look against me? Who's been on two years? Maybe I'm somewhat compliant, whatnot. What does that look like to me?

Cost-wise outside of the warranty world. So our lifetime warranty covers anything from God forbid, if you had chips, if you had breaks, if you needed a lab adjustment, if you wanted a shade adjustment, a ginger, a shade adjustment, um, any office x-rays, panoramic images. Correct me if I'm wrong. Not to interrupt, but we, um, a person in the lifetime program will get, can get one aesthetic remake in a lifetime. No, wrong, wrong. Okay. Um, so that is something that we decided to go against.

And it was a big conversation while we were discussing the warranty initially. Okay. The reason behind it is because while our patients are going through this process with us, they have try-in after try-in. If they want more, they can have as many try-ins as they want until they approve of their design. Um, so essentially when we move forward to finals with a patient, it is not necessarily clinically advised. It is when that patient is ready. It's similar to getting in for surgery after your consultation.

We're here for you the whole way through, but until you're ready, you're the one that's going to be making that call. Yep. Um, fully agree. So we do have our patients sign off on their temporary try-ins. We let them know all of the adjustments discussed with you today will be reflected in those. Once they are back, we're still happy to adjust them in the chair. We can still make tweaks and minor adjustments and changes. Um, if there, God forbid, again, is something that's not totally right, we can adjust it.

Um, but while we were having that conversation, it was voted against having an aesthetic remake for that reason specifically. Yep. Um, if somebody decided that, you know, they had their teeth done 10 years ago with us, they have a lifetime warranty, their face has maybe changed. So I can totally see why, you know, that would come up in the future. And in that case, it might be clinically advised, which is something that we approve. Um, if you're no longer functioning properly, if your face is kind of sitting differently than it was maybe 10, 15 years ago, that's definitely something that we can revisit.

Yeah. Then there's also the aspect of, for us to make, let's say that the implants are totally fine for us to make a new set of teeth on top of those implants. If a person comes in with implants from somewhere else and we approve that they're healthy enough to put teeth on top of, we will do that. Yeah. And we actually cover them inside the warranty on their implants as well. Correct.

Part 224:05

And that fee that we charge, we call it a refresh. That fee that we charge is really what most people pay for the lab cost. Right? Right. And so in this example, in that the person's 10 years out, of course, things will wear and stain over time. Let's say it's not cracked or anything, but let's say that it's just stained, right? Or their face has changed or something that may not be a scenario that we approve for an aesthetic remake inside of the warranty program.

But the cost evolved in terms of getting them refreshed. Is really less than really any other dentist can even make that at their cost for. And so we've felt very strongly that our cost positioning to the patient, our proposition, our cost proposition to them is very fair because they can't, a dentist, their own best friend can't even make it for that much. And so I think that's kind of also where we kind of went to is if you need an aesthetic remake, we've been more than, there's nobody, I won't say nobody.

There are very few people, very few groups that will go through the pain and process of tweaking everything in as much and as willingly as we will. And because of that, what we're saying is you accepted it. You went through as much as you wanted to. It is as dialed in as you could possibly imagine. So therefore it's a little bit on you as well. If you need it remade, you can come in, come back sort of through the program and get a refresh, which a refresh is essentially what most lab costs are.

So fair is fair. That kind of brings into a, you know, that kind of introduces a refresh. A refresh is a pretty cool program because a patient can come from, let's say a temporary and they're in another office. And this happens actually more frequently than most people would probably understand. And it works very simply because, because the parts and pieces pretty much work pretty well together. And by the time they're going to come to us, we're going to have an idea of whether or not those are healed well enough.

And I have no problem once we get those records. And once you go through the process of making the teeth, we have no problem sort of warranting those because our, our way of getting teeth back in and an implant back in is pretty simple. ▶And so once we go through that approval process, we're able to put a new set of teeth on top of them and warranty the underside. The implants are in compliance as well, making sure that they work okay with all of our technology that we use in our office.

So that's a huge thing that gets run by you. Yup. But we see more of those people than you would expect. Kind of at first glance. Quite a few. Yeah. And that's a cool program because it allows sort of someone that's, we'll say, made a different decision, seen their friend, want to pivot. It allows them to pivot. They're not sort of locked out. And I think that that's sort of also the point to the, the we'll call them disgruntled.

They're not really disgruntled, but the, the people that were a little bit upset that, Oh,

Part 327:18

I paid for this five-year warranty. Now, what do I do when I get to the finish line? You can come back in. We're saying as long as those implants are okay and they're maintained, you can come back in and then you're going to go through the process of selecting teeth again, however you want. Maybe you don't want any changes, but, but you can get a brand new set of teeth and now come back in through the warranty process so long as you're approved.

So there is a, it's not a full fee scenario. Correct. Unless your implants are failed, then, then things kind of get expensive. And we had somebody, I don't know, a month or two ago and it was kind of like the perfect example of why you want it. It was somebody that was pretty much out of compliance and they showed up with two or three of the implants bad. And for him, that bill would have been thousands. Yeah.

How many? 12, 14, 13, between 12 and 15, probably with the lower archery make. Once you're out of compliance and out of warranty, it doesn't take much for that price to get almost to the full price of the full fee. Absolutely. ▶Because one implant alone, that's expensive on its own. And then you have to replace the teeth. Cause you can't just refit them. And then typically that's when a redesign comes up too. Cause patients think, you know, since we're going in there, we're kind of working on some things there go, Oh, you know, last year I kind of thought that I would give you a call because I wanted to tweak this.

Yeah. I never got around to it, but now that I'm here, can we, can we address that while we're in the office kind of going in for this one? Absolutely. It's, it's a tough thing because you want, you want to accommodate everybody. I feel like it might be like parenting. I don't, I don't have any kids, but, or, you know, I have a bunch of dogs. You want to give the dogs all the love you want to give your kids all the love you want to give them everything that they possibly want for Christmas.

But at the end of the day, it's probably not best for them, right? You got to, they have to learn under, they have to learn and understand responsibility. You don't just get all of your Christmas gifts. Right. And so that's a hard balance is trying to maintain the public image, maintain that you're coming from a good place and also be fair and reasonable and kind of every scenario. And I feel like we struck a really good balance for that.

You know, we want people to come in and get cleanings. And what's great about when people come in for cleanings, you know, we talk a lot about relationships, but it's great to have a followup and a care level and a group of people. That are coming in constantly for their cleanings. Right. Like love seeing patients back for their cleanings. We get so excited for it on our end. We're like high fives and low a week before we're like, Oh, this person's going to be coming in.

I wonder what they're going to be doing, spending their time in Florida in the summer. I'm sure they've got something cool planned. Yeah. And just building on that hygiene has been a really, really cool. Cause it's, it's a, it's something that's very, that program of all dentistry. I, I would go on record saying all dentistry of all dentistry, hybrid post operative healed hybrid followup. Cleanings are probably the least attended, most slacked off and least addressed by professionals.

And we're trying to buck that trend and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, It's a two way street. We'll take care of you. You take care of us. Now, the positive of that is a lot of these people, if you took everybody and just kind of averaged them out,

Part 431:07

we have a lot of blue collar worked for the majority of their life. Maybe they put some money into their dentistry. Maybe they didn't. That's how they ended up in this scenario. Maybe they smoked, et cetera. You name it. But that's sort of your bread and butter person. Now, that person that's been blue collar might work for a CSX train company or maintenance on an aircraft company. Something of a big corporation that they've paid for dental insurance their whole life.

I don't know what the rate is for dental insurance, but I could almost guarantee you it's less than the $700 a year that a double arch warranty is going to cost you. And so if you look at it, let's say you're coming from Virginia into a cleaning for Boco. Let's put that at a thousand bucks. And then you add the 700 bucks a year for the lifetime warranty. So you get a little bit of a vacation and it's 700 bucks.

So you're at. About $2,000 a year, 200 bucks a month. Kind of expensive, but I guarantee you that that's kind of in the range of dental insurance. It's a replacement for dental insurance. And if it is a premium, look what you're getting out of it. It's not just $5,000 spend and you're screwed or I don't know. 5,000 is actually pretty high for insurance. Yeah. It's not $1,500. Oh, this was 3,000. Now you got to come out of pocket 1,500.

Right. We're covering everything. Absolutely everything. Absolutely everything. Yeah. You know, another part that's cool is being at a point in this down this road from a corporate structure, from a efficiency standpoint, from a personnel standpoint, all of that, that we can offer this, right? This is, this is the dream day one. What do you want to do this? Right. You can't do that right away. Right. So to get to this point, it's really cool because now we're, if you look at it, we're offering, even if you include the travel expense.

We're coming really close to what a dental insurance would be. And now we're sharing responsibilities. You got to take care of yours. I got to take care of yours. And so we're building that relationship, that hand in hand. And so that's, that's what I find really cool about the lifetime warranty. I think we're very proud of it here, you know, in the office. I think a lot of our patients are really proud of it. ▶They're, they want to be proud of their teeth.

It's something that they spent a lot of money on, a lot of time on, waited forever to be able to finally do for themselves. For some patients, you know, they've waited 10, 15 years to be able to have their teeth done. To me, it only makes sense to want to cover that investment and protect it for forever. We actually have a really funny patient story. We had this patient who came inside of our office, totally unannounced, just kind of walked through the door one day when, you know, Wednesday or Thursday afternoon during a kind of a slow moment for us.

And he walked in and all of our mouths dropped because he came in and he was only, I don't even think he was at his 90 days, actually. He might've been just, just right under that. And he had a night where he was out with some friends and I guess they were drinking and he fell off of a bicycle and he actually totally split one of his arches. I don't remember if it was the upper or the lower.

I want to say it was the upper and I want to say it was right. One of the. One of the front teeth. So it was very noticeable because he walked in, we were like, what happened to you? Sure. And the first question out of his mouth was like, what do I do? You know, I'm sure he more so meant how much is this going to cost me because I just forked out X amount of money to have my teeth done.

So you can only imagine the mentally having to go through that again, three months later after you just went through that whole procedure, he was probably so terrified. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And on our end, it was really nice to know. It was a good laugh. First of all, we were laughing with him, not at him. But it was really nice to know that we have a plan. We know exactly what we're going to do. You know, we do.

So what ended up happening with him? Didn't we get him in teeth like a print like that same day? Same day. Yeah. Same day he was able to go home a lot more comfortable, I would imagine. Yeah.

Part 535:29

I do believe it was a temporary. I think he even brought it with him actually, because he was like, can you please just swap these? And I don't know if that's what he was only expecting out of that appointment that day. But. We went ahead and we basically started making him a new upper zirconia arch because we were not going to allow him to walk around with a big giant chip in it. Yeah. No. And that's that's part of what's great about sort of being digitally based as we can.

Even if he didn't come in with a temporary, we could get him straightened away really quickly, get him get him a temporary by that afternoon prototype. And then and then the final as quick as the next day or that same day, even sometimes the. If you if you relate it to stuff in life, let's call it a car, right? When you think about like, OK, I'm going to shop for Chevy and I'm going to shop at Cadillac and my shop at BMW, we all know that Chevy is less expensive than BMW and and Cadillac.

If you look at the maintenance records for all three of those car companies, they'll be let's let's call them really close. But let's just say that BMW and Cadillac. And Cadillac has the edge, right? But nobody at Cadillac or BMW, when you buy that, are going to say my premium is here because nothing will ever happen wrong to this car. Right. And we're saying the same thing, right? I can't sell you this and say nothing bad will ever happen to this.

People that say we've never had a zirconia break, you know, X, Y, Z. It's the only thing that's indestructible. Uh, excuse me. Like, what do you like? What do you what do you throw? What erroneous information are you throwing away? You know, like what? Oh, well, you chipped it on concrete. So that doesn't count as a chip, right? Everyone that has ever delivered a hybrid sees fractures. They see problems like it happens just like it does in a BMW.

But what do you pay the premium at BMW for the convenience? You know, my mother. My mom, maybe four or five years ago, was shopping for a new car. She ultimately ended up with a Mercedes, like little SUV. The reason she went with them was because they dropped off a car for her when she needed oil changes and would take it, go oil change and bring it back. That's worth every penny. She paid the premium for that, right?

We pay not for the car. We want the car to break down as little as possible. But we all understand if you just turn it into a car, you go, well, yeah, you know, like it does need an oil change and that's on me. I want really good service there. Like how good is the call the coffee if I have to sit in the service center? Will they send a car out to me? Those are the premiums that you're sort of paying for the premium brand stuff.

It's not necessarily how reliable it is. Right. And I hate when we get down these things because I make it sound like almost everyone has a problem. But I really like to push that. It's about moving forward with a patient. It's about getting a good result and keeping them happy. More than it is. What's the incidence of problem, right? I don't want to talk about issue of problem that just happens. If you're responsible taking care of it, if you put your faith in me and your dollar in me and our company and you as the employee, like that all kind of filters out to everybody.

If you put it in us, then then we're going to get you good coffee and good service and take care of it. And in order to do that, you have to take care of the car. Right. You know, um, just the same thing too. It's always kind of funny because you think about even us offering the two year warranty right away is a little bit like if you bought a car and you said, uh, okay, great. I'm going to go drive it.

I'm not going to get to get an insurance yet. I'll do that at two years after your warranties up and you smash it into a tree. You can't just bring it back into XYZ dealership and say, well, this thing broke. Yeah, I broke it, but I broke. Yeah. In dentistry, we kind of have to, and I'm not complaining about it. It's just, it's funny how things change when it's sort of part of you. And it's, even though it should be more personal for some reason, it doesn't translate to be the same, but we're pushing that agenda.

We're trying with this program to bring this to the public, to give them something. We've always tried to give fair, reasonable pricing at a reasonable expectation of service, to be fair to the patient, to work with the patient and to be very straightforward and honest with them. And that's what it comes down to. Right? I mean, if you get a crown at an office, you may be understanding if it breaks, right? You want to know though, when you show up that it's not going to cost you a bazillion dollars that they're going to take care of you, that they're not going to belittle you for it.

It just happens. The lifetime warranty is something that we go through. We go through during the consultation as well. And once our reasonings are kind of explained, you know, two year warranty versus lifetime warranty, which is something that I'm sure we'll get a little bit more in depth into in a minute. But... Yeah. Actually, let's just do that now. Okay. Walk me through the talk track. Walk me through the process of, I'm on a Zoom call or I'm in a consult, you're taking up the backside.

So I've already gone through understanding how the process is and who's going to do it and all that. So you're wrapping up the discussion and I ask you, how do I make this decision and what's the timeline, right? So walk me through that part of the conversation in the consult. What am I going to be facing when I come to you? And I've got to make that decision. So we kind of compare and contrast the two options.

▶So two year warranty versus the lifetime warranty. Like we said earlier, lifetime warranty is going to cover things like chips, breaks, implant failures, relines, office adjustments, any x-rays. A bunch of shade adjustments that I've mentioned before as well, essentially for lifetime.

Part 641:42

So again, it's up to the patient, it is $700 annually or it is $59 a month. So the patients are able to choose however it fits them best. And as a side note, we actually run a fun promotional period or we're running a few fun promotions on the Facebook right now where we're actually excited because we can offer patients promo codes as like a little reward. So we do little games too. We just did March Madness actually recently.

So we did March Madness. A few of our patients were able to obtain, I believe it was like three months. I think we had a three month, one month and a two month off, something like that, which was a really fun reward. So side note, there are some perks to it too. Yeah. That's what's cool about that is that's all like the way that the warranty is structured is we can do those, which is kind of cool.

You always want to do the little like, not in like a competitive way, but you want people to be involved. Yeah. You want people to sort of be paying attention to what's going on. All of this is keeping people engaged. Yep. Absolutely. So. Okay. So two years. Two year warranty covers those similar things. Like we said before, neither of them cover aesthetic adjustments. The two year warranty. You are essentially paying for them. You are paying for that two year warranty through your cleanings that you are receiving.

So cleanings are $250 per arch or if you have the full mouth, which means upper and lower, it is a total of $500. For the yearly a la carte. For the yearly a la carte. So by that patient coming in and getting that cleaning performed for that calendar year, you are then able to get that realign. You are then able to get that shade adjustment. You are. You are essentially paying for all of those services through your teeth cleaning appointment, which I think that's actually where there's some confusion earlier about, you know, we had a lot of feedback from patients saying, like our five year warranty, I've already paid for that.

But you pay for that, all of those services that it includes through that cleaning, which is why we wanted to make it such a big point with the lifetime. Through your cleaning. In other words, doing your part. Mm-hmm. Doing your part. Which is why we wanted to make the lifetime warranty so different because you are not only paying for your cleaning with that lifetime warranty, you are paying for all of those additional services. Even the bigger ones like implant removal and implant placement, any bone grafting.

So we were able to get that clarified. ▶And with the two year warranty, you are paying for it with those annual cleanings. And that's the other, well, the other part of it too is, you know, with our lifetime warranty, it's, it's, um, there's still the responsibility that we're talking about, but there's also this freeness to it of sorts. There's a lot of competitors out there that will put out of a lifetime warranty and there's a lot of exclusions, you know, if you looked at them funny, you got to come in every two months for cleaning, which is not good.

That's that's the opposite of good. You don't want that much wear and tear on the screws. Mm-hmm. But there's a lot of rules that sort of make it so that you're always going to end up getting disqualified. It's just like a, an advertisement for show. It's a hook for show. So we tried to make it where there is responsibility, but that it's reasonable, right? We want it looked at once a year, no matter what, even if it was, even if the world came out where all of that's reimbursed and it's free and it doesn't cost me anything, et cetera.

I still want it looked at once a year. If I had it in my own mouth. Mm-hmm. I'd get it taken out once a year. Mm-hmm. Again, research says you don't really have to take it out, but that's under ideal circumstances. That's no worries about X, Y, Z. That's in a super well-maintained person. As a general whole, I want to look at once a year, I want to make sure that it's okay. Mm-hmm. And once a year, isn't going to hurt anything as it relates to the process or the procedure itself, the screws, et cetera.

It's just making sure that there is an accessibility. Mm-hmm. It's a process of wear and tear on the places that you can't see. Right. And the other thing too that I think is interesting is, in that $500 example, so let's say I go down the two-year road, I'm paying $500 a year to maintain that service, right? Mm-hmm. And it's on me to do that, but that $500 a year is not price protected. Correct. So if me as business owner, my costs go up, et cetera, and we decide we have to change that fee, you're kind of on the outside looking in.

Mm-hmm. Mind you, that $250 is while you were under the two-year warranty, so we haven't even touched on people who are not covered under any warranty at this time. Exactly. Which is then how much? Our current fee is $350 per arch. So it becomes the same as the lifetime. Correct. So we're really trying to encourage people to do their part and take part in this lifetime parking. Mm-hmm. We're not trying to make it a cost center or a problem for them.

We're trying to encourage you into it. Mm-hmm. I think that's why it makes it such an easy handoff during the consultation. Once patients hear that, they're like, it's almost a no-brainer that you're going to be choosing the lifetime warranty. I always tell everybody too, if you just want to try it out for a few years and see if you like it, see if you're benefiting from it, then let's do it. Mm-hmm. You never know as well. You never know as well what's going to change.

I've been doing this full time for 12 years now, pretty much exclusively hybrids for 12 years. Mm-hmm. ▶And the materials have changed, the implants have changed, everything's changed. Mostly the same, but everything's changed in a very little tweaky, you almost don't ever even notice it way. Materials of the teeth change, right? Mm-hmm. So one thing that's cool too for lifetime. Lifetime is we're open and going to be leading programs with those people. They're a little bit like VIP.

It's not like a premium VIP, like if you pay for a concierge physician, you're paying on top of having that in-network provider, you're paying that on top of your medicine. Mm-hmm. We're almost trying to provide a concierge service. It doesn't really, it's kind of net neutral, but no doubt people that are in the lifetime warranty. We'll sort of get mini VIP type sneak peeks towards things, opportunities to be first look at X, Y, Z material, or there's going to be programs that end up with them getting the benefit to start with.

Discounts on, let's say that the latest, greatest, newest material comes out and it turns out that it's great and the best thing ever and we want everyone to switch over. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We're going to do that for a fee, but it's going to be pretty well discounted for our best patients, which are going to be the ones that are complying in the lifetime warranty. Absolutely. And that's, it's hard as a business owner to convey that the intention of all of this is literally to be as fair as possible.

I'm not trying to buy a new car on this, right? The way that the metrics, just like a sneak peek, we've always said that we kind of like tip into a little bit. Yeah. A little bit of the metrics in terms of the costs of dentistry and stuff here and there. Probably won't give up all the secrets, but the metrics are this, essentially, in terms of what ends up costing in redo and what comes in income stream of cleanings, even with the numbers that we have now, pretty much, and let's throw in part of your salary since you spend some time on that, kind of when you mix the two together, it's a zero.

Mm-hmm. Right? It's a zero, just a net neutral, which for me as the business owner is great. I don't have to worry about it coming out of pocket or this big wave, and we've been doing this long enough that I kind of know what's predictable. So I know that this is a pretty even Steven sort of proposition, and from a business ownership standpoint, whenever we were looking to expand and taking on any type of investment or involvement, that was always a big point of contention.

Like, hey, I'm going to give you X, Y, Z for X, Y, Z. Mm-hmm. But I'm going to also take off this much because you've got five-year worth of people, or let's say you have an average of three and a half years left on the warranty, or two and a half years left on these warranties, and I'm going to take off an extra 10 grand a patient. They could make up whatever number they wanted to, because they're such a big liability, right?

I'm going to have to pay somebody to redo this, all of this stuff. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what this has done is made us stronger as a company for a couple of reasons. One, we're not out of pocket for those expenses. The group that is taking care of themselves are also really just kind of taking care of their own expense, right? Yeah. It's a full insurance. They're just sharing the pot around and around and around.

Part 751:13

And from a business standpoint, it being net neutral is amazing for me, because no longer is it a liability that I would have to, like if I want to build another office and take on some... Some partnerships, I don't have to come to them and explain that as a liability. Now that's a... If anything, it's an asset, but it's more net neutral, so that's not even a discussion. And I also can build the community at this net neutral basis, right?

And that's rewarding. That's great. That's what we want to do. We want to stay in business. You have to be at least net neutral, right? At least, yes. And so this program hasn't brought any additional profit. Or cars, or boats, or offices to the world of Dun & One. But it has made it so that we're walking together hand in hand, stride in stride. It offers the chance to be creative with programs, be creative with patient outreach, be creative with new releases of materials and new releases of screws.

Yeah. And designs and whatnot, but also give that patient that peace of mind. Right. And I feel like this conversation, it's very hard as a patient to see in between those lines if you don't get to hear this conversation. So I think this conversation is very important, not only for the upcoming patients as they're deciding which direction they want to go and who is going to do this, provider in Massachusetts, a big company. Yeah. But also for us, regardless, this kind of can help them filter that out.

But it's also for our past patients, our big group of people that are shareholders, if you will. Right? That we have a responsibility to provide value to. I think it's important for them to hear this isn't a program of profit, this is a program of net neutral and responsibility and care and long-term hand in hand relationship. Right. So, you know, that's kind of like what we're doing. I think what I have to say about that, did we miss anything about that?

Let me think. These things get pricey when you are trying to replace them as one-offs. And I think it would be a peace of mind if I was going through this procedure, I feel like that would be the number one thing that I would take home from this conversation is, I can have a peace of mind. Let's call it dental insurance. I pay for some sort of insurance somewhere. I pay for some sort of dentistry somewhere. This is now my new cost of ownership.

But what did I get out of it? I got the peace of mind. It was expensive. Probably, ultimately it was kind of my fault to end up in this scenario, but I can make something of it. I can not feel bad about it. ▶I can have awesome teeth and I can have that peace of mind to like move forward. Absolutely. And I have a good crew of people at my back while I'm doing it. Absolutely. And for those just like, you know, you go to school and you act up and you go to detention.

Part 854:26

That's kind of your first warning and then you get put on probation and then you get expelled. Well, what happened to Jimmy? How did you end up getting out? How did you end up getting expelled? Well, they went through the steps and we have avenues to go through that. That is that sort of number of steps you first, we say, oh, you're not taking care of this. You're being irresponsible with it or you didn't pay your bill.

There's this X, Y, Z probationary period. This is how we're going to handle it. After that, then you're sort of on total blast, we'll call it probation and then you're expelled. Right? So it's a two way street and we're not, I hope to never end up down that road with any of anyone. I unfortunately have done this long enough that I know that there will be, but we've offered ourselves avenues and offer the patient a way to make up for it.

And so that's, what's cool too, is that you get a lot of naysayers with length of time and they go, well, we don't insure ours at all because we do the best we can. And you know, none of medicine is insured. Well, this is a really big expense. You don't want to just take that leap of faith. And also, um, The other big pushback is typically it's, well, how long is this company in bed in business and how long will they take care of you?

Right? Let's say we went over, we went out of business tomorrow. We didn't take even in the five year people, I don't see it. What we offer them that price, it came with a five year warranty, kind of like was the add on for free, right? But when, when we get out of this, we're like, when, when we come to the end of that five year program. Which we'll definitely be in business that long, um, when we come out of that, we're going to have people that are on this residual lifetime warranty, right?

Even if we went out of business tomorrow, I feel like I still could sleep well at night because I offered them that service all the way up until that, and we're not going out of business by the way, but you know, it's not like I, it's not like we collected to your point. We didn't collect six years in advance or we didn't, we didn't sell them a $10,000 package. And, and include the lifetime warranty. And then they got gypped out of 20 years.

This is sort of like pay as you go, be as responsible as you go. And again, I have no, no intention of shutting this down or, or anything like that, but I feel like I can sleep well at night or we can sleep well at night knowing even if the world falls down tomorrow, that we didn't collect anyone's money and not provide a service all the way until the last minute of when we needed to. Yeah. Well, that's all with that sock.

Absolutely. Yes. But if you got seven years out of it, is that unfair? No, you paid, basically you paid for a cleaning. You took care of it. Thank you. And you were taken care of, you know, so that might be a little cold hearted and, and rash for some people to digest, but unfortunately it's the cold hard truth. I can't tell you that we're going to be in business for a hundred years. Like, you know, go back to Hershey's, they didn't know they were going to be around for as long as they've been.

Yeah. There was at some point, like, they were putting people at risk. Like, you know, maybe their chocolate was making people sick. They could have gone out of business. Anyone can go out of business. Right. But as a business owner, what you have to provide your patients is enough service and enough responsibility that they, at the end of the day, can never say that they got gypped out of something or didn't get what they paid for. Absolutely.

And I hope that this conversation helps people understand that it wasn't the five-year kind of was something that they paid for. It's something that came included. Our price is still very much the same as what it was. It didn't pay a premium and we collected on these people's five years. We collected what we wanted for that. And just out of responsibility and marketing, we said, we'll cover you. But you need to take care of things. And then a lot of people fall by the wayside.

But this is a better. This is a better avenue for everybody at play. This makes us healthier as a company. We should make them feel better because we're able to be in business longer. It allows us to feel better about the service and sort of better about all the results. Absolutely. Anything you can think of? I think we've touched on all things warranty on my end that I can think of right now. Has it been fun going back through the...

I'm sure there were stressful moments because you had to deal with some heat and some good patients. The transition was a challenge. Yeah. But now you're flying smooth and easy. Yes. It's pretty fun to watch those numbers kind of bump up as we add patients. So that's been really fun. Absolutely. Now, like I said, the lifetime warranty basically speaks for itself when we're having the consultation. So it's not a challenge trying to even persuade people to get on it.

Because we're not persuading anything. It's kind of a no-brainer at that point. It really is a no-brainer. Now, the only scenario that it's not a no-brainer is when you're not really sure if you're going to be able to commit to it. But even still, at the end of the day, what are you really losing? Probably not much if you just sign up for it. What do you think the breakdown is? So if I'm on the other end of this and I haven't had this done yet, I'm listening to all this.

I'm like, oh, that makes sense. But I still don't know where I fall if I'm leaning one way or the other. If you had to give it a percent of all new patients post when we made the switch over and started really presenting this as these are your two options. If you were to give it approximate percentage, what percent goes lifetime? What percent goes to a year? Just a generalization. So if I'm the listener, I'm thinking, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

I don't feel too alone in the 15% category or whatever it may be. I would say right now we're seeing about a 90%. Lifetime, 10% two-year. More often than not, it's because that person who signed up for the two-year warranty just knows for the fact that they already have an office that they feel comfortable working with going back home. Would you say that's probably the biggest motivator of why a person is okay? Yes. Makes sense. I do.

I think a lot of patients geared towards that two-year who particularly are not local to Florida but have already done previous research and know that they're going to be comfortable going to somewhere. Somewhere that's close to their house. And at the end of the day, I hope we've added a value enough that people see that regardless of which way you go, it's still an insanely fair value. Even if you don't do any warranty for the price and the offering and the service, et cetera, the patient reviews, the patient experiences, which come through the wash, this podcast is all done in one centric.

But it's because I feel... I don't feel bad boasting about this one because we put a lot of time and thought into it and really did our due diligence in terms of what's the message we want to communicate, what do we want to get back out of it, what do we want to give. And so I feel very proud of where we stand in this. This is one of the things, you know me, I'll say everything works and it's fine and go anywhere you want.

When it comes to warranty, I really feel strongly we can't be beat very well. I agree. I'm very, very proud of the warranty that we've built. ▶I'm very proud of the message that we send off. I'm very proud that it's just about like that next level of trust that we're building with the patients and they know that God forbid anything happened to them, they have somewhere to come home to essentially. Yeah. So another thing that's really cool and one of the reasons why we're able to offer the price point that we are for the level of service we are, we've already kind of covered through discussing surgery.

And time and all of that, the efficiencies that have come out through just converting it through the protocol that we have. One of the reasons why we're able to offer such a strong warranty and such a backed product doesn't have anything to do with, doesn't have a lot to do with how infrequently versus everybody else that this has a problem. We're right in the middle of where everybody else sits. If somebody else breaks. 10 times and they see the same amount of patients as ours is going to break eight or nine or 10.

They're going to be very similar, right? But one of the things that's a big selling point that is a really small nuance is that in the way that we build a case for a patient, let's just say Casey, we just talked to our patient Casey. In her case, if she has an implant go bad for her experience, replacing that implant. And incorporating the new information of the new screw and getting her that exact same set of teeth is such a minimal, easy, breezy ride that it can be done on the fly.

Yeah. That is nothing out of her life. It is a little bit of pain and it is something else, but it's, it's, it's almost nothing. Right. And so for her, that's a big sell. But for us, it's also a big sell because it takes less time out of our life. It's a piece of nine. Knowing that. That same set of teeth are going to go in and they're going to be just as happy as me, the same color.

And so for our side, it's more efficient for the patient side is more efficient. And so addressing problems, unlike when you're going across seas and they're just kind of doing it for cheaper because they are doing it for cheaper. We're doing it for less because of how efficient we are, but also in the event of a problem or in the event of a warranty coverage, the process to fix it is minimal cost in time for us. But also minimal cost in time and efficiency and peace of mind to know that you're going to get that same set of teeth back for the patient.

And I always tell people, if you get this done traditional way, again, it'll work in Indiana. I'm trying to spit out all the states here in Indiana and you have a problem and let's just say I'm doing it and I'm doing it the old way in Indiana. Okay. I'm not allowed to, I'm only allowed to work here, but let's say I have a license in Indiana. You're going to have to sit through me, sit with me through every single one of those visits to sort of rebuild and start back over for the most part, right?

There's some exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, we're going to rebuild it from square one. And when we do that, it's, that's going to be out of my pocket. I'll be mad, patient will be mad. It's going to murder your social calendar, et cetera. And those teeth are not even going to look the same. It's traumatic. Yeah. I mean, how many people we've, we've had people that come in and they get frustrated with that.

It's a process when they have a failure or whatnot and they come in with like two, three sets of teeth and they're thinking, man, this guy couldn't get across the finish line. I'm thinking, man, that guy spent a lot of money and he must be, you guys must be at odds or at each other's throat. Yeah. And so even from that aspect, having that efficiency allows us to offer this program for something fair and reasonable, but also at the same exact time provides a ton of value to the patient because it doesn't take that time off their life.

Right. And so. We've really, we've done a lot of boasting here, but the main take home that we want to give is we're coming from a good place. We want everyone to understand where it comes from and we're very proud of it. That's, that's, like I said, that's, that's one of the things I will stand on as being where we really excel and stand ourselves out. Absolutely. I agree. Awesome. Well, Erica, I appreciate you running. The program for the lifetime warranty.

You've done a wonderful job. Thank you. We've got right around 400, 800, almost a thousand arches now signed up. So that's great. And we continue to see those patients with a happy face and take care of them. And so that's always a good feeling. So. Definitely. I'm sure we'll have you back soon. I appreciate your contribution. And for you, the listener, hopefully you don't have too many questions, but if you do send them our way, let us know, like, subscribe, comment, all that jazz.

But we appreciate your time and allowing us to, to take some time out of your day and hope you learned something. Appreciate it.