Fabienne wanted to sink her teeth at Bestsmile – today she regrets her decision

Fabienne Patriarca was annoyed by her misaligned teeth. Until she saw more and more advertising posters: “Chang your life. Secretly.” – from 40 CHF per month. This is how the Bestsmile dentist chain, which specializes in transparent braces, advertises. Patriarca decided to start a treatment there, she tells Watson.

The Lucerne woman was given a box of several braces made for her – but the first one didn’t fit her. “I was in pain and my gums were torn open,” says Patriarca. The Bestsmile dentist then “sharpened” the splint to fit. But soon after, it broke. Not all rails had the same problem, but several did. The promise to send her a new box was also not kept.

Patriarca is disappointed: “In hindsight, I would have gone straight to a specialist.” She quickly got to the end result, but she wouldn’t recommend the way to it to others and wouldn’t do it a second time herself. However, Bestsmile kept to the price, the whole cost almost 5,000 francs. Still, the woman from Lucerne shared her displeasure in a Google rating.

While most Bestsmile affiliates have more than 4 out of 5 stars on Google, there are also commenters describing negative experiences such as headaches when wearing the splints or inadequate care from medical professionals. The quality of the brackets is also sometimes questioned. What does Bestsmile say about this?

Speaking to Watson, a spokeswoman for the Federation of Migros Cooperatives (MGB) said of the Google reviews: “We have dealt with more than 39,000 customers since the company was founded and are constantly accepting their feedback. that Bestsmile’s customers are above average satisfied.”

However, it’s not just some customers who are skeptical about the dental chain. Associations from dentistry also have reservations about competitor and Swiss market leader Bestsmile. They mainly criticize insufficient advice, especially for young people, bait prices and the quality of the work.

As of April, Bestsmile expanded its range of clear aligner braces to young people aged 11 and over. To do this, the Migros subsidiary needed to expand its orthodontic skills. Peter Suter, President of the Association of Cantonal Dentists in Switzerland (VKZS), writes: “Treating young people with orthodontic appliances and aligners requires special care and attention. As this group of people grows, solid orthodontic knowledge and skills are required. Each dentist must decide for himself whether he has these skills.”

Alexander Johner is president of the Swiss Orthodontic Association (SGK) and runs his own practice in Murten. He says: “Aligners like Bestsmile are not suitable for treating all alignment errors. They are just one of many options that a specialist dentist should master.” For children and young people, extensive diagnostics are therefore central – including for any costs that must be covered by disability insurance or basic insurance.

At Bestsmile, the orthodontist sees other things in the foreground. “Bestsmile proposes short treatments, but deliberately chooses simple, misaligned teeth, where treatment by an orthodontic specialist would often not be more expensive or longer,” says Johner. The SGK has also set up a review committee, a kind of ombudsman service, to which patients who have doubts about their dentist’s treatment can report. “We have already had individual cases from Bestsmile customers,” explains the SGK president. For data protection reasons, he was not allowed to give details.

Migros dismisses this criticism and explains: “The treatment advice is always medically justified.” Experienced orthodontic dentists would perform the teen aligner therapy. On the charge of deliberately selecting simple dental anomalies, Migros writes, “We are able to provide above-average quality of treatment and support patients in finding a suitable specialist for services we do not provide.”

Orthodontist Johner isn’t alone in criticizing Bestsmile’s pricing tactics. Bestsmile is also viewed with reservations by the Zurich Section of the Swiss Dental Society (SSO). “They advertise directly to the end customer and promise beautiful teeth and low prices with installment payments virtually overnight. This is a decoy tactic that we at the association do not tolerate among our members and that we are acting against,” SSO Zurich president Roger Naef told Watson. However, Bestsmile is not a member of the SSO.

However, Migros denies the bait tactic when it comes to prices: “With Bestsmile there is a fixed price and monthly costs that are transparently communicated before the start of the treatment, so that there are no unforeseen additional costs. Because we manage the entire value chain in-house – from research to treatment to production in Winterthur – we can offer a cost-effective alternative to conventional treatment methods.”

Roger Naef sees this differently. “Ultimately, the costs are often comparable to those of other dentists,” says the president of the SSO Zurich, who himself runs a dental practice in Zurich. It becomes even more expensive if other dentists have to carry out repairs, he has experienced that himself. Naef has personally experienced veneers from former Bestsmile clients. “The quality of your veneers I saw was catastrophic. They had nothing to do with an aesthetic smile, but looked like piano teeth and they didn’t fit well on the teeth,” says Naef.

The quality of the work has also been questioned by the president of the Swiss Society for Aligner Orthodontics (SGAO), Phil Scheurer. He tells Watson, “One look at the before and after photos on the Bestsmile website is enough to see that the results you’ve shown are all unacceptable,” says Scheurer. According to him, there are some “serious treatment errors”.

Scheurer, a specialist in orthodontics herself, commented on one of the before and after photos for Watson. He drew what went wrong: “The crossbite/forced bite on the patient’s right side, which represents a very high treatment need for the temporomandibular joint, is still present at the end.” This, although a correction would have been easy. The conclusion of the SGAO chairman: «The teeth are better, but far from good. So the patient has not been helped.”

watson showed the before and after example from the Bestsmile website to Professor Theodore Eliades, director of the Department of Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry at the University of Zurich. He agrees with Scheurer’s assessment, further writing, “The efficiency of a treatment method cannot be limited to the creation of a new one from a misalignment.”

This raises the question of why Bestsmile advertises results that are not of sufficient quality. “If these are the best cases of 30,000 customers, it’s frightening,” said SAGO president Phil Scheurer. If a patient’s teeth eventually look a little better, but the medical problem remains unresolved, there is clearly abuse.

Migros, on the other hand, sticks to its own quality. “Thanks to our own production in Winterthur, the splints are of high quality.” Defective products would be “obviously replaced”. “In addition, the customers are closely cared for by the doctors throughout the entire treatment period,” writes the MGB spokeswoman. They also want to refute the criticism of the effectiveness of aligners and veneers: “The dentists specialize in the treatment of crooked teeth. With more than 5,000 successful treatments, their experience is industry leading.”