I paid Dr. Robert Jones to perform an FUE hair transplant of 2000 grafts over two days back in 2005. He said he can, and collected full payment ahead of surgery. Surgery was done quickly, specially the second day. At the timeI had doubts I actually got the number of grafts I paid for ( $10 CAN for each graft, so total was $20, 000 CAN). Dr Jones said that what he did would be enough to cover the balding area, and that it's unlikely I will ever need a second surgery.
I thought to myself a doctor is an honest decent person usually, so I waited to see the results. I did everything the doctor instructed me to do after surgery. One full year later results were poor, and i can probably count no more than 1000 individual hairs growing in areas where surgery was done..
I had another FUE surgery 2 weeks ago, somewhere else of curse, after carefully investigating the doctors as far as I can. Two doctors worked from 9am to 7pm to extract 750 grafts the first day, and worked 9am to 4:30 pm to extract another 500 grafts the next day, total of 1250 grafts. Comparing the time spent by Dr. Jones working alone (9am to 3:30pm, and 9am to 2pm) to the previous showed me beyond doubt Dr Jones probably never extracted more than half what I paid him for.
He claims he is fast, and he might be a bit faster, but there is no way in the world he would have got to the speed of two persons and on top did it in less time! Dr Jones isn't using any different method than the other two doctors as far as I have seen. On top he completely misrepresented the expected outcome of the surgery. Probably I will need two more surgeries like the one he did to get any reasonable results.
He also charged me %7 tax that he never discussed with me before arriving to his office on top of the $20, 000 CAN. On my second Surgery i paid $7 per graft, with no tax! And I paid at the end of surgery, not a penny before that.
Doctors like him should be prosecuted by law for fraud, as he can do the same to tens more unaware patients
In short Dr Jones ripped me off, and I'm sure there are a lot of doctors in the US and Canada hungry for your money without any regard to the patients best interest.
My advice: First, never pay a hair transplant doctor money up front, maybe pay a small down payment only if a must. Second, do your best to count the grafts yourself, and ask the doctor for full details about number of grafts and how many did each part of the scalp get.
Another advice: do not travel to Canada to get a hair transplant that you can get here in the US cheaper. And my last advice is: Watch for that tax charge! ask the doctor about tax ahead of paying anything. Tax comes up to a lot of money, and might offset the savings you think one doctor is giving you over others..
Do your home work, investigate before you pay. Doctors get greedy just like anyone else., and some will commit fraud if they can to get more of your money.
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