I dread the day our dentist closes up shop. It took a
long time for us to find one we truly liked, but once we found our current
dentist my wife and I have been going to him for decades. His location isn't
convenient, but he's a great dentist and we're committed to going to him. (It
doesn't hurt that our grandkids now live close by his office and that he was a
Cy Young Award winning pitcher in the late 1960s who regularly donates signed
baseballs to our grandkids' school's annual fundraiser.)
Not everyone, however, is as willing to overlook the
inconvenience of how long it takes to get to a good dentist.
A reader from Columbus, Ohio., recently switched dentists
precisely because of the inconvenience of his location. The dentist's response
raises a question of how to respond to a gift intended to keep your business
when you have no intention of returning.
"We've gone to the same guy for years," the
reader writes, mentioning that her husband has gone to him since he was a young
kid and that her parents-in-law still go to him. But their dentist is located
across town and with traffic, it's taking longer and longer to get there.
"We like the guy, but it's just not convenient
anymore as our lives get busier," she writes.
So she called and spoke to the receptionist, explaining
the situation and canceling their future appointments. The receptionist nicely
offered to send their files to their new dentist.
The following weekend they received a handwritten letter
from the dentist asking them if there was anything he could do to get them to
come back. His note indicated that he just doesn't "lose patients"
and that he hoped they would continue coming to see him. Enclosed was a $25
Visa gift card.
"We do really like the dentist, but don't intend on
going back to his office," the reader writes. She plans to reply to his
note to thank him for his service and to explain again about his location being
the issue.
"Should I return the gift card?" she asks.
"Or should I keep it?"
The reader made clear to the dentist's receptionist that
it was his location that resulted in their switch. While the dentist's gesture
may be kind, there is no obligation for the reader to return the card. There
were no preconditions established in the dentist's note. He included the note
both as a thank you for their patronage over the years and as an incentive to
ask them to reconsider leaving his practice.
Writing a note thanking the dentist and again explaining
that it is his location and not his service that has caused them to leave is a
nice gesture. They can also tell the dentist that they will gladly recommend
his services to other prospective patients.
But the right thing is to treat the gift card as a gift
and do with it whatever they like, whether that's to spend it, contribute it to
a local charity, or give it to their parents to pay part of their next dentist
bill. They can even return it if they want to. But what they do with it is
their own guilt-free choice to make.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2013 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.
4 comments:
I believe in "doing the right thing" as much as the next person, but clearly, even though the case under discussion is a long term relationship, the patient decided to change dentists. The dentist made a good faith offer a gift card but the patient doesn't want to continue the relationship. If the relationship is especially close, I guess it would be nice to return the gift card, but the donee is under no obligation to do so. It seems nowadays that people in professional relationships feel the need to cater to the doctor making the gift offer, but that is exactly what the gift giver is counting on - your feeling guilty for keeping and using the gift card. We all want to "do the right thing", but this is, after all, a doctor-patient relationship, not a normal friendship. Stop feeling guilty when a business relationship is unavoidably ended.
Charlie Seng
Lancaster, SC
I would just send it back. He was told why and all should be well about it. No sense feeling bad about it. You did what was best and so be it.
Alan Owseichik
Greenfield, Ma.
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It was an open-and-shut case until the gift card came into play. The great dilemma here is that keeping the gift card might make the dentist think it's an abuse of the friendly relationship, but giving it back might make the dentist think of it as rude or disrespectful. I would personally still return the gift card though, because it was the dentist's services that they loved, not what they might get out of their friendly relationship. As long as the letter is politely and kindly worded, I'm sure the dentist would understand.
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