Before I settled on an Invisalign dentist, I did tons of research. I found lots of posts from realself, various dentist's websites and random blogs. I never found any specifics for what someone else's complicated case cost them and I think that a lot of times when people go write about an experience they're having with a certain product, it's most often negative. I would like to share my experience in the most objective way possible.
I've never been happy with my smile, I guess it's not the worst smile anyone could end up with, I don't have crowding or anything like that but I have a major overbite. I've always felt like my top front teeth slant inwards a bit. I started seriously thinking about Invisalign after I went to a new dentist in October-ish and dude was like "You have a Class 2 deep overbite, you should really consider orthodontics." And I was like "No way, hell no, I'm 24, NOT GETTING METAL BRACES, EFF THAT." Then he was like "Well, that's kind of the point, you're only 24, it would be better to get it taken care of earlier rather than later...." So he gave me a referral to an ortho who didn't do Invisalign and I "lost" it. I started frantically researching Invisalign options. I remembered seeing hella Groupon offers for Invisalign and I started looking into those, I thought Invisalign for $2500 would be pretty sweet, but then I looked at reviews for the dentists making those offers and there were either NO reviews or hella negative reviews. I figure if I'm going to be dropping a ton of money on something to fix my teeth, I better go with someone who is pretty decent.
I first started looking for dentists that had pretty good reviews on Yelp but also had special offers. I found one dentist in SF that had a $2000 off special and she said that my case would be doable with Invisalign, but she also suggested that I see another dentist who does traditional ortho as well and maybe I should do a combination of traditional ortho and Invisalign, and again, I had the same response as above...f*ck that. I started talking to my coworker who has beautiful teeth and she did Invisalign with this doc in the bay area who is like the top 1% of providers and she said that he's pretty great, pretty reasonably priced and is happy to treat clients with complicated cases like mine. Overbites are really difficult to fix with Invisalign because there's a lot of movement of the teeth and it takes a long time, like 2 years.
In early December, I made an appointment with this doc that my coworker suggested and it was pretty great because he has several offices in the bay area and one of them is literally 5 minutes away from my house. He explained to me that my case is definitely doable, I may not get a perfect correction of my overbite but it'll be pretty close and it'll take about 2 years. I knew I definitely wanted to move forward at this point and I had already bought a Groupon for him that gave me $1500 off my Invisalign and a free cleaning (which is important because when you have Invisalign you gotta clean your shit like crazy). Here is the breakdown of my Invisalign cost:
Total: $5750
-$1500 Groupon= $4250
-$2400 Maxed out FSA for 2014= $1850 (total out of pocket)
I wish I was smart and maxed out my FSA for 2013 but I didn't so I'm dumb. I wasn't comfortable dropping $1850 that day, I wanted to wait till my next paycheck to do that, but they were awesome and took the scans that day so when I did put down that $1850, they'd be able to send them in right away. They were also willing to wait until I got my FSA credit card in for the rest of the cost. I think this is probably the most reasonable cost for my case because I have a total of 41 trays, 1 refinement, several attachments and buttons.
