My smile direct club experience

It was big news so you might have heard, smile direct club very abruptly shut down their operations about a month ago. Their FAQ was laughably condensed to: “no we wont be sending you the things you paid for, yes you have to keep paying for them if you’re on a payment plan.” This left thousands of people abandoned as their care was supposed to be a lifetime commitment. I am one of those lucky people who had the misfortune of trusting this company with my longterm tooth alignment, and boy do i have some colorful experiences with them over the years. Here is my story, i hope it brings solace to anyone else whos dealt with them and amusement to those who never had to.

My smile journey, as the old company called it, really began with braces in high school. I believe i got my braces in 2012 while i lived in Utah for the eighth grade. Fun fact not many people realize- Utah has some advanced orthopedic practices that a lot of other areas still arent even comparable to. Back in 2012, one of those advancements was ceramic brackets. They were more or less tooth colored so the braces didnt stand out as much, and they had a sort of click in system for the aligning wire. I only popped a wire out of place twice, once on a hard chocolate chip and once on undercooked broccoli, a fully diversified diet if you ask me. Well these braces were all fine and dandy until my family moved a year later to north dakota, and the orthodontist i had there did his best with a form of braces he’d never even seen before. After a few more years of wearing them i developed a cavity under a bracket. After a few months of seeing how much straightening we could get done on a shortened timeline, we had to remove the braces entirely to treat the cavity. Which is all to say- i put in years of work and my parents put in a solid amount of money all so i could have straight teeth, and i didn’t quite have straight teeth. I lived with it for years, caring way too much about how my teeth looked in photos, and struggling to find a place that could make me retainers for a price my college budget could afford. Fun fact if you didnt know, after you wear braces you have to wear a retainer every night for life if you want your teeth to stay put. Which is a big commitment when they cost so much and dont last very long. 

All of this set me up perfectly for smile direct clubs rise to the orthopedic scene. They were founded in 2014, but i began seeing a lot of ads for them around 2019. I immediately identified them as a solution to my problems. I had no longterm orthodontist because ive moved states several times in my lifetime, and not many practices want new patients that wont pay for braces. And not only could they be a source of regular retainers, i could also do a straightening treatment and get my smile all nice and exact the way id always dreamed. When i got my covid money from the government the next year, I finally had enough to go through with it. So i got their little impressions kit in a happy purple box, i mixed and bit into their two part putty, and i sent it back with the provided labels. All was well. I received exactly what id paid for and got to straightening my teeth. But then, when the time came to replace my last aligner with a longterm retainer, i couldnt afford it. Their price of $100 every six months for new retainers was daunting to me. I’m an artist, i was a student, and im in my twenties in this economy, so i could never really afford something like that. Nonetheless i kept it in mind as i begrudgingly put my nasty staining retainer in every night i could bear it. And one day the time came! I worked hard, i got a higher paying job, i reduced my bills, and i could finally afford it, a new retainer. 

But of course, there was a catch. You see, their online system is built to keep all their patients very close. Since i had not gotten my retainers in the timeline they decided on, i was now out of my lifetime smile guarantee. And i learned, that meant i couldnt just order a retainer. Now i had to go through a little mini aligning treatment to get my teeth back to where they were, since my old retainer was now loose enough to let my teeth shift. I immediately saw this as stupid and a little sketchy but i knew what my other choices were. I priced around for invisalign, i saw a dentist, I even had an in with a family friend but they could only do the equivalent of a nightguard for me. So i had to stick with Smile direct. Only now, a mere two years after my first purchase, they seemed less established as a company. My first indicator that something was wrong was, in retrospect, absolutely hilarious. But in real time it had me fuming. 

I agreed to the aligner treatment, i changed my address on my account, and i ordered the first step which is a cheap impressions kit. I kept my eye out for that familiar purple box, but after weeks, i never saw it. So, digging up the tracking link, i saw that it had been delivered! To provo utah. I now lived in Union, Washington. My old provo address was an apartment with three other women, one of which i knew for sure still lived there. I could picture her, always bitter, finding that purple box and just taking it silently back to her den of a room. In other words- it was lost to me. So i emailed. And i got a response! They agreed to send another box. But they never actually sent it. And they stopped replying to email. So i called. Over the next week or two I spent several of my half hour lunch breaks just waiting on hold for this company. Its been nearly a year since then and i can still clearly remember their hold music. It was loud as hell, grainier than should be legal, and so disgustingly short. It goes…im feeling good theres so much round me that i just have to smile about, and it makes me wanna shout hey hey hey hey, Im feeling great! Im not my words from yesterday, (i cant remember this one line and then it goes)  i can see the brighter side i can see the brighter side i can see the brighter side in life. And repeat. And i could be on hold for up to fourty minutes at a time before id give up and go back to work. But finally i got someone on the phone and they manually changed my address, because from the app apparently it didnt save. And then they sent another box. And it went to provo. I called again. They changed my address again. And they sent a box. And it went to provo. Thats three purple boxes delivered to a door i dont live behind. 

This is when i did something im not proud of. At the end of each phone call theres a survey and i always hung up before taking it. But id been venting to my coworker and he, being of an older generation, told me to ask for a manager. Never in my life have i asked to speak with the manager, but i mustered my gusto and i called and i endured the stupid fucking song and i got someone on the phone and i asked for their manager. She said she works remotely and cant transfer me to anyone. Seeing this as a lie, id been transferred many times by people who were clearly remote, i asked for a number. She couldnt give me one. I asked for an email. She couldnt give me one. I asked for a name. She couldnt give me one. So i told her i was upset and asked if she could please hang up so i could take the survey. She said shes not allowed to hang up without helping me. I full on put her on mute and waited her out. Eventually she had enough of my bullshit and she hung up, and i felt no satisfaction at all giving her one star on the survey that im now sure meant nothing. The next day i got someone helpful on the line and he sent a box to my actual address. 

I went through the few months of aligners and saved up for my retainer purchase. After all that bullshit i was still researching another way to get a retainer and still being met with too expensive of options. So i decided to get the three pack and save myself a year and a half of grief. I even formed the idea that i could send one of the retainers to my brother and we could figure out how to 3D print the next set a year from now. But a few weeks after i placed my order, smile direct club shut down. I saw how bad that was but i was in the clear at least, right? I had a tracking link, the box was moving my direction, i waited for it to be delivered and when i checked at 3 pm on the tuesday I was expecting it, the post office link said it was being returned to sender for an incorrect address. I panicked. This wasnt just retainers, it was years of work and money for a company thats shitty at this point but the only thing keeping me from spending another few thousand with someone new. I needed that package. I stove recklessly and panicked to the post office. I waited in a half hour line and the kind man there was simply unable to help me. He explained that the moment i got the return message was the moment it was scanned and put on the truck. I was too late. They have a practice of placing the return label over the old label so there was no retrieving it from some warehouse. It was gone. And i could see from the tracking link why it was gone. They never put unit B on the address. As simple as that. The company was completely shut down, no one was sending packages back out. the package had been driven past my house while i was in it. I wont lie, i broke that night. I cried and smoked weed and cried and watched youtube and cried. The next day i threw out my old aligner that wasnt doing much anyway. The day after i rescued it from the trash can and tried to clean it, but couldnt get it clean enough to trust. The day after i threw it away again, and one more day later i took it back out. I slowly came to terms with the fact that i cant afford another option and ill just have to get used to my teeth moving. Having a straight smile wa nice, but it wasnt all that. I will be honest and say that kind of thing matters a lot less to me now that im married. I resigned to a retainerless life after years of struggling with it. 

And then, the night before I flew home for christmas, i found it in my mailbox. The three retainers. It was a purple padded envelope, the label had my address but not my unit number, but it was in the right mailbox. I still have no idea how it got there, a mere week after it supposedly returned back to the warehouse. I cried again when i got them. Im kind of a crier. Now im moving forward with my 3 d printing plan. My brother has let me know its nowhere near as simple as i want it to be, but i still believe its a more reasonable path than starting over with someone new. I dont know what person made this happen, but i mentally picture the man i spoke with at the post office finding it later and helping it along. Im grateful to have gotten my order, as i know how many people still havent. I’m grateful to never have to hear that song again. And im grateful i can look back on this as a story at the end of the day. In the end, everything is just a story to tell the next day. Thats all for this one, ill see you next time friend!