Living in Southern Ireland as I do and like most people here - Irish dentists excepted obviously! - I think all would unanimously agree that dentists-fees are scandalously high. Now even a cursory 'Googling' brings up many articles highlighting the huge difference in fees between the north & south - hence my desire to at least save some money on what up till then had been a most unpleasant experience.
Along the way, I hit upon a relevant thread at 'Boards.ie', a Irish-forum of which I have been a long-time member (11 years) even though I have few posts to my credit. This thread involved a NI-based dentist by the name of Belmore Dental who had been recommended by a poster, so I decided to phone them and get a quote for a root-canal treatment. I was shocked when I was told by the lady I talked to that along with a first-time consultation fee of £75, the root-canal would cost a minimum of £300! This is nowhere near what I had been led to believe from having read the aforementioned articles - indeed it appeared far more expensive that I could get it done for here in the rip-off-republic!
Now as I had sourced this lead at Boards.ie, I thought I'd do my civic-duty and post this finding for the benefit of others who might happen upon this thread. And that's where the fun began...
Within a couple of minutes of posting my finding, a moderator had edited my post, removing all mention of the dental-practice in question. Furthermore, he had edited all of the threads posts containing such specific information, even though most of them were more then three years old! Needless to say, I was curious as to why and was informed in a subsequent post that it was indeed in relation to threatened legal-action in the past and that the Boards.ie policies had changed as a result. Within a couple of more minutes there was another post (condescending at best) by someone whose chosen user-name ('Oral Surgeon') at least implies he is a dentist - more on this point later. Bear in mind that this was happening at 10.00am in the morning - when any gainfully-employed dentist would be hard at work!
Naturally, I then posted that I thought that a policy that prevented members from either mentioning any dental-practice by name, be it by way of recommendation or criticism, was Draconian in nature. Again within minutes, a third individual - do any of these guys actually work!!! - warns me that if I persisted in this manner of posting (I had posted just once!) I would suffer an "infraction" for my troubles. Well, I responded with the below post - one that within minutes was deleted!
But worse was to happen. I was then informed that even price-comparisons between the north & south are no longer permissible on Boards.ie. Just think about that for a minute!!! If this is not the Irish Dental Association dictating policy I don't know what is. Also note fitzgeme's negative assessment of Belmore Dental - does this sound like an impartial moderator to you?
Unsurprisingly, the 3-year old thread (found here) was then closed - a re-occurring theme it Boards.ie - preventing any further comment! Oh yeah, I also received an 'infraction'. Sob.
What I didn't realise at the time is that the mod. named 'fitzgeme' who 'infracted' me & closed the thread, moderates only 2 sub-forums, both dental-related - so he obviously is a dentist as well - in my innocence I thought a more impartial Super-moderator had turned up...
Who knows, this is very likely just one individual, most likely a paid-troll, working under multiple-usernames. After all, these purported dentists have 1000's of posts to their name and are active at times when no career-oriented dentist would ever concern themselves which such trivialities.
Although I am a man of few posts at Boards.ie, I was also responsible for another thread being closed - and as it happens it was also dental-related! That was over a year ago and at the time I thought no more about it, I mean, shit happens! The thread in question related to mercury-fillings and can be found here. What surprised me at the time was the tack taken by the so-called dentists, who by the way, seem to have a pack-mentality, usually working in threes - positively all ignore any request at confirmation that they actually are dentists, most takes the 'condescending' route, attempting to talk down to you when you don't appear convinced by their often-moronic line of reasoning, before finally resorting to just closing the thread in question when all else fails.
Given my recent experience and the fact that I had not visited the above thread since it was closed over a year ago, not until tonight, I was amazed to find that firstly it is still largely intact & unedited, and secondly, that the final post where the moderator closed the thread has been changed completely - back then he opened the post with the line "This is going nowhere..." - because according to him, I was supplying no evidence to support my views. I encourage anyone to have a quick look at the thread & make up their own mind - as you will see, I was the only one of the 2-3 others that were badgering me providing any supporting material.
Obviously 'someone' decided that that ridiculous line of reasoning for closing the thread would be seen through by anyone of average intelligence who actually read any of it, hence the reason for the rewrite. Specifically, this is not the original mods. closing-post. The original post was deleted and the now much more reasonable-sounding post put in its place.
In closing, it is really sad to see a genuine resource like Boards.ie being abused in this manner. Here you have vested-interests actively controlling what can and cannot be posted. They have absolutely no qualms about editing (therefore 'destroying' in a true sense) quite 'ancient' posts, all to 'protect their patch'. I mean, I bet there are China-based forums with more freedom than this! I wonder if there have been any legal-rulings in other countries (never mind Paddy-land!) to at least limit this type of abuse?
