I Cancel On You

Isn't it annoying when something gets cancelled?

The other day, we had an appointment set up with a specialist for our son to do some therapy that he needs to do. It's nothing crazy, but definitely something that we didn't really know about until we learned a few weeks ago that one of the compounding factors may be this other thing we looked into. Sure enough, we've got that going on as well, with some different flavors. None of it us really earth shattering, but the paradigm is definitely not supporting this type of information being uncovered and it's really a damn shame. I digress though..

What really annoyed us is that the provider is about 35 minutes of a drive from us which really isn't that bad, all things considered. We set down there with plans of doing a few errands, which we accomplished. When it came time to head to the office, we plopped in the GPS and headed in the direction because all the things we were doing were local to the office which was convenient. We pull up in the damn parking lot of the thing and my wife gets a phone call, 15-minutes before the appointment. They cancelled the appointment because the person was sick. What the fuck man?

I have no problem with people getting sick, shit happens. I've worked in the fields where those things happen and it throws a wrench into things. You move on and roll with it. In the paperwork for them as a provider, and us the patient however, it says that if we cancel an appointment less than 24 hours before the appointment time, we get charged a 50$ cancellation fee! We got called from them 15-minutes before the fucking appointment and they cancelled it. You bet your ass we are calling them come the next day to tell them they better give us a free appointment or half off an appointment.

Those types of things really annoy me, because they make it such a pain and inconvenience for us to cancel the appointment if something happens. What if we blew a tire on the way there? Would they charge us 50$, plus having to foot the cost of a new tire? I would certainly hope not, but some people are fucked like that.

With the appointment being cancelled, it really bothered us because we were looking forward to getting these therapies started, getting progress on the treatment and moving forward with getting things in the right direction. With what we've got going on, and there not really being a lot of extensive knowledge and experience by people we've spoken to, this is frustrating because some say it works, some say this other thing works, and others say this other thing over here works. There are thankfully lots of options.. but each of the options comes with a cost associated with it as well as a time commitment driving there, doing the appointments and all that jazz.

I certainly hope that they are going to offer us some sort of compensation for the last-minute cancel like that, because we are lucky we had things to do in the area otherwise we would have been pissed if we drove down there for nothing.

What about you, have you had an appointment that got cancelled last minute? Did they offer you anything for the inconvenience? Let me know in the comments!