Complaints

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• Initial Complaint

  Date:11/07/2024

  Type:Sales and Advertising Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  On 2024-March-06, I bought a package of 10 appointments with **** *****, owner of Holistic Brain Health, for $1596. She bills herself as a "medical intuitive". I'd had many dental surgeries and was struggling with P.T.S.D. related to that, while facing another upcoming dental surgery. In the initial meet-and-greet appointment by Zoom, I was having a hard time deciding whether to pay for appointments as I went, or buy a package. She told me if I bought the package, I could always convert it back into individual appointments; this made the decision easy, and I bought the package. I then used 2 of the 10 appointments in advance of the dental procedure. After recovering, I reached out to her by email to see what to do; I planned to use her again for my next procedure, but because I was doing well and it wasn't likely to be for quite awhile, I requested to go ahead and convert from the package back to paying full price for the two individual appointments. Inexplicably, she seemed to get upset, and said I was implying that her services hadn't been helpful to me. It's impossible to know if her services had helped or not, but I thought it was plausible, and had been planning to work with her again. She leaned on me to make one more appointment so we could talk about it, but I couldn't see paying for anymore time with her when I felt fine (and when she seemed upset). I again requested that she refund my payment minus two full price appointments; she responded, and I'm quoting: "It's very common in my line of work for clients to want to quit once they are on the verge of true transformation. I know this is true for you...it would be unethical for me to let you give up this easily when I know that I can make a huge difference in your health. When you are ready to schedule more sessions, let me know. Otherwise, you are welcome to donate your remaining sessions to someone else who could use my support." ...talk about unethical. And manipulative.

  Business Response

  Date: 11/17/2024

  My policy is that you can get your money back if you aren't making progress with my services.  The chief complaint she came to me was resolved in 2 sessions.  I told her there was plenty more I could help her with for the remaining sessions.  But she decided she wanted her money back to spend it on a much more expensive treatment abroad.  

  The 10 session discount is for clients who intend to commit to 10 sessions.  If they are unhappy with the progress they are making, I am willing to offer a refund on the remaining sessions. 

  I told her that if she wanted a refund, then we would need to make an appointment to talk about it.  It was not intended to count as a one of her sessions.  But she didn't want to talk about it.  She just wants her money back.

  -**** *****. Ph.D.
  

  Customer Answer

  Date: 11/25/2024

  The primary issue that I saw **** for was PTSD related to many dental surgeries. My surgery did go very well, in terms of my nervous system, but there is absolutely no way to identify if it was because of appointments with ****, or the numerous other modalities I was employing at the same time to support myself. I didn't feel *anything* when we worked together. Nonetheless, I believed it was possible it was helpful, and planned to continue working with her down the road. But it was an open question - I just don't know. Ironically, I wanted to keep working with her in the future - but she was upset and inappropriate in that email exchange, that the "container" had been compromised - it's none of her business how I direct my health journey, or my limited resources. She seems to think *she* should direct my health journey, and that's a huge red flag for me. I came to ******* for treatment for Lyme, which is unrelated to why I was initially seeing her; also ironically, at the time I bought the package, she herself was very sick from mold and tick born disease, so much so that she had to reschedule an appointment on short notice. Why would I use this person to help treat my Lyme and mold symptoms, if she's still sick from it herself? 

   

  Her metric for deciding whether someone gets their money back is "Did you think it was helping?" Perhaps I should have said "No", but that wasn't honest. What was honest was, "I don't know". It's unprovable, and I felt nothing...her metric is flawed and will lead to more problems down the road, and should be changed. She made it sound in my first meeting with her like it would be easy to convert the package back to individual, full price appointments. I'm guessing most of her patients also "don't know", but they keep working with her because *she* is so convinced. 

   

  When she was leaning on me to make another appointment, she *never* told me it wouldn't count towards my package, despite multiple opportunities. But I really didn't want to meet with someone who felt they had an ethical duty to force me to continue working with them because I was "so close to a breakthrough". For heaven's sake. 

   

  I will escalate this as far as necessary.