Complaints Procedure

Last updated: 22 July 2026

We want every part of your experience with Dental Treatment Abroad to feel clear and well looked-after. But we know things can occasionally go wrong, or leave you unsure or unhappy. If that happens, we would like to hear from you. Telling us helps us put things right for you and improve for the next person.

This page explains how to raise a concern, who deals with what and how quickly you can expect to hear back. There are three different routes depending on what your concern is about, so please take a moment to find the one that fits.

At a glance: who handles what

• A concern about our service (how we coordinated your enquiry, our communication, our timescales or how we handled your information) comes to us at Dental Treatment Abroad. See Section A.
• A concern about your dental treatment itself (the clinical assessment, the care you received or the outcome) is raised with the treating clinic in Bucharest directly, because your dental care is provided by the clinic and not by us. See Section B.
• A concern specifically about how your personal data has been handled can always be raised with the UK’s data-protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). See Section C.

If you are not sure which route applies, don’t worry. Just email us and we will point you to the right place.

Section A: Concerns about our service (coordination)

Dental Treatment Abroad is a UK-based patient-coordination service. We introduce and coordinate UK patients with one vetted partner clinic in Bucharest, Romania, and we relay information between you and that clinic. This section covers concerns about the part we handle, for example:

• how we communicated with you, or how long we took to respond;
• the information or quote we passed on from the clinic;
• how we looked after your contact and dental details; or
• anything about the coordination itself that did not meet your expectations.

How to raise it

Please email us at hello@dentaltreatmentabroad.co.uk with the heading “Complaint”. It helps us if you can include:

• your name and the email address you used when you enquired;
• what happened, and roughly when; and
• what you would like us to do to put it right.

You are welcome to write as much or as little as you like; a short message is completely fine.

What happens next

1. Acknowledgement. We will confirm we have received your complaint within 2 working days, so you know it is in hand and who is looking into it.
2. Looking into it. We will review what happened fairly and without judgement, checking our records and, where relevant, raising the matter with the partner clinic on your behalf.
3. Our response. We aim to give you a full response within 10 working days of acknowledging your complaint. If it is a complicated matter and we need longer, we will tell you before that time is up, explain why and give you a realistic new date.
4. Putting it right. Where we have got something wrong, we will say so plainly, apologise and set out what we will do about it.

Our working hours are Monday to Friday, 09:00–18:00 UK time, and the timescales above are counted in working days.

If you are still not satisfied

If our response does not resolve things for you, please tell us. Reply to us and ask for the matter to be escalated. We will then look at it again with fresh eyes, review how it was handled the first time and respond to you within a further 10 working days.

We are an independent service and we are not a member of a formal ombudsman or alternative dispute resolution scheme for our coordination role. If your concern is really about your dental treatment, or about your personal data, please see Section B or Section C below, which set out the proper routes for those.

Section B: Concerns about your dental treatment (clinical care)

This is an important distinction, and we want to be honest with you about it. Dental Treatment Abroad does not provide dental treatment and does not form a dentist–patient relationship with you. Your clinical assessment, your treatment and your treatment contract are strictly between you and the independent partner clinic in Bucharest. The clinic is Romanian-registered (with the Romanian College of Dental Surgeons) and states that it is EU MDR 2017/745-compliant. That is the clinic’s own professional responsibility and its own compliance, and not something we guarantee.

Because your care is delivered by the clinic, a complaint about the clinical side (the treatment you received, the outcome, aftercare or anything about your safety or the standard of care) needs to be raised with the clinic directly, as it is the clinic that holds your clinical records and is professionally responsible for your treatment.

How to raise a clinical concern

1. Contact the treating clinic first, using its own complaints process. If you do not have the clinic’s complaints contact to hand, email us at hello@dentaltreatmentabroad.co.uk and we will pass you the right route. Raising it with the clinic directly is usually the quickest way to have a clinical matter looked at properly.
2. We can help you make contact. If you would find it easier, email us and we will help you get your concern to the right person at the clinic and support you through the conversation. Please understand that, because we are not your dentist, we cannot make a clinical judgement or resolve a clinical complaint ourselves, but we will not leave you to manage it alone.
3. If the clinic does not resolve it. Dental care in Romania is regulated by the Romanian College of Dental Surgeons (Colegiul Medicilor Dentiști din România), which oversees dental professional standards there. If your concern is serious and the clinic has not resolved it, you can escalate to the College, whose current contact details are published on its official website. We are glad to help you find them.

We know it can feel daunting to raise a concern with a provider in another country, so please lean on us for help with the practical side: introductions, translation of what is needed and keeping things moving.

Section C: Concerns about how we handle your personal data

When you enquire, you may share contact details and dental or health information with us. Health information is special-category data under UK GDPR, and we rely on your explicit consent as our lawful basis for handling it. On the strength of that consent, we share the details you enter only with our one partner clinic in Bucharest, Romania, so it can prepare a treatment quote and recommendation, and we use those details to reply to you. This means your data is transferred from the UK to Romania; Romania is in the EU/EEA, which the UK treats as providing an adequate level of data protection, so no additional transfer safeguards are needed. We never sell your information, and we do not share it with anyone else other than the service providers (processors) we rely on to run the service.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing hello@dentaltreatmentabroad.co.uk, and you can ask us about the personal data we hold about you. Withdrawing consent does not affect anything we did with your details before you withdrew it.

If you have a concern about how your personal data has been handled, please raise it with us first at hello@dentaltreatmentabroad.co.uk so we can try to resolve it. You also have the right, at any time, to complain to the UK’s data-protection regulator:

• Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
• Website: ico.org.uk
• The ICO would usually prefer you to give us the chance to put things right first, but you do not have to, and contacting us does not affect your right to go to the ICO.

Full details of how we collect, use, share and protect your information, and of your rights, are set out in our Privacy Notice.

How to contact us

• Email: hello@dentaltreatmentabroad.co.uk (please use the heading “Complaint”)
• WhatsApp: +40 727 506 445
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 09:00–18:00 UK time. We are an online service, so email is the best way to reach us.
• Service operated by: Dental Treatment Abroad

Thank you for taking the time to tell us when something isn’t right. It helps us improve.