No longer a customer, Lumino still gives me reason to be wary about how they handle my private data

An email sent by me on March 27 to the head office of Lumino (the dentists). Link added for readers’ reference. I’ll let you make up your own minds.

Hi Josephine:

How are you?
   I hate to bother you once more, as you had done everything you could to resolve the privacy issues I had with Goody’s subcontractor, Global Payments, last year. I was very happy with your professionalism and your actions. I am pleased to see Lumino has since gone with another provider for its loyalty programme.
   I regret having to lean on you again.
   As you know, I found it very uneasy that I allowed Lumino to have my private cellphone number and last year I made repeated requests to the Terrace branch to not contact me through it any more. I was given assurances that it would not happen again.
   I had a hygienist appointment on November 16, which I cancelled via email due to the ‘flu. I was advised that there would be an opening in March 2019, but by this point I already had in mind I would switch dentists, as each Lumino dentist I was assigned to wound up leaving the practice. Therefore, I never replied.
   On November 29, I was sent a reminder that I could book in if I clicked a link in the email. I never did.
   Imagine my surprise when this week I received an SMS from Lumino accusing me of missing an appointment (that I had never made) and that there I could be charged for it.
   This was the first I had ever heard of a March appointment. Back in November, Lumino would send email reminders (for the real appointments) so I really doubt there was anything booked.
   It was rudely worded, in my opinion, presuming the customer to be wrong.
   Call me intolerant, overly sensitive, or out of touch with modern communication techniques, but it seems the Terrace branch is incapable of following a basic request and now, it has concocted a missed appointment out of thin air.
   Besides, I was not even in Wellington on the date concerned, so there was no way I would have made an appointment for it.
   After hours spent on the 2018 privacy breach, fielding those scam calls that came [redacted as it’s something I believe to be true but cannot fully back it up without a few affidavits], receiving cellphone calls from Lumino waking me after four hours’ sleep, and getting tired of making the same request at branch level, I have to draw my relationship with Lumino to a close.
   Going to the dentist or the hygienist shouldn’t be this hard, but with Lumino on the Terrace, it’s continually stressful.
   I wonder if you could arrange to have my records transferred to Real Dentistry, 62 Rongotai Road, Kilbirnie, Wellington, then delete my details from your database. I have asked Real Dentistry to request my records from Lumino on the Terrace.

Thank you,

Yours truly,

Jack

   I never got a reply this time, but I think we know what Lumino thinks of all of this as of today. Note: I contacted Josephine from a different email address, so they do have that to counter me with. Still, I thought I was pretty clear above.

   I’ve also not received a reply from Heineken. Might have to get the Privacy Commissioner involved in this one, too.
   I know most of you won’t care, since people haven’t abandoned Facebook en masse, and Google remains the most frequented site on the web. But I honestly thought New Zealand firms were better than this.


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