I have been using Practo ever since it was launched, in fact was one of the first few docs in India to enroll.
In the starting it was fantastic. Reasonably priced, good team support. Slowly they kept increasing charges but that was justifiable. Then they came up with Practo Reach. They charged me an enormous amount stating that they had only 2 slots for my city and only 2 ppl in the entire city would benefit from it.
After a week they added 2 more slots and slowly within 6 months, more than a dozen. When I called them up I was told that because of increase in demand, they gave top slots not as per the city but colonies. Not even a week passed, a dentist working not even a kilometre away also got a slot. Again when I called, I was told that the slot was for within a radius of 500 metres.. that was enough and I unsubscribed.
Now came their biggest scam. These guys removed the online appointment from Practo Ray and introduced Prime. Anyway, had no option but to subscribe. To add to it, Prime made me pay 325 ₹ for every appointment booked online and even if a patient came for a follow up, booking an appointment online where we generally don’t charge consultation, I was paying to the company for that and for every new consultation for which I charged 400₹, I was paying 325 to the company. Anyway, even this was acceptable.
Now comes a bomb. These guys removed Practo Ray services from Prime. Made me pay separate for Ray. That meant, I had to pay almost triple the amount I used to pay. After this another scam, without even informing me, these guys changed their policy and included Ray under Prime, not adjusting the amount that they took extra. When I asked them to adjust the amount, I was told that with Prime, one will get a basic package of Ray.
Now according to the company, for the basic package of Ray for which one usually pays 14k approx annually, the doc will have to pay separate for the cloud space also and the SMS service too. So I asked them if I have to pay separate for the SMS and cloud space what am I paying this 14k for?? All these years I was already using the basic package of Ray and it seems their team support changes the features according to their will.
In short, to summarise it, it’s like you order a biryani in a restaurant which costs 1000₹. When the final bill comes, you see an amount of 5000₹, because the restaurant charged 1000₹ for the biryani, 500 for the rice , 1000₹ for the materials used in Biryani and so on.. when you question them that the dish was for 1000 and why pay 5000, you will be told that the plate in which you are having it hasn’t been charged for and 1000₹ is for the plate you are having your biryani in.
