Posted on 12/11/2012 6:06:20 AM PST by YourAdHere
Sears/Kmart definitely.
Research in Motion, i.e. Blackberry, will be hard pressed to survive 2013.
Many Dentists will probably close/retire. A local dentist told me his business is down 40%.
A lot of dentists will retire or close their offices. Many will go away due to self inflicted wounds of the Dental offices out here in Californiacator land have more people working for them than in a doctors office.
Check the pictures of their staff and them in the local news papers. They look like Rugby teams.
They were riding high before the meltdown. Everymouth represented thousands of dollars of vanity for the patients and minimal need.
My dentist and I had a falling out when he pushed replace the crowns and fillings/work he had put in a few years ago for my wife and myself due to those crowns and fillings are now a problem.We both told him that he put them in, and we weren’t having problems. A young guy came back to this guy and had probably the best dental plan in California. We tried to warn him that the dentist he had grew up with had changed.
He pushed XRays like it was a printing press for income. I had a knee problem and had enough Xrays and MRIs for that year without repeated and not needed dental Xrays.
Two years later at about $6,000 per year, the yearly max of his dental plan, the young guy woke up. Often the dental office had more workers than patients, and they had some type of billing scam to involve them with most patients. Like when he got his teeth cleaned, the hygienist would call in someone to record her so called findings. That lasted about 5 to 10 minutes, and an extra charge on the bill of $100.
When he complained and called this a scam, the hygienist said it made her more efficient so she could see more patients per day. He told her that she and the dentist should eat the extra cost if there was any if it made them more effective, not the patients.
He will be looking for a new dentist next year after about 30 years with the current Je$$ie Jame$.
We are in our 70s and many of our friends of the same age feel that their dentists are taking advantage of them by pushing a lot work that isn’t needed. Of course some of the former beauty queen patients want what ever will make them think their teeth looks great.
A few dentists are fighting this situation. They are running their offices with their wives/, who do the receptioning and billing and have a hygienist come in for schedule cleaning. Many are going to the one day protocol for new crowns or crown replacement. This saves the patients time and money.
I know one dentist, who has quit the employment and fleecing the patients game. He had over a dozen employees including an office manager and an assistant office manager. The office became a place of infighting, game playing, higher demands for more pay for less work.
After a bad week of cat fighting and bs, he announced that he was closing his practice and gave everyone two weeks pay and any vacation that was due.
After closing his office, he rested for a few months and then took the courses he needed for the one day crown and other one day work. His wife said she wanted to return to work. They opened a new office 20 miles away in a different city ad county. He got a hygienist to rent space in his office. She is an independent contractor and pays him rent to work in the office. His wife helps when he needs help and runs the office with no problem.
Many dentists are/have priced themselves out of the market.
They remind me of a couple of contractors, who were good and priced them selves out of the local market. They often had expensive contracts in expensive conclaves in the bay area, not here. After the melt down, most of these guys had no place to go.
Boy, did you ever nail it. I live in the Midwest and I think the salad days are over for dentists. They way overbuilt these huge, fancy buildings with lots of overhead and then came Obama, the great destroyer. All those folks, like famers and rural people who paid out of their own pocket for cleanings and minor work either stopped coming or are putting visits off as much as possible.
The cost for a crown has unjustifiably gone up at least 20% per year over the last decade. It’s now about $1,200 for one crown! And don’t even add in a possible root canal.
These guys have priced thenmselves out of business and I see a lot of them going out of business, particularly all those guys who built the Taj Mahal dental office.
Best Buy is nothing more than a showroom nowadays...
“The cost for a crown has unjustifiably gone up at least 20% per year over the last decade. It’s now about $1,200 for one crown! And don’t even add in a possible root canal.”
Crowns cost at least $1200 out here plus the extras you get hooked into, before, during and after your crowns are finally installed.
“These guys have priced thenmselves out of business and I see a lot of them going out of business, particularly all those guys who built the Taj Mahal dental office.”
Yep, freestanding Taj Mahal’s or monster suites in a medical complex to “house” their Rugby teams, aka dental office staff during the day.
A friend, who thought that I was over reacting about our local dentists, a couple of years ago, as the new grab your billfold and credit card approach to dental work, changed his mind after some personal observations at a medical complex with offices for MS and two dentists.
His wife had a severe GI problem that required consults pre and post op over several months. Her surgeon, an excellent surgeon had a small office with a small waiting room and two small exam/treatment rooms. The areas where so small, he would drop his wife off and wait outside in his car until she or the receptionist would call him to come pick her up.
Often her office visits were early and yet the parking lot was filled. He asked his wife’s doctor about the lack of parking, and he was informed that two dentists owned the complex and had a couple of herds of office staff, who took most of the parking spots.
So he had to drop his wife off and then find street parking in the street. His wife would call his cell when it was time to pick her up. One day she had a very early appt. He dropped her off and went to the street to park so patients by themselves or with others could park in the lot.
At about 8:25 am, the parking lot and street looked like trying to cross the Bay Bridge as the two staffs of the two Dentists came in. He said there was at least 8-10 vehicles with dental staff for each office. As he watched, he remembered my comment about a Rugby team for each Dentist, as the Rugby teams went from the parking lot to their offices.
A couple of times he dropped his wife off before the lunch hour. Then, after parking in the street, often he would see food being delivered for the staffs. Friday’s had a lot of food delivered.
Both dentists had and still have large first floor offices, with rooms up stairs or the staff and dentists, and not for patient care.
Your description of Taj Mahal described the dentists’s offices versus spartan for the doctors.
I’m a capitalist, but when people price themselves out of jobs/careers to keep up certain life styles, I have little if any sympathy for them.
“Starbucks - who can afford it anymore?”
We haven’t been able to afford it for about 2 decades.
They apparently now have a new $7/cup coffee.
Starbucks is a cult place for many.
We have a new one, and it very busy inspite of a bad parking sitution in our downtown.
There is a merchant across the street from the new Starbucks, who has had a business and service shop for 40 years in the same location.
Recently, I was in his shop for my twice a year visit.
I had passed the local SB’s at about 2 pm, and it was packed with mixture or young adults to our local senior citizen boomer/hippie generations.
So I asked the shop owner if the SB’s was busy all time. He nodded his head and said yes.
I asked what the makeup of the customers was, and he said most apparentely didn’t have jobs. Those, who, were working came in bought coffee to go. The others came in for coffee/food and the WiFi for their Apple addictions to their smart phones, IPods, I Pads and a few with the bigger portable Macs.
He knew that many were local professional students at our local community college. He knew them or their parents or grandparents. I asked how they could afford Starbucks, and he laughed that their parents/grandparents didn’t charge for room or board at their home. Bus transportation is subsidized by our taxes with buses everwhere with minimal riders in the buses. There are several bus stops with a block or so or depending on the line, the riders could get off/on right by the SB’s front door.
This downtown SB is one of many over our little city.
Went to the local K-Mart recently. Stuff packed in there so that you couldn’t find anything. Only reason I could see for anyone shopping there is to avoid the Wal-Mart Zoo next door.
Yes, there is a Wal-Mart next door. When the Supercenter opened everyone figured the K-Mart was doomed, but it is still open.
J C Penney?
Gotta disagree with your Avon prediction - women will always shell out to fell good and look good - just a reality.
I remember reading that during the great depression, cosmetics suffered far less than others - interesting no?!
The trouble with Avon is less the economy at large than that it is so mismanaged that it is falling apart. As it is put in business journals, they keep starting brush fires, then putting them out, but in the process neglecting their business.
Likely they will be divvied up between other cosmetics companies, where competition is fierce.
Avon would surprise me.
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