Dr. Wong 6500 Grafts, 1.5 Years Post #2

[TheEmperor]

The client clearly stated a number of time s that he didn’t want his face to be shown in order to protect his identity?

 

Yes, I am still waiting for Joe to fully hide my identity in his posts and remove the photos that he copied from my blog.

[Bill - Seemiller]

TE,

 

I'm getting a little tired of your statements implying that our forum protects doctors rather than providing a venue for patents to share their genuine experiences.

 

Ironically, I denied your request privately to remove this topic and/or photos simply because you didn't want other members reposting photos you've already posted using our patient websites.

 

This topic was created by you to discuss your experience and results. We do not remove topics once they are started unless they're in violation of our terms of service. Patients who start topics should thus, be prepared to commit to their statements and be prepared for an open discussion of their results. This includes the clinic's right to post photos and other members' rights to re-post or reference photos you've already posted publicly. Frankly, I'm not going to split hairs on the size of the box covering your face. Your face is already hidden. If you'd like Joe to enlarge the box, call the clinic and ask for him. He's a reasonable guy and I'm sure he has no problem obliging. I'm also not going to ask members to remove references to photos you've already publicly posted. These photos were re-posted to illustrate each member's point and thus, removing these photos would be as damaging as removing their posts.

 

If you would like to discontinue this discussion, I will consider locking the topic. However, it's not my responsibility to remove photos that you don't like. Now that you and Hasson and Wong have already shared your side of the story. Anything additional is just beating a dead horse, is there really a point in continuing an endless debate?

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[Bill - Seemiller]

Members,

 

Do you think we should keep this discussion open for both parties to discuss their concerns? Or like forum member "Mahhong" implied by his statement below, should we lock this topic and allow both parties to resolve their concerns privately.

 

Per Mahhong, "It would seem this is really a matter to be dealt with privately now that both sides have given their version of the story."

 

Unfortunately, this topic appears to be spiraling downward and is becoming far from civil. I've already recommended to both parties privately and publicly that they have a civil phone conversation to work out their differences and do what they can to resolve TE's concerns. At this point, this community has become a spectator in a street brawl where the end is inevitably going to be a bloody one.

 

Thus, I suggest we consider locking this topic. Your thoughts?

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[Levrais]

I don't see how the clinic comes out ahead in a discussion like this. When I first saw TEs posts months ago about his crown looking worse after the strip, I thought it was a well reasoned observation. It was clear that he was not happy with the result or with H&W. It didn't give me a bad impression of H&W though, it only made me think that they are not 100% perfect and of course no clinic is. I still thought they are the best in the world at mega sessions. Also, I have read many of joe's posts and have a high opinion of him. I have seen him in some nasty debates and always thought he came out looking better than the other other guy because he always kept it professional. The problem with this debate between Joe and TE is that no matter who makes who look like they are wrong, the whole thing is negative. Even if Joe is correct in all this, the approach taken is giving me a negative impression. From a newby's perspective, this must give the impression that not only isn't this clinic perfect, but my anonymity will be compromised if I use them. There are so many amazing results from H&W, that one person posting about a poor result isn't likely to change that. However, beating TE down and keeping his pics up when he has repeatedly asked to take them down is somewhat disturbing.

[Guest Ian512017155]

Bill,

My opinion, just close it. Nothing good is going to come from this debate. All it has become is a grudge match between the client and a member of Dr. Wong’s staff. It seems that anytime a client posts his or her results that they are not happy with it always becomes a bickering fight between the client and an online representative of that surgeon.

Lastly, I need to apologize for my last statement that was removed when I called their representative a paid shill, I shouldn’t have used that word when in reference. I do strongly feel that the client needs to speak to Dr. Wong directly inside of thru a third party and hopefully this is in person so they can work out their issues instead of this bickering online

[orlhair1]

I agree......this post is not helpful to anyone trying to find out information about hair transplants. It is unfortunate, but I think it should be closed. Just my opinion.

[bonkerstonker]

I'm not a fan of locking posts but in this case both parties have said what they have had to say and there is nothing left for anyone to add or take from this so lock it!

[corvettester]

In the interest of transparency and principle, I think it should stay open.

 

Threads with positive reviews don’t get locked, yet negative reviews invariably end up so. It always seems that if you come forward with a negative experience against a coalition doctor, the thread is bound to get locked. This practice is raising too many eyebrows, mine included. After all, you never see the threads bashing Armani and Larry Shapiro getting locked.

 

The Emperor started this thread to detail his experience. Should new developments arise, what if he wants to add to it later? If he creates a new thread or brings it up in another post, he’ll surely be accused of highjacking threads or reigniting old feuds.

 

Even though I don’t think this thread is serving any useful purpose in the usual sense, it does serve a purpose in another sense: new members, as well as veterans, can see how clinics handle dissatisfied patients.

 

I’m not saying that I agree or disagree with The Emperor—that’s not the point. It’s the principle of the matter: threads should only be locked when they are in clear violation of the Terms & Conditions.

 

I’m not taking sides here either. I can understand the frustration of both parties involved; however, I have to say that I am a little disappointed in Joetronic’s response thus far. I feel that he has spent more time defending himself and his clinic than he has trying to reconcile with the patient. Of course, I don’t know what went on behind the scenes—it’s incumbent upon him to show us, which I don’t think he has.

 

That is what is so surprising to me on this one. Usually, H&W simply takes the high ground, publically admit that the work isn’t up to their standards and commit to making it right. Why waste time and energy arguing with disgruntled patients? Why protract it any further? Instead of bickering with all the “he said/she said” nonsense, why not just reaffirm your commitment to the patient publically so that all can see how truly committed H&W is to their work.

 

Joetronic has a well-deserved reputation that speaks for itself. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of H&W and I certainly don’t believe most, if any, of the accusations that are being made against them. However, I do think that if a member has questions, concerns or even suspicions they should be able to voice them. I thought that this was the whole point of the HTN: to protect unsuspecting hair loss suffers.

 

Therefore, it’s not enough for Joetronic or any doctor rep to fall back on their reputation, but rather they must continue to prove themselves to the community in an ongoing basis. Moments such as these should be viewed as opportunities for clinics to show their commitment to patients, not covering their asses.

 

Furthermore, If this thread is going to be locked, you should at least give it a proper, fair hearing. It’s only been five days now. So long as there are no T&C violations, it should get at least two weeks, if not a month, especially considering that there are probably plenty of members who haven’t even logged on in the past five days.

 

Lastly, I do appreciate that the community is being allowed to vote on the matter.

 

 

Corvettester

Edited June 18, 2011 by corvettester

[bonkerstonker]

Corvet you're quite right threads should not be locked unless violating the terms and conditions so I take back what I said it should stay open to keep the integrity and reputation of the site honest as it does look very suspect when negative threads are locked. This does not mean I think the emperors thoughts are all correct I just feel he should be able to vent here rather than hijacking lots of other peoples threads and been told he can't talk about him self there either.

[hairthere]

It's emperor's thread and he hasn't done anything to violate terms of the site. Unless he wants it locked it should remain open, imo.

[Ahairdown]

Keep open please - important to have clear transparency for both positive and negative viewpoints on an individual HT.

[M1A1]

Corvettester,

 

Well said, I completely agree with you on every point. This thread Must Stay Open.

 

In addtion, a previous member responded back to my earlier post about a refund. Yes, I have seen this argument many times and it is somewhat valid, but not in TE's case. This case is all about YIELD not the number FU's. This is why generalizations are not appropriate. Every case and Patient, not CUSTOMER is unique. The negative PR for H&W both in the short and long term will have negeative implications on their reputation as well as impacting their bottom line. With that said, do I think Dr Wong intentioanaly planned to do harm to TE, absolutely Not... He Joe, & H&W have helped many people improve their quality of life and given those people a sense of confidence-not to sound like a Visa commercial, but that is priceless.

 

People forget that TE now has to spend more time and energy in truly defending himself even though he is the PATIENT. He can never get the time back he lost. One of the benefits of an HT is supposed to be for someone to feel better about themselves so they can move on with their life and better enjoy their time instead of feeling somewhat less confident and investing their time on hair forums defending themselves.

 

My belief is that this thread must stay open and be archived so as to give people who are conducting their due dilligence a mechanism to better facilitate their choice of HT Surgeons-after all, the patient is the one who has to live with the result until they can find a solution that will meet with their realistic expectation.

[Dutch]

I agree with most of the above & hope this thread remains open.

H&W have an awesome reputation & they're almost always showing amazing results but this is not the issue now, and he is clearly not happy & we want to see what they will agree on, if anything.

A partial refund might be logical & fair on the man & perhaps he can go to another surgeon to add some density if possible.

[TC17]

I do not believe this thread should be locked. I hate seeing threads locked and I believe it weakens the credibility of this community at times. This is an important thread because it highlights an issue that we see come up quite often, that being the issue of pre-surgery communication.

 

Nobody here is privy to what was said between TE and Dr. Wong, but what is clear is that there was, at the very least, a miscommunication between doctor and patient. Either Dr. Wong made a promise about a result to TE, or TE misinterpreted what was said as a promise. Either way, TE's belief as to how he would look after surgery is not consistent with how he actually looks.

 

TE hasn't handled this situation as well as he could have, but he is being driven by emotion. That is not to say he has carte blanche to say anything he wants, but we have to view things through his eyes. How would any of us react if we had spent thousands of dollars, years of our life, physical and emotional pain, and still did not receive what we were either promised, or thought we were promised? It seems that whenever a negative result is posted, the people with good results rush to condemn the poster or defend the doctor, while the people with negative results rush to defend the poster and condemn the doctor and industry.

 

TE's transplant was not a failure. TE looks somewhat improved from certain angles with certain styles. But unless I missed something, "not a failure" is not the goal of hair transplantation. TE was a NW 5 and he had A LOT of grafts moved - he should have had a better result. If his hair was of such poor quality that he could not have the result he desired, then that should have been explained to him in great detail prior to surgery.

 

I do not know what was discussed so I will withold judgement, but I hope this spurs the consumers to get clear answers from doctors before surgery, for doctors to clearly communicate the meaning of "realistic expecations" for that particular patient, and for there to be some record of this.

Edited June 18, 2011 by TC17
spelling

[alix]

I think it should be left open,as others mentioned,threads should only be locked when they are in violation of the terms & conditions.it's no good seeing negative threads end up locked.

[bonkerstonker]

The word refund has been thrown about here quite a lot but what would h&w be giving a refund for?

 

As far as i can see they haven't done anything wrong other than transplant fine hair but at the end of the day how would anyone know what kind of a result someone would get without trying it and if they'd of said we're not doing the ht because you don't have coarse hair h&w would of been slated for that too for not helping everyone and trying to take in only people they can get a stella result with.

 

Does anyone here think that the grafts didn't grow or something because that's the only reason that deserves a refund?

 

They have already planted some free grafts and given him a huge reduction and it's not met emperors standards every time so are we saying h&w screwed up the ht both times or simply his donor is not good enough to give the wow result he needs so he can style his hair in any style he wants. For me i'd expect to use at least 11000 grafts of coarse hair with his size of loss to come even close to styling his hair however he wants.

[orlhair1]

Having read the comments by Corvettster, TC and others, I will change my point of view and agree it should be left open. I guess previously I was just thinking how much more can be said about this? However, no one knows unless the thread is open for people to comment on and for TE & HW to discuss as they feel they should be able to. Personally, reading up a lot on threads, including this one, helped me make my decision to have my transplant, understand the importance of communication, expectations and to decide who I wanted to do it. So closing it or locking it could prevent others from valuable information.

[M1A1]

TE,

 

Touche, "But unless I missed something, "not a failure" is not the goal of hair transplantation." You hit the nail right on the head with this statement. The simplicity of your statement is pure elegance. You are so spot on.

 

This community is definitely growing and it is my sincere hope that TE can move on with his life and a suitable agreement can be arraged between both parties.

[mahhong]

Just to clarify I'm not necessarily asking that the thread be closed; I was just concerned it was going to become a back and forth war of words with no extra substance being added to the debate.

 

I certainly agree the thread should remain viewable even if it is locked. TEs review of his HT is perfectly valid and his opinions shouldn't be checked. He has the right to feel unhappy with his HT, whatever the facts surrounding the procedure are - as long as H+W have a similar right to reply to him at every occasion.

 

I just felt that, in terms of making progress with TEs complaints, this particular thread had gone as far as it could and the only next step was private dialogue with H+W or another doctor. What this thread has done is seemingly opened a massive gulf between TE and H+W - a position that is unhealthy to both parties. In addition, much of the thread revolves around accusations extraneous to TEs results. When a thread turns to accusations of misconduct then facts and evidence really need to come to the forefront and, without them, there is a danger of serious repetition in the statements being made.

 

Whilst I do agree TE has a total right to express his opinion freely, my personal worry is that it's much easier to make accusations than it is to defend against them. TEs accusations may be 100% honest and true, or they could be total lies - none of us know that except the parties involved. But it's very cheap to throw words around and we all know criticism and complaint can be browsed over by a casual reader and taken to heart. I have seen Dr. Feller become the victim of this 2 or 3 times on here. I'm not an advocate of defending the doctors unquestionably but sometimes I feel it's unfair they can do 1000+ procedures, one can go awry, and then suddenly there are whole threads devoted to "Is Dr. X losing his/her touch" etc.

 

If TE has a genuine case, which it's clear he believes he does, then his next step is to really level with H+W and contact the clinic. That's where the substance of the matter can be worked out. I absolutely agree with freedom of speech on these forums, however, and certainly agree this thread should remain viewable, even if further replies are not allowed.

[TheEmperor]

Forum/All,

 

I am still waiting for Joe to edit the photos to completely block my facial features, including cheeks, facial hair, and eyebrows. I am not asking him to hide the hair, just cover more of my identity.

 

In the meantime, I sent Joe a letter detailing my dissatisfaction with the surgery. Below.

 

-----------------

 

Please show doctor Wong the close ups of the grafts from the second surgery to get his opinion on what went wrong. Almost to the graft, I can go through the close ups of the grafts planted (on the left side) between the jaggies in HT#2 and see that they grew at an almost insignificant diameter when compared to the jaggy grafts. This is why the jaggies are still visible. From surgery #1, its easy to see a divide up the middle, where more grafts are growing on the left side.

 

Now that I have had 6500 grafts, I know that I don't have many in the bank for future work. Unfortunately, what I have now is see through, I have a large and uncoverable crown, and I am a slave to a styling routine to hides the deficiencies of the transplant. Not what I expected for 20K. Perhaps you can understand my frustration. If you want a list of my grievances related to the surgery:

 

1) Evidence that some technicians got better growth rates than others.

 

2) Jaggies. WTF was Dr. Wong thinking planting pronounced and evenly spaced hair clusters?

 

3) Scar is 3-4mm, requires hair 1.75" long to hide. Apparently this is a normal scar and the reason it's hard to hide is the fine side hair. You saw the donor areas going in, you could have told me I would never be able to use clippers again.

 

4) Expanded crown. Despite what happened with you, I am 100% positive that the surgeries expanded the bald area by pulling the skin down. Part of my reason to go ahead with strip as opposed to a minimalist FUE approach was the expectation that I would be able to cover the crown with 6-7K grafts and have a fullish restoration. Before strip, I knew the hair at the back could be combed forward to help, now the hair at the back needs to be combed UP, and there is a significant bald area visible from directly behind. My pictures from directly behind show this. Your pictures are with my head tilted forward.

 

5) Dr. Wong didn't follow hairline he drew first time. I realize the wisdom in the hairline he planted, I'm sure an asymetrical hairline has less risk of looking completely fake, he does it on 95% of his patients, but he drew in very mild temple closure which he didn't plant. He planted this in the second surgery. I though the line was a "contract". Did he run out of grafts? Change his mind?

 

6) Hairline doesn't look particularly natural. I can only comb hair from left to right. When combed the other way or combed back, something just doesnt look right. Everyones head and face are shaped differently and I don't think Wong got the correct read on the hairline.

 

7) Dr. Wong relayed an anecdote of a patient who had grafts that weren't permanent. I am not sure why he told me this unless he thinks I will have the same problem. If so, I am screwed. I don't have high hopes for the transplant hair staying for the long haul, especially the really fine ones that appear to be damaged or miniturized.

[Bill - Seemiller]

Thanks for everyone's input on whether or not we should close this topic. I agree with keeping this topic open as long as it stays fair and free from personal attacks. But for those who commented that it's only ever topics showcasing less than optimal results that get locked, understand that it's because these topics have a tendency to become brutal and violate our terms of service not because we're trying to hide poor results from the community. Our community invites all patients to share their results on this forum good or bad, happy or not. And we know that all physicians have controversial cases no matter how good they are.

 

Hopefully TE and Hasson and Wong can come to a mutual understanding and agreement that'll benefit everyone.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bill

[TheEmperor]

It's been a week since Joe from Hasson and Wong posted his pictures of me, and he still has not edited them to address my concerns about anonymity. I have asked that he completely cover my facial features, facial hair, and eyebrows. Bill from HTN has been copied on at least one of these requests.

 

Anyone that I work with can easily identify me from the photos. The damage may have already been done, but for professional reasons I cannot have people linking my identity with online threads.

 

I took painstaking effort in my blog photos to hide identifying marks, facial hair, and any facial features and I expect the same concern for my anonymity from Hasson and Wong. Regardless of whether they feel they are properly protecting my identity, I have requested that they make changes.

 

I would like to ask the forum, is it the responsibility of doctors to protect their patients anonymity? Should the doctor's consultant be the one who decides what is properly protecting a patient's identity, or should the patient decide?

 

I would also like to ask the forum, if a doctor does not protect a patient's identity, should the forum adminstrator remove the photos?

Edited June 21, 2011 by TheEmperor

[Bill - Seemiller]

TE,

 

Your face has already been blocked out to protect your identity and then further edited by Joe in an attempt to make you happy and further protect your anonymity. The forum moderators and publishers are not responsible for any posts made by third parties, which includes topics and replies from patients, physicians, clinics, etc. We are also not responsible for the kinds of photos you and/or the clinic choose to display.

 

However, as a courtesy to you, I've requested that Joe create a bigger box around your face to make you happy. He's already done this and replied in an email that this has been completed.

 

If you are still unahppy with the way he's edited your photos, please contact Joe privately. If he's not responding to your emails, call him on the phone at the clinic. This takes less than 2 minutes and I'm sure once you go over your request with him, he'll have no problem honoring it as long as it's reasonable. But this is between you and the clinic.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[TheEmperor]

TE,

 

Your face has already been blocked out to protect your identity and then further edited by Joe in an attempt to make you happy and further protect your anonymity. The forum moderators and publishers are not responsible for any posts made by third parties, which includes topics and replies from patients, physicians, clinics, etc. We are also not responsible for the kinds of photos you and/or the clinic choose to display.

 

However, as a courtesy to you, I've requested that Joe create a bigger box around your face to make you happy. He's already done this and replied in an email that this has been completed.

 

If you are still unahppy with the way he's edited your photos, please contact Joe privately. If he's not responding to your emails, call him on the phone at the clinic. This takes less than 2 minutes and I'm sure once you go over your request with him, he'll have no problem honoring it as long as it's reasonable. But this is between you and the clinic.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

Bill,

 

Joe did not increase the size of the box to completely hide my face. He drew in some eyebrows, and as you know, my request was to hide my cheeks, facial hair, and eyebrows completly. He did not comply. The pictures are still very revealing.

 

I have sent an email to Joe with this specific request. You were copied. The last email was sent on the 18th.

 

My questions are still open to the forum. There is an impasse here. I have contacted the doctor with specific instructions, they have not complied, and the forum admins refuse to get involved. Thus my question to the forum.

Edited June 21, 2011 by TheEmperor

[balody]

Why cant i link to The Emperors results?

i've just read 8 pages and cant see what the topic is based on.