Acahti Dental

I've been going to Dr. Peterson at Acahti dental for years now. She is a really great dentist - attentive, thorough, and kind.

There is no other Dentist like Dr Oberly. He is AMAZING. Entire experience absolutely the best.

This is the best dentist and dentist office staff in Ithaca. The doctor is a highly experienced and he is really caring and sensitive to patients’ needs and will fix all the teeth fractures that previous dentists in Ithaca ignored or just told you to altogether quit gum chewing if you want to use your teeth.

I had a phenomenal experience at Acahti Dental today. The staff were incredibly kind and competent. They were flexible with scheduling my appointment, and they were ready to see me once I arrived. Dr. Peterson was extremely kind and offered great dental advice. I cannot recommend Acahti Dental enough if you live in Ithaca.

Guy was kind of degrading to me when discussing my oral health. I get that they are trying to be educative but not talk to me like a child. Also had a huge hassle with them and insurance. I was told they take my insurance when I made the appt. Then I was told that they wanted payment up front and not deal with the insurance

If I could give zero stars I would, but alas. I had a root canal done here in 2019 and it seemingly was successful. For a year, things went fine but then I began experiencing pain in the tooth that was treated (and should not be able to feel pain in). I was told that the sporadic pain was normal. So it went another year and the pain came back more intensely. I went back and they did a variety of scans and x-rays which they said they wouldn’t charge me for, only to slap me with an emergency fee. They told me they would call me back after they’ve looked over the scans, and they never called. After three weeks I had to call THEM back. They told me they found an extra canal that they missed. They drilled into my tooth several times, told me that the issue wasn’t the extra canal, and continued to prescribe me antibiotics, which would work for a few weeks and the pain/infection continued to return. It got to the point of an abscess around my tooth and the inside of it bleeding. They finally told me that they would do another root canal for free, only to switch up the next day and tell me that I’d be paying full price. I said I couldn’t afford this, so let’s pull the tooth. How much will that be? They responded, $800-1,000. I called another location downtown who only charged me $250 for the extraction and told me that the tooth wasn’t worth saving (and was definitely infected when they removed it). Just so everyone knows if they don’t already, most dentists will retreat a failed root canal for free. Other issue: They will randomly cancel your appointments, even the day of with no explanation besides, “The doctors aren’t in today.” This has happened several times. Like another reviewer said, there are a lot of better options. Good luck!

Good part: Dr. Peterson is good and friendly. Overall I was happy with the quality of her work. Bad part: Their dental hygienists for the most part weren't good at all. The last year I was there, they changed them every couple of months. New ones didn't quite know what they were doing. One of them one time was pressing so hard with a Scaler on my mouth that I got bruises on my lips. Ugly: Rude and lousy front desk assistants. It's the most disorganized office you could ever imagine, especially when it comes to payments, insurance, followups. Initially it was good, but then it got just really bad. Make sure you double check exactly how much every procedure cost beforehand. They may be vague about insurance, but YOU should bring it up and double check it , because there is a good chance they don't know what they are talking about until they go and check with insurance. For my last operations they initially told me my insurance is renewed and I could use its money for a procedure. After the procedure, they told me my balance and I paid. Then 8 month later, unrelated to balance I called them for some of the records for my new dentist. The assistant told me I have a balance. I asked them why they didn't send me anything before and it turned out they sent it to a wrong email (they do have my phone number but they don't bother calling you even that's literally their job). I told them there is probably a mistake because I already paid and please check with the Dr and my insurance and follow up with me. Then I did not hear back anything from them for a year and 8 month until a week ago they sent me a letter with a balance and threatened to send it to collectors. The worst part was that when I called them the assistants were totally rude, not acknowledging that they should have contacted me right after the procedure while I could talk to insurance, and I could go there in person to talk to doctors about options to pay, etc. Long story short, this place used to be decent, however for reasons I don't know it is a mess right now as you could see from other reviews. If you choose to go here, please double check exactly how much you are going to be charge and follow up with a month or two after because they may not do that until 2,3 years later.