Painclinicaustralia Reviews 3

30 minute free consult sounds great on paper. Here's my problems:
-failed to call my for my initial consultation booked as promised. I have the emails confirming date and time, had my phone on me all day, got no call and no follow up. My partner ended up booking another appointment online (after we could not reach them by phone) on my behalf.
-call throughout feels like a sales pitch, hard to build genuine connection over pain when you feel you're not really being heard.
-asked 'why have you dealt with this pain for so long?' I was managed for five years and have been in treatment under a GP and neurologist for the last three years. I have been dealing with my condition, I'm just looking for options because my pain has been a constant struggle. (Chronic migraine sufferer.) A very poorly worded and hurtful question implying fault for not finding a solution sooner, choosing to live with pain.
-quoted $400 for a consultation with a doctor, running costs and charges for additional treatments, medications etc. not mentioned because I was so gobsmacked I said 'are you ******* serious?!' and gave the phone to my partner because I couldn't believe what I'd heard. I understand not all treatments can be free or cheap, but I pay half that to see a neurologist at full price. Admittedly, I shouldn't have sworn like that, but how do companies expect those dealing with chronic pain to afford it? Many of us are at least reduced in work capacity, if indeed able to work at all. A cost as high as this during a cost of living crisis is not manageable.
It feels like this company only cares to push their sales pitch, instead of listening to the human on the other end who, may I remind you, is in real, chronic pain.
Do better.

I had a horrible experience with this clinic last year. I was in urgent need of a pain specialist and/or GP after I was abandoned by my existing specialist and GP.
I messaged them and explained my situation and that I needed support to access tramadol for severe fibromyalgia pain. They immediately started trying to organise an appointment for me. I explained that I was not able to attend an appointment because I was so unwell that I had no regular sleep schedule and was unable to talk. I was just enquiring if they could offer the services I needed. This went straight over their head and they continued to pressure me into scheduling an appointment. Since they weren’t paying attention to anything I said, in an effort to end the conversation, I said that my mother would call them to make the appointment. I was so frazzled that I gave them my mum’s phone number. So instead of waiting for my mum to call, they immediately phoned my mother, who was in a busy supermarket at the time. She informed my mother that they were a cannabis clinic and they did not prescribe pain medication of any kind. My mum reiterated my need for tramadol prescriptions and made it clear that they couldn’t provide what I needed.
Over the next few weeks I received multiple emails and text messages from at least 3 different staff members. It got so bad I had to block their email addresses and remove the SIM card from my phone to stop their text messages.
The final text I received was from a person claiming to be the big boss of this place. She asked for contact details of my lawyer (as if I have one!!) as she wanted to take legal action to remove the Google review that I had written. There was no way I was willing to remove it because everything I wrote in it was true and could be proven as such. This woman wrote a lengthy and completely defamatory reply to my Google review. Amongst other things, she said I had contacted them 100 times! She said she had read all of my other reviews and insinuated that these were a reflection on my character. She said I had written distasteful texts and that her staff were traumatised. Not one thing she wrote was even close to being true. I asked her to prove her ridiculous allegations but got no response. I asked her to remove her untruthful and harmful comments but she refused, saying I needed to remove my review which would mean her reply would be gone too.
I ended up deleting my review after a few months but I still retain copies of my complaint and her defamatory response.
There was no need for any of this to happen. If they had listened to my they could have told me they don’t provide the services I was seeking in the first instance, instead they chose to ignore, harass and defame me.