There are now two facilities of the Cienega Med Spa business open and operating in the state of California. The orthopedist who owns the franchise is known for having employees who harass and threaten patients if those patients make concerns about the clinic online.
It has been receiving a large number of complaints from its customers over the terrible customer service that it provides as well as the botched treatments that it does. In addition, in order to conceal these complaints, medspa engages in a variety of unethical marketing practices.
Because of this, I have decided to write the following review. It will assist you to comprehend how the neglect of this medspa is putting people’s lives in danger and what people are genuinely saying by providing you with the following information.
About Cienega Med Spa & Its Owner Dr. Edward Glenning Stokes
Cienega Med Spa is a medical spa with locations in West Hollywood and Santa Monica. Its owner is Dr. Edward Glenning Stokes.
The contact number of its Los Angeles office is 310-928-1300 and the number of its Santa Monica location is 310-341-2741. Apart from Dr. Stokes, other notable people at this place are Dr. Nina Farokhian and Mary.
They offer various services including:
- Cortisone shot
- Botox
- Coolsculpting
- Lip injections
- Hand rejuvenation
- IPL photo facial
- Laser hair removal
- Hydrafacial treatment
- Microneedling
- Skin resurfacing
And several more.
Even though he is the owner of multiple medical spas, Dr. Stokes doesn’t have a good reputation in the industry.
He has been accused of botching operations and providing poor service to his clients, and they have lodged numerous complaints about him:
The reviewer who posted above mentions, for instance, that they scheduled around four visits with him but were unable to see him at any of those appointments. The reviewer waited for Stokes for an hour and a half, expecting him to show up at some point, but he never did.
The staff then disclosed to the reviewer that Stokes was not even present at the clinic at that time. After the reviewer had waited for such a significant amount of time, the staff approached them and inquired as to whether or not they would be interested in rescheduling their appointment with a different physician.
According to the critic, it is very impolite of them to behave in such a manner. As a result, they awarded Dr. Stokes with one of the five highest possible ratings.
Dr. Edward Stokes isn’t nearly as well-known as he’d want to be, that much is a given. Cienega Med Spa is plagued by the same problems, but rather than addressing the underlying causes, Stokes has resorted to dishonest advertising practices.
He makes an effort to divert customers’ attention away from the numerous unfavorable reviews of Cienega Med Spa:
Dr. Edward Stokes & His Love For Unethical Marketing Tactics
To promote Cienega Med Spa, Dr. Stokes uses multiple unethical marketing tactics:
Using Paid PR to Build a Fake Reputation
If you look up Cienega Med Spa, you can come across multiple articles that are effusive in their praise of the business or the person who owns it. After reading these articles, you could be forgiven for assuming that Cienega Med Spa is a well-respected provider of services.
On the other hand, the vast majority of these items require payment. This indicates that Dr. Stokes has paid the websites to produce an article on his company that is extremely complimentary of the company.
If you look closely, these are not normal blogs but PR sites. Such websites allow businesses to promote themselves and create an illusion of being reputed by posting positive articles about them.
Shady businesses like Cienega Med Spa take advantage of these websites to make it seem as if third-party websites are talking about them. This isn’t the only shady medical practitioner which uses such an unethical marketing tactic.
Another shady medical service provider who uses paid PR to hide negative reviews is Dr. Lara Devgan MD. What’s worse is that Dr. Stokes doesn’t just stop here.
Fake 5-Star Cienega Med Spa Reviews You Don’t Know About
It is not reasonable to anticipate finding trustworthy testimonials when you search for “Cienega Med Spa Reviews.” Why? Because the medspa offers monetary incentives to both third parties and its customers for posting positive reviews on its various online company profiles.
The Federal Trade Commission considers this to be an unlawful method of conducting business.
If a consumer of medspa writes a review giving the company five stars, medspa will give the customer a $15 gift card to either Amazon or Starbucks. The FTC has made it quite apparent that it is against the law to solicit reviews by using paid recommendations.
This explains why the business run by Dr. Stokes has a rating that is nearly perfect on a variety of review platforms, despite the fact that it has been the subject of a significant number of complaints from its customers.
That’s not the end of it. The following is an example of how the establishment encourages its customers to post phony reviews:
BBB Accreditation
The Cienega Med Spa has earned accreditation from the Better Business Bureau. It is a common misconception that in order to obtain BBB accreditation, one must adhere to ethical business practices. However, this is not the case. To obtain accreditation from the BBB, all that is required of you is to pay a high annual charge of approximately $10,000 to them.
To put it another way, a Better Business Bureau certification is the same thing as a paid membership on a well-known review website.
CNN Money had carried out a comprehensive examination of the situation. They discovered that a significant number of swindlers and con artists received A or A+ ratings on BBB as a result of having accredited profiles.
If you pay the BBB to earn accreditation, you also gain a lot of influence over the information that appears on your BBB profile. In addition, regardless of how terribly you treat your clients, you maintain a perfect score of either an A or an A+.
Swindlers take full advantage of this deplorable method of conducting business, which is a commercial technique that should never be done. Another dubious business that uses this strategy to coerce customers into trusting them is called Dr. Cat Plastic Surgery. This company has a history of misleading its customers.
Why does Cienega Med Spa feel the need to lie such a significant amount? Because the establishment has been the subject of an excessive number of complaints from its patrons. In the following part of this review, I will be sharing a few of the many reviews of Cienega Med Spa that I discovered online:
Cienega Med Spa is Negligent and Reckless, Putting Its Clients’ Lives at Risk Through Its Lack of Expertise
Tashi is a registered nurse and a lawyer, and she had a dreadful day at Cienega Med Spa. In the first version of her evaluation, she stated that customers should not come here for the majority of their treatments. This medspa is not qualified adequately to carry out the majority of the cosmetic operations that it offers.
Tashi had gone there since it was within her budget and she enjoyed the atmosphere. In spite of this, she emphasizes that the medspa has a “doctor around” rather than a single individual who is in charge. In most cases, you can anticipate having a dermatologist serve as your supervisor for more involved treatments. However, Dr. Edward Stokes is an orthopedist and is now treating this patient here.
He does not have any prior experience in the field. Dr. Nina F, who practices naturopathy, is the only other medical professional at this location.
According to Tashi, the leadership of this medspa does not have the necessary qualifications to provide consumers with advanced aesthetic procedures. It poses a significant threat to the customers.
In addition, medspa will not write prescriptions for any pre-procedure pain medicine. When you go to a real doctor’s office, you won’t have to worry about encountering something like this. In this location, they administer a numbing cream; however, for the majority of surgeries, this is not sufficient. Tashi inquired as to the reasoning behind their exclusive usage of numbing cream, but the staff just said that they always have.
A consultation for therapy was provided to her. As a result, she inquired about the before and after images of the patients who had done this operation at this facility. The palace, on the other hand, did not have any photographs available for purchase.
Another major warning sign for Tashi was the persistent upselling of this location. During the initial conversations, they said that they were willing to perform the treatment on the same day. According to her, the Medspa views its patients as an annuity to pay for the pricey equipment, thus it treats them as such.
Tashia has written many revisions to her original article after the clinic accused her of defamation and accusing them of being the target of her animosity. She made it clear that she was not slandering the location and that all she was interested in was conveying how she had evolved emotionally as a result of her time spent there.
In addition to this, she observed that Cienega Med Spa labels any criticism of their services as an attempt at slander.
In her response, the Chief Executive Officer of this medical facility stated that Tashi was spreading terrible rumors about her despite not even knowing who she was. Tashi emphasizes, however, that she had not said anything derogatory about her and had simply inquired about her credentials. She was only interested in her qualifications. In addition, the clinic revealed a private chat that Tashi had with one of the nurses working here by posting it online. Tashi brought to our attention the fact that the medspa was in violation of HIPPA.
Tashi drew attention to the fact that two pharmaceutical products have pamphlets advertising them as vitamins despite the fact that they are not vitamins at all in her most recent update. Toradol and Zofran (Ketorolac) are the names of these two medications. While she was perusing their brochure, she came across the fact that they promote a “vitamin therapy” that is both fraudulent and ineffective.
Tashi claims that Cienega Med Spa is only a sham to take people’s money. Customers are being taken advantage of, and the business is holding out hope that it will never be discovered.
She claims that the palace lists RX-Grade medications as vitamins and that she has never encountered a business that is so plainly deceptive, dangerous, irresponsible, and wrong. She also claims that she has never seen a business that sells drugs. Tashi emphasizes that Toradol can be administered intramuscularly and intravenously for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, whilst Zofran can be used intraoperatively or postoperatively for the treatment of nausea and chemo sickness.
Both of these pharmaceuticals have to be carefully monitored, therefore there is no way that they can be considered a “Vitamin Therapy.” She claims that because this “medspa” makes use of things that it does not fully comprehend, it places the lives of its customers in danger.
Tashi raises concerns about the ability of the employees at the medspa to comprehend the liver function tests that must be carried out for Toradol. She is also curious as to whether or not they are able to identify a cardigan arrhythmia by auscultation. Tashi brings up the fact that medspa doesn’t even take the blood pressure of its customers but yet manages to provide potentially harmful medications.
She claims that this location demonstrates recklessness, negligence, and danger. Tashi brings to our attention the fact that medspa implies that their vitamin drips are helpful to patients who suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Anemia, and Lyme disease. However, each of these conditions is considered to be quite dangerous. When dealing with circumstances of this severity, a random drip won’t do any good.
Because of the administration of Cienega Med Spa’s recklessness and excessive avarice, the spa’s patients’ lives are put in jeopardy on a regular basis.
Tashi has drawn attention to the fact that Cienega makes false promises about its “Vitamin drips” in the photographs that follow; these statements put the patients’ lives in jeopardy.
Cienega Med Spa Has Careless Staff and Poor Customer Service
Dawn informs us that this medical spa has a lot of background noise, and that this noise can be heard not just in the treatment room but also in the waiting room. She asserts that she was able to pick up complete conversations as well as laughing.
Instead of being a peaceful event, it was one that she found to be fraught with anxiety. During the procedure, her provider was sidetracked by a different member of the team who needed assistance with a piece of machinery in another room.
Dawn considered it to be an unprofessional act on their part to do so. In addition to this, as she was waiting for her treatment to start, a member of the staff from the reception desk entered the treatment room to inquire about payment. According to her, the timing of this occurrence appeared extremely strange. The workers at the front desk had the opportunity to inquire about her payment while she was waiting in the reception area; nevertheless, they decided to instead barge into the treatment room.
In addition, Dawn did not receive any form of greeting or acknowledgment when she arrived for her appointment. It appeared as though she had annoyed the individuals there and had broken into a conversation that was going on. After she had finished her papers, they sent her to an unpleasant room where she had to wait for her appointment with a nurse.
Dawn reveals that she was aware of the commotion caused by the noise. As a result, when the nurse entered the room, she informed the nurse about the same thing. In her response, she stated that they have been there for a considerable amount of time and that business has really increased. Dawn characterized this remark as being laughable in her opinion.
After that, they wheeled her into the examination and treatment room. She reveals that the loud conversation was still distracting to her. After that, a man entered the room, did not introduce himself, and began applying numbing lotion to her skin. When she questioned him about the noise, he explained to her that the owner was present, which was the source of the disturbance.
Dawn mentions that she was subjected to unending chitchat and laughter, a laser, and a complete disrespect for her as a customer, and that she was at a loss to determine which of these factors was the most intolerable. She claims that the front desk workers were not bothered by her entry or exit because they did not greet her either time she was there.
Update: After some time had passed, a representative from Cienega Med Spa got in touch with her and apologized for the unpleasant experience she had. Dawn was informed by a representative of the company that her feedback would be communicated to higher management. That sums it up nicely.
Dawn claims that she paid $350 here, and the business did not even offer a partial return of this amount to her. Without a doubt, she despises everything about her time spent at this medspa.
Botched Procedure Caused the Client to Go to the ER
When Chanel went to this medical spa, she did so with highly optimistic expectations. The very first time she went to the location, she went ahead and had the coolsculpting process done. Chanel reports that while the locals were friendly, they were far from trustworthy.
They had warned her that she might feel a tingling sensation and some slight discomfort while the treatment was being performed. However, the medical professional continued assuring her that she was doing wonderfully because they had seen other patients cry during this surgery.
Chanel claims that this inconsistency should have been the first warning sign for her to look out for. However, at the time, she was completely oblivious to it.
She inquired about the sensations that would follow the treatment, and everyone there said that she would experience tingling, numbness, and possibly some minor discomfort in the area that had been treated. Everything was a fabrication.
Chanel divulges that she suffered agonizing nerve agony for an entire month and still has not fully recovered from it. She decided to go to the emergency room since the symptoms she was experiencing indicated that she required a CAT scan. The physicians had a hunch that she was suffering from internal hemorrhage.
Chanel says that she will never get cool sculpting in her life. She might also file a lawsuit against Cienega Med Spa for the horrendous treatment they gave to her.
Update:
Chanel had shared an update on her review because the spa posted a rebuttal to her complaint. They claimed that they didn’t have Chanel in their database.
She responded by highlighting that she had emailed and called them. Also, she had received her services on July 31st. She points out that she has kept all the receipts so they shouldn’t lie so blatantly.
Cienega Med Spa Failed the Coolsculpt Procedure, Harassed the Client to Remove Her Review
Here, the reviewer says that women over 50 years old should not visit Cienega Med Spa. She points out that the coolsculpting procedure is not for everyone. The reviewer waited for 6 months to ensure she was not judging her results prematurely.
Finally, she faced the truth that the procedure did not work for her.
The coolsculpt did not work for her and she thinks that it might be because of her age.
She thinks that there haven’t been enough studies conducted on this procedure. So, it’s hard to determine when it fails to yield results. In her experience, the panels couldn’t grab the tissue properly and they had to change them. As a result, the procedure failed and they had to restart.
The reviewer highlights that she lost a significant amount of money by paying for this procedure. Moreover, she had to talk to a PR executive working for Cienega Med Spa who kept urging her to remove her Yelp review.
Also, there was no change in the fat area she had treated. In her experience, the coolsculpt at this medspa didn’t work. She doesn’t recommend this place nor this service to women over 50.
Made a Clerical Error, Harassed the Client and Discriminated Against Her
Julia mentioned that she had been receiving laser hair removal treatments at Cienega Med Spa for the past two years. They had sold her a combination of two packages for the purpose of completing the two most recent sections she was working on a few weeks before she filed her evaluation on the website.
They didn’t inform her about it until she went in for her next appointment, but for some reason, they didn’t charge her for one of the sessions that was included in the package. After that, they developed a very negative attitude toward her and began to treat her like a criminal.
Julia claims that the abrupt shift in conduct of her friends was due to a $95 session, despite the fact that she had spent over $4000 at the location. She said that it was an error and that she shouldn’t have to pay the full price for a single session. She said that it was unfair. Julia informed them that she was ready to pay the total fee for the package in order to participate in an additional session.
On the other hand, they informed her that they cannot accept her offer. In addition, the personnel informed her that there is nothing that they can do to change the situation.
She then proceeded to her subsequent appointment and made arrangements for her subsequent session. They didn’t bring up the $95.00 once again until her subsequent sessions, though. She was ignored by the front desk employees for a period of thirty minutes before being instructed to sit in the lobby.
After she had finished her appointments, they continued to press her about paying for the further session that cost $95. Julia questioned the staff members about the silence that prevailed in the lobby throughout the half an hour that she waited there. In addition to this, she brought up the fact that they regularly neglected her while she was in the waiting area.
Julia had the impression that they were trying to exclude her from the group. The medspa is not going to complete the remaining sessions in her package because they have changed their policy recently. In addition to this, they have informed her that they are unable to provide a refund for the remaining sessions. As a result of all she went through, Julia does not advocate going to this medspa.
Additional Cienega Med Spa Reviews You Should Read:
Made a Clerical Error, Harassed the Client and Discriminated Against Her
Julia reveals that for the past two years, she has been getting her laser hair removal done at Cienega Med Spa. A couple of weeks before she published her review, they had sold her a combination of two packages in order to complete the two most recent tasks that she had been working on.
They made a mistake and didn’t inform her about it until her next appointment, but they didn’t charge her for one of the sessions in the package, so she didn’t have to pay for it. At that point, they turned quite hostile toward her and began treating her like a criminal.
Julia claims that a $95 session was the cause of their abrupt shift in conduct, despite the fact that she had spent over $4000 at the location. She claimed that it was an error, and that she should not be required to pay the whole sum for a single session. Julia informed them that she was willing to pay the package price for an additional session if they wanted to schedule one.
However, they informed her that the offer she made is not acceptable. In addition to this, the staff has informed her that there is nothing that they can do about it.
After that, she went to her next appointment, during which she booked her next session. After that, they didn’t bring up the $95.00 until her subsequent sessions. She was ignored by the workers at the front desk for a period of thirty minutes before being instructed to sit in the lobby.
After she had completed her sessions, they continued to bother her about the $95 session. Julia questioned the staff members about the silence that prevailed while she was waiting in the lobby for a half an hour. She also brought up the fact that they neglected her on numerous occasions when she was in the waiting room.
Julia had the impression that they were treating her differently because of who she was. Now, the medspa is refusing to do any of the remaining sessions that were included in her package. They are also explaining to her that they are unable to issue a refund for the remaining sessions. Because of all she went through, Julia does not advise using this particular medspa.
Additional Cienega Med Spa Reviews You Should Read:
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