Buying a home teeth-whitening kit from a dentist in Ireland can work out to be up to 25 times more expensive than purchasing the same product online, the Cork Independent has learned.

Dentists in Cork are charging between €300 and €550 for home teeth-whitening kits while the same or similar products are available online from the USA for the equivalent of between €20 and €150.

In one instance a Bishopstown resident visited her local dentist and purchased a ContrastPM home whitening kit for €500; her husband was able to purchase the exact same product from the USA for just $41 including shipping, the equivalent of just €28.

Investigations by the Cork Independent have revealed that popular home whitening kits from manufacturers such as Zoom, Opalscene, Day White, ContrastPM and Optident regularly cost between 300 and 500 per cent more when bought in Ireland than online.

The Cork Independent contacted 17 dentists around the city, of which seven did not provide the kits at all and three only provided a supervised whitening service carried out in the surgery. The remaining seven did sell the kits to the public at an average price of €460. A quick look at prices for similar kits online revealed an average price of €96 across six different brands.

A spokesperson for the Irish Dental Association pointed out that dentists would normally examine a patient before selling any such kits to them to assess their suitability and also provided advice and aftercare where required. They added that the products available online were often not the same as those available through dental surgeries and therefore could not be compared on  a like-for-like basis.

Dermot Jewell of the Consumers Association of Ireland told the Cork Independent, “In order to protect their professional integrity the sector should not be involved in retail at all. There needs to be a prohibition on dentists selling these types of products altogether.

If people are determined to buy such products from their dentist they should get as much information as possible before they visit the surgery. Even allowing for examinations and different brands there are clearly huge price discrepancies and consumers need to be able to ask their dentists why this is the case from an informed position”.

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