Deposits, Cancellations and Consultation Fees: What You Agree To Before Cosmetic Surgery

Should You Have to Pay for a Cosmetic Surgery Consultation?

Neither answer is wrong on its own. The American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, which certifies Dr. Troell, puts typical consultation fees at $75 to $250 and notes that most surgeons who charge one apply it toward the procedure if you go ahead. The reasons it lists for charging are reasonable ones: a fee “removes the potential for a patient to anticipate ‘sales’ pressure,” compensates the surgeon for time and expertise, allows more one-on-one time, and screens for patients who are serious. The same page is explicit that the reverse is also true: “Not charging a consultation fee does not mean that a surgeon is desperate for patients or less reputable.”[1]

What a free consultation should not mean is the version the negative reviews describe and the search engines now warn about: you book a free visit, spend most of it with a patient coordinator, see the surgeon for a few minutes if at all, and leave with a price and a deposit request. The test of a free consultation is not the price; it is who examines you. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ consultation checklist (“Tips and Tricks for Acing Your Plastic Surgery Consult,” May 2025) assumes you are in the room with the surgeon, asking about certification, experience with your specific procedure, before-and-after photos of patients like you, hospital affiliations in an emergency, the post-operative course, and the revision policy.[2] Those questions cannot be answered by a coordinator.

At Troell Cosmetic Surgery the consultation is free and it is with Dr. Troell himself: he is the practice’s only surgeon and performs every consultation and every operation. The examination, the discussion of what is and is not realistic for your anatomy, and the written quote all happen in that visit, in English or Spanish, in the same office on South Fort Apache Road where your surgery and follow-ups would take place. A virtual consultation is available for patients who cannot come in first.

Is a Cosmetic Surgery Deposit Refundable If You Cancel or Change Your Mind?

Policies differ, and almost none are on the practice’s website. Some practices refund a deposit if you cancel outside a notice window; some keep it inside the window and refund it outside; some treat it as fully non-refundable from the day it is taken; some apply it to a rescheduled date. The reviews this guide was written against are not complaints about any one of those rules. They are complaints about not knowing the rule until the money was already gone: a deposit that “someone will call you back” about and never does, a booking fee kept after a cancellation made days in advance, a charge that appears years after an appointment that never happened.

The law sets the outer edges. FindLaw’s consumer guide to appointment deposits and cancellation fees (updated February 2024) states that a business can charge you to schedule or cancel, “but the law limits these fees”: policies must be disclosed beforehand, a business generally “can’t charge you an unreasonably high fee for services they didn’t perform,” and it lists as red flags a cancellation fee of 100 percent or more of the service cost and a business that “asks you to pay in full before you’ve seen it in person.”[4]

The honest structure, whichever rule a practice uses, is that the rule is stated before the deposit is taken, in writing, and matches what the practice’s published terms say. At Troell Cosmetic Surgery the term is simple and it is published: a surgical deposit is taken when a surgery date is scheduled and it is non-refundable. That is the sentence on the practice’s terms and conditions, it is the sentence you will hear when you schedule, and it is the sentence this page repeats so that nobody learns it afterward. What that means in practice is that the decision to place a deposit is the decision to have the surgery on that date; the practice does not ask you to make it in the consultation room, and you should not make it until you are sure.

Anything beyond that sentence — what happens if you need to move a date for illness or travel, for example — is confirmed with you in writing at the time you schedule, for your procedure and your date. If a practice, ours included, cannot show you its scheduling terms in writing before you pay, that is the moment to pause.

What Should a Written Quote Contain Before You Pay a Deposit?

A deposit placed against a verbal number is a deposit placed against a number that can grow. Before any deposit, the quote should be on paper and it should name every line: the surgeon’s fee and what it covers, the anesthesia type and who provides it, the facility or procedure room, garments and supplies, follow-up visits, and any procedure being combined. It should say whether the number is a fixed fee or a starting figure, and it should say what the deposit is, when it is due, and whether it is refundable. The American Board of Cosmetic Surgery’s financing guidance (“How to Finance Cosmetic Surgery,” May 2026) says the same thing from the other side: most cosmetic procedures are elective and not covered by insurance, so patients should get “a complete picture of the total cost” — surgeon, anesthesia, facility, lab work, post-operative items and follow-up care — and ask for “an itemized breakdown during your consultation,” with medical credit programs such as CareCredit and Alphaeon Credit named among the ways to spread the cost.[5]

Dr. Troell’s quotes are written after the examination and built on the plan you settled on. For procedures performed awake in the office under local anesthesia with IV sedation, the surgeon’s fee includes anesthesia and use of the procedure room; for procedures under general anesthesia at the accredited surgical facility, the quote itemizes the surgical center and the anesthesia provider beside the surgeon’s fee. How that structure compares with national surgeon-fee averages is worked through, procedure by procedure, in the practice’s cost guides — the Brazilian butt lift cost guide is the most recent and the most detailed on what a quote should itemize.

Why the Booking Question Is Answered by How the Practice Is Built

Dr. Robert J. Troell, MD, FACS, is a board-certified facial plastic surgeon and a Diplomate of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a surgeon with more than 30 years of practice, including residency and fellowship at Stanford University and a Clinical Professor appointment there from 1995 to 2013. He has held an active Nevada medical license since 2001 and has practiced in Las Vegas for more than twenty years. He is the only surgeon at Troell Cosmetic Surgery, which is why a free consultation here is a consultation with him and not with a coordinator, and why the quote you are handed was written by the person who will operate.

The booking structure follows from that: one surgeon, a free consultation with him, a written quote after examination, a deposit only when a date is scheduled and stated as non-refundable in the practice’s published terms, and follow-up visits with the same surgeon in the same office — the continuity our revision guide describes. Patient reviews are on the practice’s Google Business Profile and reviews page, which the practice cannot edit or delete.