Print this, paste it into your emails, ask every question — of us included. Good clinics answer all twelve without flinching; weak ones reveal themselves by question four.
Dental tourism has a trust problem, and it's earned: glossy websites are cheap, and an international patient can't drop by to check the sterilisation room. But the fix isn't avoiding treatment abroad — it's asking questions that glossy marketing can't fake. These twelve, with the answers you should expect:
You want a named specialist orthodontist (in India: an MDS in Orthodontics, registered with the Dental Council of India), not "our smile team". Registration numbers are publicly verifiable. A clinic that hesitates to name its doctor is a walk-away signal.
Align maintains its own provider records. If a clinic advertises Invisalign, its provider status should be checkable — and your aligners should arrive in Align packaging with a unique case identifier.
Photos are enough for a preliminary yes/no, but final treatment should only follow a clinical exam, radiographs and a 3D scan. Anyone willing to sell you a full treatment plan from selfies alone is guessing with your bite.
Digital planning (like Invisalign's ClinCheck) shows your tooth-by-tooth movement and final position on screen. A confident clinic shows you this — and lets you take it to your home dentist for a second opinion.
The strong answer is an itemised list: records, scan, digital plan, the full aligner series, attachments, IPR, refinements and retainers. The weak answer is a low headline number with "extras" appearing later. Compare against a transparent baseline like our own pricing page.
Equally revealing. For treatment abroad the honest answer includes: your flights, hotel and food (you should book and pay these yourself — bundled "packages" are where hidden markups live).
You want specifics: check-in frequency, platform, response times, who reviews the photos, and what happens if teeth stop tracking. "Just message us anytime" is not a protocol.
Some cases need extra aligner stages at the end. Ask whether refinements are included in the price, and how the refinement scan is handled for a patient living abroad.
The textbook answer: step back to your previous tray, contact the clinic, and the plan adjusts — possible because you hold your full current series. If they can't answer this instantly, they don't treat many remote patients.
Volume matters in orthodontics. Hundreds of completed cases with before/after records is a meaningful track record; ask to see examples similar to your case.
Direct-to-clinic payment keeps the money trail clean and eliminates middleman markups. Facilitators (like us) should be paid by the clinic as a referral fee, never by inflating your price.
The trick question. Roughly one in ten people who ask us get told aligners aren't their best option. A provider who has never turned anyone away is selling, not diagnosing.
We built our process around these exact questions: named DCI-registered specialist orthodontists at an ISO 9001-certified partner clinic in New Delhi with 500+ documented cases, verifiable Invisalign provider status, iTero 3D scans with an on-screen preview before you pay, an itemised quote covering refinements and retainers, a written remote-monitoring protocol, treatment-only pricing (your flights and hotel stay in your hands — no packages, no markups), payment direct to the clinic, and a genuine willingness to say "aligners aren't right for you" (check your case here).
Deep-dive the safety side in Is dental treatment in India safe?, or see what the trip itself looks like in the step-by-step journey guide.
Request a quote and put every question in this article to us — the full documentation comes standard.