On April 24, 2014, Dr. Tammy Wu wrote a letter against the idea of the possible merger of the Allergan Botox giant along with the skin care / cosmetic giant Valeant.  This was 2 days after Valeant had proposed a merger with Allergan – or possibly a hostile takeover?

While this merger may make some sense since there is many crossover items – basically competition could be eliminated with this type of corporate merger.  But we have been afraid that customer service will be hurt as will future research and development.  Esepcially with our beloved Botox.

Allergan just published on their website about 100 of the 500 letters they have received from their physician customers.  This is the link to the letters from physician customers to Allergan – all of these are against the idea of the “Vallergant merger”.  I figured it’s a cute name for combining the companies.

Dr. Tammy Wu’s letter is among those 100 published.  In fact, I think in reading them, she was the first one to write.  Perhaps she sparked a flurry of letters to Allergan.

This is her letter:

Dear Mr. Schaison:

As a physician who has experienced the “Valeant” service, I have to say that I am not impressed with them.  Specifically, our office had enjoyed a great relationship with Obagi Medical Products (OMP) and have done business with them for many years. As you may be aware, Obagi was acquired by Valeant last year.

Since the merger/ acquisition, every aspect of OMP has gone down the tubes. Customer service, billing service, product quality control (we receive leaking products and broken products almost with every order – which had never happened before when Obagi was independent), shipping control, timing of delivery of products, etc. have all been negatively affected. The poor OBagi representative has to backtrack and apologize almost on a regular basis for all the mishaps that have happened since the merger.

Allergan has been a leader in aesthetic products and more, and I hope that Allergan will stay independent and have no affiliations with Valeant. I respect Allergan for its research and development aspects, and I believe the future is quite bright for Allergan as an independent company.

I hope that the Board of Directors will take into consideration as much as possible the implications of this merger and what it will do to the reputation of Allergan – in my opinion, if it’s the same as Obagi and Medicis, it will only be negatively affected. We stopped using Medicis products as a result of bad customer service, and we are currently considering eliminating Obagi from our office as a result of all the mishaps.

Thank you for reaching out to us physicians. I know that I am not the only physician hoping for a positive outcome from this, which would be Allergan Independence, no Valeant involvement.  Thank you for listening.

Sincerely,

Tammy Wu, MD

Diplomate, American Board of Plastic Surgery

Surgical Artistry, Inc.

2336 Sylvan Avenue, Suite C

Modesto, CA 95355

Some Background info:  Allergan has the products that we carry: Latisse, Juvederm, and Botox.  It also has SkinMedica.  Valeant has Obagi, Restylane, Perlane, and many other dermatologically related items.

I would like to mention that Obagi has tried to improve on it’s customer service since we had initially complained, but it is a different culture, it seems at Valeant, and I do think that some change is unavoidable.  But we hope to adapt and get used to the new culture.  And we’ll probably adapt too, if Allergan and Valeant were to become combined.

Visit our Modesto Botox home page.

Actavis update

UPDATE: Valeant didn’t end up merging with Allergan.  Actavis ended up being the company which merged with Allergan.