Warning this is long...
We just did our first cycle with an egg donor and to say we're disappointed is an understatement. We learned at the transfer that they almost canceled her cycle but she finally responded at the end, while on the max medication dosages (despite being 23). Her results were 7 follicles retrieved from, resulting in 4 eggs, and 3 fertilized.
Yesterday we transferred two embryos of not good quality (day 5, but they weren't at blastocyst stage yet) and learned today the third didn't make it to be frozen. So instead of the 70-90% chance our clinic normally says for egg donor cycles, we're looking at 35-50% chance of success, or something like that (maybe less if the third embryo failing is any indication of the quality of the other two...). So we're prepared for this not to work. While we're lucky that insurance did cover the medical costs of using an egg donor, it doesn't cover administrative fees and has high deductibles (at least compared to insurance I had previously that I used to cover an IVF cycle for myself, so we're looking at a lot of out-of-pocket costs despite having coverage). So this is costing us a lot of money. Our clinic does have some sort of a refund plan, but we didn't do it, in part because I think it's only for if you don't have insurance coverage, and also it never occurred to us the outcome would be this bad that we'd need to do another cycle.
So my question is....if this all goes bad, has anyone had luck going back to their doctor to ask about any sort of money back or a discounted cycle after an experience like this? I did have one friend at another clinic basically get a free cycle after they got just one embryo with their donor and it didn't work but I didn't know if that was common or not. And I get that you can't predict how things will go, but this seems shocking to us (and our doctor seemed very surprised too). I know it can happen, but honestly this donor didn't do any better (maybe worse? although theoretically her egg quality is better than my 42-year old eggs) than I did two years ago.
Obviously if this all works out I guess I'm ok with what we paid, although if the transfer only results in one baby, I'll be a bit disappointed that we have no options to have another child without going through the whole process again, which is not what we expected, even though I'm not positive we would want another - I just at least wanted the option and that's part of what we were paying for. But just curious if others have encountered this.