Customer service

What the hell is awebding??

Customer Service has been discussed by me before, as well as by some of my friends, whose blogs I follow, who actually haven't updated their blog lately...although that's another story.

This annoys me however. Last year I bought new glasses. The price was HORRENDOUS, but I decided that I would finally get a really good pair, with all the bells and whistles...non-scratch, special coating, anti-glare, bendy-legs (since I always seem to break a leg) and all the other extras. They were $759.00...yoiks! But, there was a $100.00 cash back thing going on, and Steven's Blue Cross would reimburse me $250.00, so really, I ended up paying $410.00 and when I rationalized it that way, it didn't seem so bad.

Plus, there was a one year guarantee that was 100%...if you lost them, sat on them, whatever...total replacement. And the second year was the same deal, but 50%.

Now. After I paid and went home, I was phoned a day or so later, saying that they had mischarged me, and I owed another $50.(she had forgotten to charge me for the eye exam, which is not free in BC anymore. Thanks, Gordon Campbell, but we won't go there now) I was a little choked, but I went and paid it. So, these glasses are now up to $809.00, which is totally outrageous, but again, I am rationalizing that down to $460.00, and I always end up with scratched lens, which drives me insane, so I really am very pleased with these ones.

Jump ahead just less than a year. The glasses seem to need a bit of an adjustment, and since they are so expensive, I don't want to screw around with them, so I zip down to the optometrists and ask the girl to straighten them for me, which she does, quickly and with a smile, also telling me that if her eyes look funny, it's because she just had drops to dilate her pupils, and she wasn't actually crying. As I leave, I am thinking they seem too tight and still sort of crooked. I drive half way home and realize that something is wrong, so back I go. The optometrist himself is there, so I ask him if he could straighten them, and he comments: "God God, who did this?" and I said: "The girl who just had her pupils dilated." He chuckled and said that she couldn't see straight, and no wonder she did an awful job. So off I went again, after he adjusted them.

Since then, they were rather loose, but not really worth complaining about. HOWEVER, a few months later, which was exactly 2 weeks after the one year guarantee ran out (can you see where this is going?) they were just TOO loose, so off I go again. The woman looked at them, and says that the temple is cracked and I need a new one, since I am at the 50% term of the guarantee now, it will be $49.00, which is half of the cost of a new temple. I told her the story, and said that I quite thought that the girl who adjusted them had perhaps been too rough and cracked them, and really, if I had just come 2 weeks earlier, then there would have been no charge to me at all. She basically said: "Too bad.", so I asked her to order the new part, and went home, cranky.

Now, the new part arrives the same day I had another yearly eye exam, so as I am waiting there, the fellow goes to get the new part. I asked him why it would have cracked, being such expensive frames, and he apologetically tells me that even the high end frames are mass produced and out-sourced now. So I said, then, really, rather than pay these prices for glasses that last a year, I'm better off to go to Wal-Mart and get cheap ones for $300 and in reality, get 2 or 3 pairs for the same total price. He didn't say anything, but just went back to fix my glasses. And when he came out, he said: "Guess what? It wasn't the temple at all, the screw had just broken off inside the screw-hole, so I just replaced it...no charge." I was both happy and mightily pissed off at the same time. It's a good thing that after the eye exam, I was told that my eyes hadn't changed in the last year, so I didn't need new lenses, because you can guarantee that I wouldn't have got them there.

As a small side note, they have a new machine there, that takes a digital photo of the inside of your eye. Since glacoma and other eye diseases run in my family, he suggested that I have this done. It's a $25 charge, that may or may not be covered by my medical, but I thought I'd have it done anyhow. The picture is then shown to you on his computer screen, which is quite a huge screen, and I have to tell you, the inside of an eye is simply gorgeous. At least mine is, I don't know about yours. It looks just like Jupiter. Really! Huge and round and orange, with a large reddish "spot" (the place where the optic nerve enters the back of the eye) that look exactly like the red spot on Jupiter. You can see all the blood vessels, and a shadowy area that looks like the possible storm areas on Jupiter. I was amazed...it was phenomenal to look inside of my own eye.

I asked him if anyone ever asked for a print out, as I thought it was quite fantastic, and he just looked at me like I was an insane astronomer and said, in a hesitant tone: "Ummm, no, you're the first." *sigh*. Oh well, maybe next year they'll let us have a copy for an additional $25.00, I'd happily frame it and hang it on my wall.

~The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient, while Nature cures the disease.
~Voltaire (1694-1778)