Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Sort of reminded me of a George Carlin bit......

Yesterday, I took our daughter to the eye doctor for her initial checkup after she started wearing glasses.

Her right eye has improved to just about 20/20. That's the good news. The bad news are the actual glasses.

The intial price of her glasses were quite an eye opener (rim shot). So I was a little surprised when one of the lenses popped out while I was cleaning it. And it happened pretty much every time after that. The "anti-scratch" coating was also purchased for her lenses. I should have asked yesterday if they accidentally applied the "pro-scratch" coating.

I pointed out the problems to the glasses technician. She took the frames back and tightened them up. Now the Carlin bit. The "anti-scratch" coating doesn't really mean your lenses won't get scratched. Oh, O.K. I must have taken that phrase to mean something else......like the lenses wouldn't get scratched. Now if the glasses were a year old, I don't think I would have said a word. These are about 3 months old. And it's not like we have been dragging them on the sidewalk. They haven't fallen off her head at school. But they are pretty scratched up.

Now what was really interesting. The tech said that they will order new lenses, free of charge. I thought that was pretty nice. Well, guess what? That's their policy for customers whose lenses get scratched after the "anti-scratch" purchase. And they'll only do it one time.

Which leads me to this question: If you already have a policy in place regarding this, isn't this kind of an admission that the coating doesn't really work? And wouldn't that be something to inform potential purchasers of this? My wife ordered these glasses, but she didn't say that they had told her that.

Am I overreacting? Have I become the "GET OFF MY LAWN" guy? Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!

2 comments:

  1. My son and I both wear glasses and you are totally right about the anti-scratch coating. I've always been afraid not to get it though, thinking, OMG, if my glasses are THIS bad with, what will they look like WITHOUT it?
    It's amazing to me how much glasses cost. Even with insurance I often end up spending around $350 per pair, and that's choosing fairly inexpensive frames.
    The worst was when my son was 12-14 years old. He had to go to the eye dr every six months because he had so many growth spurts and it seemed his vision changed with each one. (And inurance would only pay for one visit/one pair of glasses per year)

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  2. We're a family of 4 and we all wear glasses. It sucks! We had a very bad experience with Bard Optical and my youngest's glasses. It was very similar to the situation you wrote about! Our insurance changed recently, too, and the new eye benefits are non-existent. One thing our new eye doctor told us was to NEVER "dry" clean the glasses...i.e., take them off and rub on your shirt or cloth. Always use a liquid. Totally gonna try that with this pair.

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