On March 12th 2011, I went to Accrington’s Dolland & Aitchison Optician (Now a Boots Optician) for a routine contact lens check-up. I've been using the same optician for perhaps 10years now, and my husband and sons go there too, and I normally get a new pair of specs every year or so from them.
After looking at my eyes through his gadget thing, the optician changed my lens prescription. He didn't go in to any sort of explanation about what had changed, just that he said he would notify their lens company “Contact Lenses By Post” of the change and the next ones that I get will be for the new prescription.
When the new ones arrived, as normal, I put them in on the 1st of the month, so that would have been 1st April. They weren't comfortable and I couldn't see properly in them. And when I say that I couldn't see properly, I don't mean that things were a little bit blurry, I mean that I really couldn't see!
I tried them a few times, but didn't feel safe to drive in them, since I felt I could see better with no lenses or specs than I could with them in! There was no way that I could wear them for work using a PC all day, since I couldn't even see my laptop screen whilst it was on my lap!
After the second try with them, I called the Contact Lens By Post service and asked them to check they'd sent the correct ones, because they were unusable.
The guy on the phone confirmed that they were definitely what the optician had requested - plano on both eyes (no magnification!!!) and a change in shape on one eye!!??!!
So, again I tried them for a few hours, but then had to drive somewhere. Since I couldn't see to even watch TV in them, there was no way that I felt it would be safe to drive in them.
I took them out and found a spare pair of pre-change ones and used those for a month.
The next month (May) I wore my specs all month, leaving the lenses unopened in their box. And then last month (June) I wore the last pair of old ones that I had left.
When July arrived, I was fed up of paying £30.80 a month for a tiny little cardboard box to drop through my letter box with contents that were of no use to me whatsoever! I gave them one more try. I put them in on the morning of Saturday 9th and couldn't recognize the face of a neighbour when I ran in to her unexpectedly in a restaurant where we'd gone for tea (Because I couldn't see to cook!)
So, last Saturday, the 9th July, I went in to the Optician and explained that I really didn't think they were right since I couldn't see. The receptionist got out my file and took it in to the back room to ask the optician to review his notes. She returned and I was told that I just needed longer to get used to them! She said that I should use them for a couple of weeks and then I would be used to them and they would be fine.
I repeated that I could see better with no specs or contacts than I could with these, and said that they weren't comfortable either.
They insisted that I should persevere with them.
On the morning of Sunday 10th July my youngest son was reading in Church for his Primary School Leavers' Service - I couldn't see him, his classmates nor the hymn sheet in the lenses. The afternoon was to be my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary, and mum had asked me to read a poem and there was no way that I would have been able to do that in the new prescription, so I had to wear my glasses for the rest of the day... and am still wearing them now.
On the morning of Sunday 10th July my youngest son was reading in Church for his Primary School Leavers' Service - I couldn't see him, his classmates nor the hymn sheet in the lenses. The afternoon was to be my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary, and mum had asked me to read a poem and there was no way that I would have been able to do that in the new prescription, so I had to wear my glasses for the rest of the day... and am still wearing them now.
Yesterday (Friday 15th July) I looked at Tesco Online and priced up my lenses with them. £40.50 for 3 months for the same brand of lens that I've been used to. So today I've been to Accrington Tesco Optician and explained. I showed them the old and new prescriptions.
They said that they thought it would be unusual to go from the prescription I had before to the current one. She booked me in for a full (free) contact lens consultation and I'll be going there for that next week.
They explained how the same brand lenses from them in store would cost £43 for 3 months. (£43 ÷ 3 = £14.30 per month = less than half the price I'm paying now!) - They're a little more expensive in-store than they are online. They said the eye test with them would be free - that's the reason my old optician validated having a higher monthly charge, because follow-up and after-care and eye tests were free, and I didn't even get any cleansing solution for that price.
Yeah well, when my "OLD OPTICIAN" insisted that the new lenses were right, without even bothering to come out of the staff-room to speak to me, or look at them in my eye to see how they were sitting, or without even asking me to look at the eye chart, they lost their £30 a month from me. But when I leave, I take my family with me. That's the 3 pairs of specs a year from hubby (who is having problems with the prescription safety glasses he got from the same optician last month) and a pair of specs for each from each of the kids... all because they didn't believe me & treat me with respect when I went back to make use of their "inclusive" after-care and follow-up that they appear to be including £15 a month for!
So, I've cancelled my Direct Debit, and emailed D&A/Boots Opticians through their website so they know exactly why they have lost the custom of a whole family. I've actually saved myself a bit of time and asked them to look here at this blog post (http://tinyurl.com/WhyImSwitchingToTescoContacts) so that they know the full details of what happened. Hubby seems to think that the staff maybe didn't want taking over by Boots so they're deliberately doing things wrong to drive customers away from the practice, but that would be a very self-destructive thing to do since eventually the shop would have to close when word got round that they prescribed wrongly regularly & treated people badly when they questioned their eyewear.
Anyway - will update after I've been to see the Tesco Optician later in the week - and even if he says the "wrong" prescription's right, I'll have saved myself £15 a month by switching to them - but I really can't see how it could be correct since I can't even watch TV in them! Would D&A have been liable if I'd had a car accident due to not seeing a child in the road, or something like that? Ponder, ponder!
Looking back, when I had my last full eye test on 28th October 2010 I was told that my eyes had changed only slightly, and not enough to need a new pair of glasses - unless I particularly wanted a new pair. I decided that I would have a new pair, and got some made up to the new prescription. If the change then was so slight that it didn't need new specs, but I got them anyway, surely that same change would have meant that I couldn't see in my specs for a while until I got used to them? This didn't happen - I just began using the new specs instead of the old ones. And even now, I can switch between the two pairs and hardly tell any difference. So why is there so much difference with the contact lenses?
So, I've cancelled my Direct Debit, and emailed D&A/Boots Opticians through their website so they know exactly why they have lost the custom of a whole family. I've actually saved myself a bit of time and asked them to look here at this blog post (http://tinyurl.com/WhyImSwitchingToTescoContacts) so that they know the full details of what happened. Hubby seems to think that the staff maybe didn't want taking over by Boots so they're deliberately doing things wrong to drive customers away from the practice, but that would be a very self-destructive thing to do since eventually the shop would have to close when word got round that they prescribed wrongly regularly & treated people badly when they questioned their eyewear.
Anyway - will update after I've been to see the Tesco Optician later in the week - and even if he says the "wrong" prescription's right, I'll have saved myself £15 a month by switching to them - but I really can't see how it could be correct since I can't even watch TV in them! Would D&A have been liable if I'd had a car accident due to not seeing a child in the road, or something like that? Ponder, ponder!
Looking back, when I had my last full eye test on 28th October 2010 I was told that my eyes had changed only slightly, and not enough to need a new pair of glasses - unless I particularly wanted a new pair. I decided that I would have a new pair, and got some made up to the new prescription. If the change then was so slight that it didn't need new specs, but I got them anyway, surely that same change would have meant that I couldn't see in my specs for a while until I got used to them? This didn't happen - I just began using the new specs instead of the old ones. And even now, I can switch between the two pairs and hardly tell any difference. So why is there so much difference with the contact lenses?
 |
| The left is an example of what I had, and the right is an example of the new prescription |
No comments:
Post a Comment