My eye exam was May 1, 2023.
As of today, I still don’t have contact lenses.
That’s nine weeks from the time of my first appointment, and I still can’t see.
Let’s go back to May, when this Visionworks debacle began. In truth, my sad and frustrating history with the optometrist goes back further than that – I remember a three-hour wait just for a follow-up appointment in Amsterdam that set the tone for seemingly everything that followed, and I ended up switching eye-care centers every few years due to poor service, but they always end up sucking. Not sure why this is across the board for all the eye places I’ve been – does anyone else know?
As for this latest go round, on May 1st I went in for my 9 AM appointment, and once the doctor arrived (ten minutes late) we had a relatively quick exam and she sent me out with a trial pair of contacts – my first progressives, thank you old age. She advised to let my eyes get used to them and follow up in a week. If they worked out we would order the 6-month batch my feeble eye insurance plan would cover.
After a week of trying them out, and freaking out while driving because the distance sight just wasn’t there, I went back and said we had to try something else. She arrived ten minutes late again (the waiting room is right where she has to walk in, so it’s not an easy place to sneak in the back and pretend you were there all the time). That said, my time with her was blessedly quick, and she offered a mother progressive lens and I went away for another week.
Same deal – driving was difficult, as was seeing up close, so the progressive lenses were great for a twenty-foot section of world around me – neither up close nor far away – so I went back and said I’d be fine with regular distance lenses and could use the readers I’d grown accustomed to (and finally have in each room of the house). She advised trying a different brand of progressives. Amenable to that, we went with another pair.
Another week of poor performance, another week of questionable driving, and another appointment where the doc was twelve minutes late. (My appointments were all at 9 AM when the store opened, and apparently this doctor rarely rolled in at the 9 AM mark, so I wondered why they even scheduled appointments for that time.)
At the 6th week mark I asked if this was some sort of record for contact trials. She laughed and said almost.
At the 7th week, we broke the record, and I insisted on just doing distance lenses (which is what I thought from the beginning but figured since I wasn’t the optometrist I didn’t know any better). She gave me one pair that almost worked, but not quite, so I went back for week 8.
They had changed out their seating by then; I’d been going there so long I actually witnessed a revamping of the seating. Doc was on time! I took it as a good omen, and the lenses she gave me to try would work as well as we are going to get with my almost-48-year-old eyes. I can live with readers; I can’t live with driving and not seeing anything other than what’s immediately ahead of me. So the distance lenses were a go, and a week later I called the store to order them.
No answer.
I called again the next day, first thing at 9 AM right when they opened in case there was a crowd.
No answer.
Tried later that day.
No answer.
Tried the next morning.
No answer.
Well, you get the idea.
Finally stayed on the customer service re-routing message and punched in that I was trying to order contacts. Got through to a person at Visionworks who advised that it would be easier if I ordered the lenses online. With my insurance payment already in mid-processing mode, I didn’t think that would work without causing problems, but I stayed on and asked her to help me through that. She took down the lens info I had and after ten minutes said these weren’t available to order online.
Huh.
The eye doctor prescribed lenses that I can’t order online?
The customer service person said that’s what it looked like, but she would try to call the store herself. I thanked her profusely, saying I just hadn’t been able to get through. And ten minutes later, neither was she. She took my name and number and said a manager would call me back.
The next day, I tried again. Another customer service rep said she would try to contact the store. “Good luck!” I chimed, chipper than a chipmunk in a broken bag of birdseed. A few minutes later she returned.
“No one is answering at the store so I will escalate this to the territory manager. They should respond in 24 to 48 hours, and since the first call already went out to them this has already been 24 hours.”
On the third business day, I tried the store again.
No answer.
I called customer service, gave the ticket number, and asked if the 48 hour thing was just a joke. It was the same rep from the week before. We laughed – oh how we laughed! She said she would try the store again – before I could stop her I was once again waiting to hold while she dialed a number I knew would not be answered.
Spoiler alert: no answer.
She came back and said no one was answering the phone there.
“NO!” I shouted. “I don’t believe it!”
And we laughed again – oh how we laughed again.
She said she would now tag ANOTHER territory manager on this fiasco, and I thanked her for her efforts.
At this point I am hoping to see something – anything – by Christmas. Because I literally cannot see anything without these contact lenses.
And I am dropping Visionworks after this because they clearly, ahem, don’t care about their clients.
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