Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Lenscrafters

I bought new glasses from Lenscrafters.

Product quality: excellent - I don't feel like I've compromised at all.

Customer service: excellent - friendly, honest, didn't pressure me to spend more even though I (inadvertently) gave them a few openings to do so, went a wee bit above and beyond.

Product selection: decent - could always be better because there are way more frames in existence than shelf space, but I found a few suitable frames so I can't complain.

Store layout: suboptimal - I find it very difficult to browse, I have to deliberately force myself to look at each frame, there are frames in these drawer things that appear to be showing you their entire contents but you actually have to pull them out.

Price: either the prices are way too high, or my insurance is way too low. People who don't have the same insurance of me have told me that my insurance is good, but the fact of the matter is it doesn't cover the lenses on my prescription, to say nothing of the frames. This is always a dilemma for me. I feel like I should refuse to spend more than my insurance covers so as to manipulate market forces, but the fact that glasses are something that I must wear at all times on my face in order to see keeps winning out, and I end up spending 2x-3x my insurace amount on optimizing appearance and user experience. And then I feel guilty for manipulating market forces in the wrong direction.

But, on a positive note, I can see!

2 comments:

Scott M. said...

My wife and I were *SHOCKED* at the difference in price between various places when we shopped around. We tried an independant associated with the Optomitrist, LensCrafters, Hakim, Shoppers Optical, Bay Optical, Zellers Optical, Walmart Optical and a few others, and her glasses cost between $400 and $550 dollars (two pairs of lenses for two existing frames, one polarized one not).

As a last gasp we went to Costco.

The glasses there -- the exact SAME glasses there, same coating, same options, everything -- cost $190.

Amazing.

impudent strumpet said...

Ooh, that's good to know! Thanks! I didn't even know Costco had glasses