Rant: West Seattle Optix

[WSB]

This is one business with which we have had longterm personal experience so for what it’s worth, here’s ours.

I haven’t been there in a couple years because we don’t have vision insurance now that we’re self-employed, but I’m wearing glasses I got there when I *did* have insurance and will be going in for a checkup sometime soon, since now, staring at a 13″ MacBook 16 hours a day, my eyes are under more strain than they were when I stared at a huge employer-provided screen 11 hours a day.

I have had to go in a few times for some maintenance – these are wire frames and the plastic/silicon nose pads start to get slippery after a while, plus the frames get a little crooked. Each time, I have had no wait and no cost to have the pads replaced and frames tweaked. Without even having to give them a name or account number (and we don’t know them personally, so I’m just another person in off the street).

I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience but regarding the “crooked” part – just want to be clear, they did finally refund your money?

Also – is this the same doctor who’s been there for a long time, Dr. Gormley, or has there been a change?

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[charlabob]

I have to agree with TR here — I’ve been going to Dr.Gormley for 8 years and he and his staff have been great. (I went a couple of times when we didn’t have insurance and the prices were definitely competitive.) He even gets along with my now 97 year old MIL who knows more than every health provider she know. He was patient, listened, and did what was necessary.

I’m sorry you had a bad experience too — it sounds like a horrible miscommunication but I’d be very surprised if anything “crooked” is going on.

WRT small businesses in general, that their businesses have dropped significantly and I suspect they can’t absorb some of the fees they used to — I don’t know this about WSO, but, it seems likely the “restocking” fee is an indication that they can’t afford to suck it up as they might have before.

I know Dr. Gormley was there 6 months ago — can’t imagine the business changed hands without WSB knowing. :-)

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[melissa]

I wasn’t impressed either. I didn’t feel ripped off in the way that the first poster did, but I did feel that the glasses there were extraordinarily expensive. Maybe I’m just too downmarket, but I found that when I bought my glasses at Costco I spent less out of pocket than I did at West Seattle Optix. And WSO is covered by my insurance, whereas Costco is not. And the folks at Costco always happily tinkered with my glasses when they were out of whack.

Generally, my experiences with Costco’s optical department have been fantastic, whereas I ended up feeling taken advantage of at West Seattle Optix.

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[Mater]

I would say crooked when he knew he owed me money but did nothing to alert me and actually refund it. Had I not noticed it while going through some ppwk months later I can guarantee you he would have kept my money. And as for me having to go in for my refund – to get the money he over-charged me – is ridiculous! Why I went back I’ll never know. I guess where I come from you try to keep your customers happy and do what you can to do so. He obviously does not agree with that motto. Btw, same doctor. Thanks Melissa for the Costco info. I guess I’ll head there next. But what really pisses me off is that I’m now out hundreds of dollars in the process.

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[angelescrest]

Mater–

I have had it happen twice where health professionals–the dentist and the orthodontist–have kept insurance overpay money and I never knew about it until 1)I inquired about our billing and 2)they used it when I had more dental work done (a pleasant sort of surprise). I would have rather known about the money “sitting” in my account–yes, for years!–particularly when I had to pay out so much originally. (Braces–how can those wires cost $6,000?)

Is this a common practice?

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[davette]

I was in WSO today for my eye exam and have been going there for about 8 years as well. I’ve always been treated with respect and had excellent service. I even had lenses switched out when I was having trouble adjusting to the bi-focal aspect. Mind you, he told me to try it out and if I wasn’t happy he would replace them with regular lenses. After a few weeks, (not months) I gave up and went back in. He replaced the lenses without question. Every now and then I go in to have them adjusted as with normal usage they tend to get looser. They have always been easy to work with. I have shopped around and I think their prices are midrange. Costo is certainly cheaper, but they don’t have a very interesting selection to choose from, Market Optical has beautiful glasses, but very expensive. I’m sorry that you had a bad experience. As a small business owner myself, I don’t believe you can always please everyone, it’s not like Nordstrom where you can wear something for months and then take it back.

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[flowerpetal]

I have been going to WSO for years and have never had anything but excellent service. We actually have fun while we are in there kibbutzing with the staff, trying on glasses, talking about music, styles, etc.

I’m sorry to read that this has been a bad experience for the OP

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[charlabob]

It sounds like the moral of this story, if stories still have ’em, is to check with all our providers for insurance overpayments. Oddly, we just got a check for $49 from my orthopedist for an overpayment. Of course, he got gazillions of dollars overall, so he can afford to be generous. :-)

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[JanS]

so..is he an orthopedist, or an orthopod? ;-) yeah, yeah, I know..just being silly…

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[charlabob]

Absolutely intentional threadjack, because I like seeing which weeds these things wander off to:

Who cares what his title is, Jan–he’s just *cute*; like movie star cute. And that’s not why I picked him, but it didn’t hurt that the last face I saw, before the Aussie put me under, was drop dead gorgeous. Plus he’s friends with the lead singer of GBS our favorite Canadian band. (Yup, I’m that shallow — so sue me.) :-)

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[JoB]

i suspect poor service is just part of the territory these days…

i bought three pairs of glasses from a Seattle store.. when i got home i found out two of the three were sitting at an angle on my face.

The sunglasses had been readjusted so that they sat away from my face instead of close to my eyes protecting them from glare when i drove… done for focal length i am told… though i think the crooked was just plain laziness.

i traded the sunglasses in for new frames last friday (expensive upgrade.. but i needed peripheral sun protection for my eyes … and got those back yesterday. They sent me home with the red focal dots still on the lens… but this time they had checked the lens… so i just cleaned the lens.

which is more than they did for what was originally the most expensive pair of glasses… they sent me home in those with the focal point on the left lens a quarter inch more towards the outside than on the right…

and were somewhat rude when i brought them back in and told them exactly what the problem was… until of course they checked the lends and then i was once again Mrs B ;)

i have yet to get those back.. so we will see.

The real punchline is that i told them there was something wrong with the focus on one pair the day i picked them up.. and that the sunglasses wouldn’t work for me… that they sat too far from my face…

Now, a total of 5 visits and over two weeks later .. i have a pair of much more expensive sunglasses than i wanted, a pair of reading glasses and am still waiting for my walk around glasses…

I think i will be pleased when i finally get all of them.. but right now i am not a happy camper.

what i learned from all of this is that it is now the consumer’s responsibility to make sure that they got things right.. and that it is much less time consuming to be aggressive about making sure it is right on the first visit….

i miss the days when i could walk in and trust them to make sure the product they delivered was right before delivering it….

but it isn’t just glasses.. my local pharmacy filled a prescription for a face cream with the version used in much more personal spaces…

i haven’t yet gone back to ask them if it’s the same cream.. just labeled differently:) maybe i will do that today.

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[Mater]

Lets talk about the stupid WSB while we’re at it. Don’t delete my previous post. Why don’t you guys go back and get a regular job?! The blog was SO MUCH BETTER when it was a hobby! I’m sick of you ‘policing’ and thinking you’re all that bc you’re not. Get a life TR!

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[hopey]

Uh, you *do* realize that the entire reason this website and the WSB forums exist is because of TR & Patrick’s dream? These forums are like having a conversation in their living room. They make the rules clear. If you don’t follow the rules and they don’t like the conversation, they have every right to kick you out.

Why don’t you go troll on the Seattle Times website or Yelp or something?

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[WSB]

That same person made that point in a home page comment several months ago, so not sure why they bothered to come back.

This is a business. It’s a business with literally 20 times the usage that it had when we stopped doing the “hobby” site – fewer than 1,000 homes/businesses visiting at least once weekly then, 20,000 homes/businesses visiting at least once weekly now. If we make bad business decisions, that’ll go in the other direction. You have the absolute right to feel that we are running it the wrong way and therefore decide you don’t want to be part of it.

The main purpose of WSB is 24/7 news, information, and discussion. We have consistently continued to increase the amount and quality of news that we produce, and that you find out about here first. The forums are here because they were suggested as we were getting an increasing number of requests for West Seattleites to make recommendations for their neighbors who wanted to know, who’s a good plumber, what’s a good restaurant, which preschool is worth waiting for, etc. That remains their main reason for existence, along with other forms of helpful, respectful, neighborly, West Seattle-relevant discussion and information. If you think that’s boring, I’m sorry to hear it, and I completely respect your decision to seek non-boredom elsewhere.

In our view, the huge volume of continuously new information on this site (the Blogs, More, Twitter pages, in addition to the home page news we produce) is non-boring in and of itself, even if it isn’t a laff riot.

The Web is full of laff-riot sites. But even they have rules. The founder of Fark, who was with me at a new-media conference a few weeks back, noted that he has kicked out thousands. Our total number of suspensions in a year and a half isn’t even close to double digits.

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[KBear]

Now I see why mater didn’t get good service. By the way, mater, it’s “my husband and me”, not “my husband and I”.

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[melissa]

Whoa! Zoinks. The Op’s vitriolic, unfortunate post above (#13) makes me wish I’d never agreed with him or her. I don’t wish to even appear to support someone who uses this forum to bitch about this blog in such a mean-spirited way.

Find me a business out there that’s perfect! They don’t exist. Find me one, like this one, that’s informative and useful to a huge number of people? They’re rare. And amidst the waning viability of print newspapers, I’m glad for a source that’s reliable, informative and local.

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[Author]

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