Kaiser Optical, stick these lenses up your ass!

The BBQ Pit
1

Two years ago, I decided to get my glasses from Kaiser’s Optical Department. They were the most expensive glasses I have ever bought in my life, and also the worst.

The first iteration just wasn’t right. I went in and complained, and was told it was probably the new-fangled lens material. So they made the lenses again with a different material; they still weren’t right.

“Oh, you just need to adjust to them.” Well, I’ve been wearing glasses for 43 years. I know that. They’re not right.

“Well, it’s because they’re progressive lenses. You have to get used to them.” It’s my third pair of progressives. I am fully used to the getting used to them process. They’re not right.

“It’s over thirty days since you ordered them.” Right. A week and a half to make the first ones; a week of wearing them. A week and a half to make the second ones; a week of wearing them. They’re not right. Fuck you.

So, today, getting my new prescription filled at Lenscrafters (more expensive than they used to be!), it is revealed that the straight-ahead focal point in the left lens is 4mm to the left of where it should be.

Words fail me. Oh, not all words: “Fuck you,” is still coming out with some frequency.

2

But if its Kaiser, that means they will have better vision! :eek:

3

Can you get any kind of refund?

I too was worked over last year by not one, but two, local optometrists, sequentially. It took me over a year to get a new pair of glasses. Optometrist A gave me a 100% refund; Optometrist B insisted on keeping $109 for “lab processing fees”.

I finally went to the guy down the street who the Better Half said, “He won’t be any good, he’s the guy who just built that new eye clinic, he’s just a real estate developer with an optometry degree.”

The real estate developer listened seriously to my problem, performed the most thorough eye exam I’ve ever had in my life–and then came up with a pair of glasses that actually work.

Even if they, too, were the most expensive glasses I’ve ever had in my life.
I’m planning on keeping them for 10 years.

My teenage daughter says she wants to be an optometrist. “Oh,” I said, “Because you want to help people like your mom who have trouble finding glasses that work?”

“No,” she said. “Because it’s indoor work, it’s 9 to 5, and Optometrist A drives a red Beemer. Convertible.”

4

She’s right. Optometry is like chiropractic medicine. Your patients never die, and they never get better. It’s like a license to print money.

5

Heh. As soon as I saw the title of the thread, I thought, “Kaiser, huh? Is he in DC, Denver or Dallas?” :stuck_out_tongue:

I will always be grateful to Kaiser for taking such good care of my dad throughout his battle with cancer, but for me and the rest of my family, they consistently sucked ass. Inefficient, incompetent and lousy customer service. I can think of two or three times people in my family had to go get blood re-drawn because their lab lost or fouled up our samples. Glasses were always a nightmare.

6

They can get better with laser eye surgery. That seems to be improving and getting cheaper every year. I’d certainly think twice about starting a career in optometry right now.

7

The upsurge in LASIK hardly renders the optometrist obsolete: the practice I work for (which specializes in LASIK) has two ophthalmologists and about ten ODs. Optometrists are still used for pre- and postoperative care, diagnostics, etc. As LASIK continues to become more popular, the optometric profession will probably undergo a shift in responsibility, but I think there will always be a need. Also, there are millions of people out there who aren’t good candidates for LASIK, or who just won’t want it or be able to afford it. Optometry is still a good field for someone to go into today IMHO.

8

If you want to really piss off dermatologists, use the same line on them.

I’m not disagreeing with this comment as it refers to chiropractors, but you really shouldn’t use the phrase “chiropractic medicine”. It’s like trying to force together the north poles of two magnets.

9

Particularly in a few years, when everyone who’s had LASIK wakes to find his ruptured eyeballs oozing from their sockets.

10

Exactly. I actually wear swim goggles all day long just to catch the eye guts in the inevitable event that my eyeballs blow up on me.

11

A friend of mine went to a presentation (sales pitch) for Lasik at a posh hotel.

The promoters had really done their work well, the place was packed.

My friend was among many who asked questions of the presenters,and the opticians, his was,

“I notice that most of you guys wear glasses, why is that ?”

He was asked to leave.

12

I had that focal point thing happen to me. It sucked goat hair. Dude! You’ve been wearing glasses for 43 years? The shit you pick up on around here. I wore mine for 20 and got the lasik thing. It’s going away now but it was great while it lasted.

13

Well, I had a fuck-up of equal magnitude at Lenscrafters.

I had been wearing contacts for 15 years at this point, but hadn’t been re-examined in a few years. Went in for a eye exam, prescription update, new lenses, blah, blah. Doctor says I have a severe astigmatism (sp?) in addition to being near-sighted. I expressed surprise, since, up to this point, I had never had any sign of astigmatism. Doctor double-checks, very carefully. Yup, severe astigmatism. New prescription.

Doctor decides to “ramp up” the prescription gradually, since (according to her) astigmatism-corrective contacts of this strength always cause nausea and dizziness if put at full strength right away. So she gives me contacts that should correct my myopia (nearsightedness) and partially correct the astigmatism, and I’m suppossed to come back twice to get progressively stronger lenses for the astigmatism.

So, she gives me the first pair and I CANNOT SEE. She passes this off as “adjustment”, tells me it will be better after a couple of days. After a week, I still can’t see well enough to drive. I get a new appointment. She’s puzzled, but thinks thats a stronger astigmatism correction will clear up the problem. I suggest, politely, that I could see fine with my old contacts, which did not correct at all for astigmatism, and perhaps the problem lies in the degree of myopia correction. She disagrees, and demonstrates that increasing my myopia correction from -0.75 (what she had prescribed) to -1.00 (slightly stronger) does not improve matters. I go home, unhappy and still blind, but with the stronger astigmatism prescription.

I then check my old prescription. My myopia correction was -3.50. Nearly four times as strong as she had prescribed. No wonder increasing it to -1.00 hadn’t helped.

So I return again, with this information. Her response? “Gosh, I had no idea your eyes could even take such a strong prescription!” (direct quote)

At this point I’m totally frustrated. Those machines you use to examine my eyes, lady? They should tell you how strong a prescription I need. If you can’t read that information off of them, maybe you should get your own eyes checked.

So I demand to get the final prescription, with a (finally) adequate myopia correction and the full astigmatism correction. I want to be able to see, and I want to get the hell out of there. So I put in the contacts, and I can finally see again. Not great, not as well as I remember with new contacts, but everything is visible. I test at 20/25 in one eye and 20/30 in the other. Doctor says thats probably as good as I’m going to get with the horrible astigmatism I’ve developed. Ah, well - at least I’m done.

Two years later I need to do the eye exam/new prescription thing again, so I go to a new doc recommended by others. She looks me over, tsk-tsks over my bad contact cleaning habits, and…

…asks me why the hell I’m wearing astigmatism contacts when I have no astigmatism.

On the plus side, now that I’ve gotten rid of the astigmatism “correction”, my corrected vision is back up to 20/20. Grrrrrr.

mischievous

14

As an aside, my Dad got a great pair of sunglasses for free with his regular glasses. A proper pair of sunglasses, with a nice tint to them, takes away the glare without making it too dark to see properly to drive.

Great, until he found out that they were prescription lenses in the same way that his reading glasses were. Found this out a few inches away from the ditch at the side of the road :stuck_out_tongue:

15

I know, but once I’d typed “chiropractic” I was stuck. I hate using an adjective as a noun, and couldn’t think of another way to phrase it.

16

How about “chiropractice?”

17

I once (in high school) got bitched at by a clerk at LensCrafters. She was immensely surly to begin with, and spent about ten minutes pawing through the bin of completed orders trying to find mine. Finally she turned to me and asked, “Was it just one pair?”

Yes, just one, I say (thankfully).

She slammed them down on the counter with a scowl, and said: "Well, you said glasses!"My mother and I were both utterly bewildered as to what, apparently, the correct singular form of ‘glasses’ is in this woman’s mind. A pair of glass?

Then the prescription was twice what it should have been. “Oh, it’s too late for us to fix it today, come back tomorrow.”

And I’m currently in contact lens hell, because the idiot optician that I saw recently claimed that they stopped making the type of contacts I’ve been wearing for years. He gave me a new type, which aren’t painful but definitely aren’t comfortable. He also still won’t give me my prescription, as he says he needs to “make sure they fit right” (hint: I know whether or not they do). So when I go in next week, if he decides to be a bitch, he can withhold my prescription, which drastically reduces the chance of my soon-to-be former insurer* paying in full for a two-year supply, as they would if I could just have ordered them last week, but that’s kind of a different rant.

*Because I was covered under my parent’s insurance, and my father’s job is now in New Delhi.

18

Oh jebus, my last pair of glasses had to go back to the lab TWICE. The first time, I COULD NOT SEE out of them. The eye doctor rechecked my eyes, rechecked the glasses, and told me I needed to adjust to them. Uh, no. I’ve also worn glasses for a bazillion years, and I KNOW what new lenses do to you when they’re right, and these were NOT right. I didn’t leave with the glasses – if I’d tried to wear them, I’d’ve had blinding headaches, because I almost got one just trying them on in the store.

So a week and a half later, the glasses are back. I’ve got progressive bifocals, have had them for several years. On THIS set of lenses, I could see ok only if I always looked down and to the left. I think they put the short focus on BOTH lenses in the same place. That’s fine for the right eye. For the left eye, not so much. I argued with them again, not leaving the store with the bad lenses.

The third time they got them right.

You really have to stick to your guns these days on stuff like this. Don’t go out to try to “adjust” to something that’s WRONG.

Gah, it’s been a couple of years now and I’m still pissed off about this. And it was a small outfit, so they’re no better than the big 'uns.

19

I am pleased to report that after four days of wearing my new glasses, both the regular and the shades are perfect. I’m so happy!!!

And, yes, all of y’all are correct that the bad ones could have happened anywhere. Kaiser had me wondering if, “My eyes are shit. This is as good as I’ll ever be able to see again.” As visually oriented as I am - I’m a reader: books, magazines, backs of cereal boxes, road signs, house numbers, the labels on the underwears teenagers show off; you put printed characters in front of me, I’ll read them - I cannot express my delight in being able to see properly again.