This is an updated review. I went in for the follow up for my contact lens fitting. I will likely have my new contacts in about a week and a half.
The Pros:
Dr. Doran.
He's a nice guy with a good chairside manner and definitely appears competent. I found him more consultative as we went along and he seems trustworthy.
Rana.
met with Rana after the appointment with Dr. Duran today. She read my review and acknowledged that I perceived my experience to be subpar. It would be great if she and her team worked with the salespeople on their consultative sales and customer service skills to improve the customer experience, and thusly avoid predictable pitfalls in service delivery. She also worked with me to ensure I could maximize my insurance benefits.
Location.
This location is convenient to highways and is centrally located.
Convenience:
Being able to walk in and ensure you can be seen with little wait is a great benefit.
Opportunities:
Turnaround time.
It took a long time to get my glasses for a company that can produce glasses "in an hour." Apparently, my insurance insisted they are sent out to their lab for efficiency (although this did nothing to decrease the cost).
There were errors in production that weren't communicated to me. Likewise, it took forever to get contacts in so I could get them fitted. If I hadn't had lenses, I would have been flying blind.
Cost.
The prices for their frames and lenses are not competitive with the online market; frames are limited and can be purchased more cheaply online. Contact lens costs are substantially (up to 300 percent) more expensive than their online partners. Lenscrafters/Pearl is a huge company with tremendous leverage. There's no reason online retailers should be more competitive
Customer experience.
There's no need to "make it right" if you make the experience great every time. Glasses are a big deal for those of us who must wear them and we want to look good and feel confident we are getting accurate feedback and not just "a sale."
Selection.
Despite having access to a large selection of frames, many of the frames are so similar that all seem to look alike. Many of us with glasses want to them to be original and expressive of our personalities. That's hard to do when they mostly look similar.
When you are spending four or five hundred dollars over your insurance to look good and see well, you should get all of this and more. It would be great if the staff were more proactive and addressing concerns about delays, etc in real time instead of after the fact.
The bottom line is although this wasn't the best experience, I will likely go back. I hope my next experience isn't so turbulent.