This summer, 60 Minutes on CBS revisited a story they first aired in 2012. It was about a little-known Italian company called Luxottica, the company that controls the eyeglass industry.
Luxottica manufactures just about every designer eyeglass brand in the market – Gucci, Prada, Ray Ban, Oakley, Polo, Ralph Lauren, Versace, Chanel, Chaps, Paul Smith, Vogue, etc., etc…
Not only that, but they also own or run the retail channels – Lenscrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Target Optical, Sunglass Hut, and Oliver Peoples. All but a few brands sold at these retailers are made by Luxottica.
AND they even control some of the payment channel by owning the second largest vision insurer, Eyemed.
All of this was on our minds when we got our eye exams this year. My prescription hadn’t changed, but Honey’s had, so she decided to price new glasses at Wal-Mart Optical – one of the few places left on the planet that are not owned by Luxottica.
The price difference was Amazing! She was able to get new glasses – with top of the line Nikon lenses – for over $350 less than she paid for just the lenses on her last pair of glasses from Lenscrafters.
Wow! Outstanding! Fantastic! Wonderful!
Except….
They never worked.
We were in the area, and bought her new glasses at the Wal-Mart in Crosby – a store we almost never visit.
Once the glasses came in the trouble began. We didn’t make it home before she was complaining that the glasses hurt her nose. They also gave her a headache, but we thought that was normal – actually to be expected with a new set of progressive lenses.
She had already lost confidence in the technician at the Crosby store, so we began a series of visits to our “local” store in Porter. We made about a dozen visits, sometimes twice in a single day, but the Porter technicians were unable to help – if she could see, the glasses hurt, and if they didn’t hurt, her vision was blurry.
They finally decided/admitted that the glasses the Crosby store sold her were never going to work properly. The bridge width was too short for her face. Honoring their 100% satisfaction guarantee, they helped her select frames that fit and ordered her a new set of glasses.
The new glasses came in yesterday and they were just about perfect right out of the box. The technician did tweak the ear pieces a tiny bit, but they probably would have been fine without it.
The final outcome was that Honey got a great pair of glasses at an excellent price, and we have become experts in a new field. We now know more about fitting glasses than we ever wanted to learn – certainly more than most optical store sales people.
No comments:
Post a Comment