You would think that with formidable online competition coming from prescription lens and frame vendors, Dominican opticians would be bending over backwards to ensure that their customers have the best possible experience and continue being willing to pay a premium for getting the advice and assistance of a real person when making a choice of prescription frames. Unfortunately, this seems to be another area where the DR has yet to catch up with 21st century retail realities. At least that's what a very bad experience at ?ptica Lopez at Agora Mall has shown us.
My wife was there last week to select frames for her new prescription for mild astigmatism. The women who assisted her was very nice, but my wife needed to ask her for each frame she wanted to see, and the sales person stood by waiting while she tried each one on (not impatient per se, but definitely hovering). For those of us used to buying frames in North America, where the sales people give you free reign over a vast room containing hundreds if not thousands of frames, leaving you be unless you ask for assistance, it's easy to see how that could be annoying and intimidating. My wife hasn't had the benefit of shopping at a N-A optician superstore, but she is very polite and doesn't want to waste anyone's time, so the constant presence of a sales person breathing down her neck made her rush to a decision and she settled on some frames, making a 3,000 DOP deposit. No sooner had she gotten home did she realize that not only where the frames grossly overpriced, they actually weren't what she wanted. By then the store was closed, but she called first thing in the morning, and that's when her ordeal with ?ptica Lopez started.
Work on grinding and cutting her prescription had not begun, so that was not an issue. She would have been quite happy to have been given a store credit for the deposit, and asked for 30 days grace so she could come in and take her time finding the frames she really wanted. A reasonable request if there ever was one, but no dice -- month end was only a couple of days away, said the manager of the store, and "we are forced by our accounting system to only offer credits within the month the down payment is received." To those of us familiar with accounting systems, this is of course utter nonsense.
My wife then tried for a compromise: "grind the lenses to my prescription before the end of the month, but don't cut them to fit any frames until I've chosen some in a few days time. Use my deposit to pay for the un-cut lenses and various coatings". Again, no dice. "We can't do that". This time no lame explanation was concocted (other than "The Managers of the Company won't let us do that"), just pig-headed anti-customer stubbornness. To ?ptica Lopez, it's worth alienating a customer if it means having to do nothing in return for a deposit. Money for nothing is how they see it, and why not if you have no concept of creating customer satisfaction or loyalty?
So now we're launching a Pro Consumidor complaint against ?ptica Lopez, for what its worth. In the meantime, please learn from my bad experience and stay away. Even if you don't change your mind 12 hours after making a deposit, I wouldn't trust those guys with doing a good job on a prescription -- all that dishonesty and money grubbing clearly takes up most of their attention and time. Customer service and producing a quality product comes a distant second, if at all.
I'll post in the future to let everyone know how the Pro Consumidor thing goes.
My wife was there last week to select frames for her new prescription for mild astigmatism. The women who assisted her was very nice, but my wife needed to ask her for each frame she wanted to see, and the sales person stood by waiting while she tried each one on (not impatient per se, but definitely hovering). For those of us used to buying frames in North America, where the sales people give you free reign over a vast room containing hundreds if not thousands of frames, leaving you be unless you ask for assistance, it's easy to see how that could be annoying and intimidating. My wife hasn't had the benefit of shopping at a N-A optician superstore, but she is very polite and doesn't want to waste anyone's time, so the constant presence of a sales person breathing down her neck made her rush to a decision and she settled on some frames, making a 3,000 DOP deposit. No sooner had she gotten home did she realize that not only where the frames grossly overpriced, they actually weren't what she wanted. By then the store was closed, but she called first thing in the morning, and that's when her ordeal with ?ptica Lopez started.
Work on grinding and cutting her prescription had not begun, so that was not an issue. She would have been quite happy to have been given a store credit for the deposit, and asked for 30 days grace so she could come in and take her time finding the frames she really wanted. A reasonable request if there ever was one, but no dice -- month end was only a couple of days away, said the manager of the store, and "we are forced by our accounting system to only offer credits within the month the down payment is received." To those of us familiar with accounting systems, this is of course utter nonsense.
My wife then tried for a compromise: "grind the lenses to my prescription before the end of the month, but don't cut them to fit any frames until I've chosen some in a few days time. Use my deposit to pay for the un-cut lenses and various coatings". Again, no dice. "We can't do that". This time no lame explanation was concocted (other than "The Managers of the Company won't let us do that"), just pig-headed anti-customer stubbornness. To ?ptica Lopez, it's worth alienating a customer if it means having to do nothing in return for a deposit. Money for nothing is how they see it, and why not if you have no concept of creating customer satisfaction or loyalty?
So now we're launching a Pro Consumidor complaint against ?ptica Lopez, for what its worth. In the meantime, please learn from my bad experience and stay away. Even if you don't change your mind 12 hours after making a deposit, I wouldn't trust those guys with doing a good job on a prescription -- all that dishonesty and money grubbing clearly takes up most of their attention and time. Customer service and producing a quality product comes a distant second, if at all.
I'll post in the future to let everyone know how the Pro Consumidor thing goes.