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Thread: Hoya products in 2017...

  1. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Uilleann View Post
    So to ask further about the employee issues at Hoya - is this a systemic, company wide problem? Or extremely localized to particular labs or individuals? Anyone with experience at the Seattle lab in particular? Good/Bad?
    I'm calling it company wide because the problems get worse the higher you go. I loved our reps. Then, most of the customer service people we dealt with were great, with one or two exceptions. Then, one lab manager was a complete sleazebag, but most of the rest were good to OK. It's once you get to the lab managers and higher that the problems really start to set in. Like I said in my longer-ish post, the higher-ups have a tendency to throw people like the customer service folks and reps under the bus and try to shift blame for problems onto them, even when it's stuff they have no control over (why am I supposed to be mad at my REP when the LAB is sending me scratched lenses? What does the person answering the phone in Dallas have to do with asymmetrical PAL markings?). The issue is that the people who're in charge of making the REAL decisions in the company have no morals, no scruples, and no integrity.

    Basically, if everything is going fine, and all you ever have to deal with are your rep(s) and customer service, you should be OK. If/when an issue arises that's beyond either of those positions, watch your back.

  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by jefe View Post
    I know it's a common practice, but I don't think it's being done with that lens yet.
    It's been done for many years now - almost 10 to be exact.

  3. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by jefe View Post
    I have never had reason to be upset with the folks at Hoya Hartford (CT). While I can't attest to anything regarding their edging, the uncuts I buy are a-okay. Customer service is fine, too.

    The EX3 coating is the best AR coating I've encountered. The true test is how it holds up over time and how my clients feel about it. I've gotten many comments about how lenses with this coating have held up much better than what my clients had before. It's much better than Avance'.

    That said, Phoenix lenses tend to yellow more than standard Trivex, and I had to stop using Phoenix Transitions lenses because of problem with the coating crazing.
    Trivex lenses are very challenging to coat and almost always have ripples or orange peel. Next time you receive an uncut have a look before you edge it. Look carefully under a good back light (fluorescent) and you will see what I mean. Then edge it and insert it. Check the coating again and you will see it looks even worse.

    It's like the edging process upsets the adhesion between the coating and the lens surface. Use a magnifier and is even better to see what I mean.

  4. #29
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    We've used a lot of a Essilor lab and recently we had tons of problems. We would be on the phone with the lab everyday. Our rep (who I've only seen one time in two years) told us it's because they had replaced a lot of people at the lab. He kept giving us tons of excuses and told us it should start getting better in a couple weeks. It's to bad for him that my patients don't have a couple weeks to wait for things to get better. We moved more to Seattle just to try them out. While I can't say it's been 100% flawless, they are way less hassle than Essilor's lab. Some people complain of the pricing, but I hand compared our statements from Seattle to other labs and found that the prices were very comparable. I think even on a lot of progressives, ID2 and Array, were cheaper, by maybe 3-5 dollars, than going through Essilor and getting a S-fit. In the end, price wasn't the biggest issue to change labs. I was just sick of all the problems and having patients be mad at me. What good is having a practice if your patients don't want to come back.

  5. #30
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    Time brings me to another issue-- you don't always know where your pt.'s glasses really are. If you send any of your jobs off to be edged, there's no guarantee that they'll be edged at the facility you sent them to. We found that out the hard way. For example, about two or three years ago, they opened a Houston facility that was supposed to alleviate the stress at Dallas. Our rep told us to start sending all of our jobs to Houston since it was supposed to give us a quicker turnaround time. OK, great. Come to find out, all Houston does is edge on site. There's no surfacing equipment there whatsoever; and they're so understaffed that the majority of the jobs they receive end up going to Dallas, anyway. We had more than a few pt.'s frames lost in transition between Houston and Dallas, which could've been avoided if we'd have just sent them straight to Dallas in the first place.

    Then, too, not every Hoya facility can handle every job type, even though they claimed they could. We didn't find out until a frame was lost in transit, for example, that RXes over a certain power are handled at a "specialty lab" in, IIRC, Florida. All glass jobs are done in St. Louis. All mirror jobs are done at another lab. Hoya is so interested in making themselves seem like this powerhosue, though, that you don't find that out until a customer service rep is telling you that a patient's frames are missing because they disappeared in transit between Dallas and wherever. FURIOUS to find out that some reps had been instructed to lie about the status/whereabouts of jobs. One customer service rep in particular had been telling people that he'd been personally checking on jobs in the AR machine when we came to find out that the facility he worked at didn't even have an AR machine. Want to guess what we were told when someone called his supervisor on it?

    We're the ally of the ECP!

    A few weeks later, we started getting some BS about "specialty facilities", but the fact that we'd been being lied to was never addressed or rectified.

  6. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by Browman View Post
    Time brings me to another issue-- you don't always know where your pt.'s glasses really are. If you send any of your jobs off to be edged, there's no guarantee that they'll be edged at the facility you sent them to. We found that out the hard way. For example, about two or three years ago, they opened a Houston facility that was supposed to alleviate the stress at Dallas. Our rep told us to start sending all of our jobs to Houston since it was supposed to give us a quicker turnaround time. OK, great. Come to find out, all Houston does is edge on site. There's no surfacing equipment there whatsoever; and they're so understaffed that the majority of the jobs they receive end up going to Dallas, anyway. We had more than a few pt.'s frames lost in transition between Houston and Dallas, which could've been avoided if we'd have just sent them straight to Dallas in the first place.

    Then, too, not every Hoya facility can handle every job type, even though they claimed they could. We didn't find out until a frame was lost in transit, for example, that RXes over a certain power are handled at a "specialty lab" in, IIRC, Florida. All glass jobs are done in St. Louis. All mirror jobs are done at another lab. Hoya is so interested in making themselves seem like this powerhosue, though, that you don't find that out until a customer service rep is telling you that a patient's frames are missing because they disappeared in transit between Dallas and wherever. FURIOUS to find out that some reps had been instructed to lie about the status/whereabouts of jobs. One customer service rep in particular had been telling people that he'd been personally checking on jobs in the AR machine when we came to find out that the facility he worked at didn't even have an AR machine. Want to guess what we were told when someone called his supervisor on it?

    We're the ally of the ECP!

    A few weeks later, we started getting some BS about "specialty facilities", but the fact that we'd been being lied to was never addressed or rectified.
    Seems no different here north of the border. Hardly anything is done local anymore and the BS flows like the Mississippi.

  7. #32
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    Blue Jumper Hardly anything is done local anymore ....................................

    Quote Originally Posted by Lab Insight View Post

    Seems no different here north of the border. Hardly anything is done local anymore and the BS flows like the Mississippi.
    Heard some rumors that some of these international companies have closed a lot of their labs and operate whats left with a skeleton staff and an edger or two.

    Apparently everything else goes overseas with special arrangements of UPS/Fedex or DHL on a 24 hour service basis.

  8. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Ryser View Post
    Heard some rumors that some of these international companies have closed a lot of their labs and operate whats left with a skeleton staff and an edger or two.

    Apparently everything else goes overseas with special arrangements of UPS/Fedex or DHL on a 24 hour service basis.
    Chris, that rumor is reality in progress. The profit centres for the large companies are overseas. That's where the capital investment and super labs with low cost labour and tax free incentives are.

    The rest is just feeder avenues.

  9. #34
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    Redhot Jumper Maybe we should pull the switch to get the sign "Fasten Your Seat Belts" flashing

    Quote Originally Posted by Lab Insight View Post

    Chris, that rumor is reality in progress. The profit centres for the large companies are overseas. That's where the capital investment and super labs with low cost labour and tax free incentives are.

    The rest is just feeder avenues.


    Interesting......................

    So that could make it an optical Rx industry, that will be getting hit with special taxation for imports of custom made goods ordered in the USA and Canada, for in the USA living customers. That could also affect in Mexico made prescriptions, and could work on both, frames and lenses.

    This would also translate into a lot higher prices for any lab work done in those countries, if those manufacturers want to keep their profit margins at the same level as they are now, or they might just ship their labs back to the homeland.

    Maybe we should pull the switch to get the sign "Fasten Your Seat Belts" flashing

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