Walman vs. Midland vs. ???

[AmandaWithrow]

Hey all,

The company I work for currently (Rocky Mountain Eye Center) is filing for bankruptcy and today is our last day.
The doctor at my location, who specializes in prism (and other eye conditions like keratoconus) is going to open his own practice. I'll be going with him and am looking around at different lab options. We are expecting to open our new office in the same building at the beginning of December.

We've been using Midland primarily for years and I am not the happiest customer. I hated my experience with HOYA and don't want to use them again. I do enjoy the essilor products because I'm comfortable with them and can easily fit people into them. I also really like the Shamir Auto Intelligence lenses and want to bring them back (RMEC decided we would only offer Essilor Value, Good, Better and Best lenses last year). I've gotten a recommendation to use Walman, and the recommendation was that "they are slightly better than Midland, which isn't saying much, but they might be your best bet."

Here are the things I hate about Midland:
Although quality and how long lenses take has improved in the last few months, it is still very poor. I literally just got my chem clip order in with the mirror on the inside of the lenses. Obviously, we have a time crunch to get the remaining orders to patients ASAP and they literally took a week to receive a frame for a patient.
Wrong spellings on patient names.
Sending frames back to me because they cancelled an order because they didn't get a frame for it. Like, wtf.
Sending wrong frame, rx, lens color, etc.
Receiving multiple orders for stores that aren't even in our organization that then have to be sent back and paired to the correct account.
Prices on lenses are absolutely ridiculous.
Policies - they'll start a job immediately, like in less than 5 minutes, and then charge 100% if we cancel because "the job was started already."
Working with a prism specialist, sometimes we have to remake the orders like 3-7 times and we get charged for every single remake beyond the first one.


I LOVE Cherry Optical's prices, policies and reviews on the lenses. However, I don't know who to go with for our managed care orders.

Advice? Have you worked with Walman? What do you like about it, what do you hate?
Any other labs for managed care that I should consider? Why?


Thanks in advance for your replies :)

Amanda Withrow

[dwlk]

my office here in MT uses walman's for all our safety's and special needs, however we also use Summit for everything else and they are also really good for "unique" orders, (i once sent them a plano pal with 15 diopter's of prism and man did they push their machines)

before walman's we were using twin cities and by far my experience with walman's has been much better, their customer service team has been super friendly and helpful with me, their processing doesnt take too long, they're quick about calling and reaching out with question's and i've generally enjoyed the quality of their work. the only thing i wish they had was better warranty policies, i believe they only have a 6 month warranty in place, which to me isnt very long

[AngeHamm]

I haven't used Walman much, but my experiences were all good.

[dwlk]

im not sure how many labs walman has, but the lab we send our orders to is in state, so that does speed up shipping time for us, plus patients like that the lab is "local"

[AmandaWithrow]

my office here in MT uses walman's for all our safety's and special needs, however we also use Summit for everything else and they are also really good for "unique" orders, (i once sent them a plano pal with 15 diopter's of prism and man did they push their machines)

Is Summit also a lab that does orders for VSP and Eye Med (if not also Davis/Superior and Spectera)?

[dwlk]

Is Summit also a lab that does orders for VSP and Eye Med (if not also Davis/Superior and Spectera)?

yes summit is a VSP and eyemed lab, they use shamir and essilor products, and their own in house brands are Hoya based

[AmandaWithrow]

Awesome, thank you for that information dwik! I'll look into Summit along with Walman. Luckily, we have enough time to meet with reps before we reopen so we can compare all of their policies and price lists. I've decided to just take unemployment for these 3 months before we go back to start putting the office together in November so I can focus on planning which vendors to go with, etc.

[AmandaWithrow]

Any experience using WVA/Fait Optics?
My contact lens girl used to use them for glasses and contacts when she worked for a different office.

[iD]

Simplify has really great service and the owners will work with you.
CSC also has access to pretty much everything.

[DanLiv]

Walman and Midland are both quality labs. I've been with Midland for 25 years and am still happy, and I have used Walman occasionally and have been happy with them. Warranties and policies should all be a wash, a lab rep that wants your business will match whatever another lab is offering. The main difference is Walman isn't a single lab, it's a bunch of different labs, so your experience may not be the same as others' if you are using a different Walman location. I'm also in CO so our Walmans are the same. I know the people there and they are great, but I have not used them enough to be able to speak to the overall dependability. Another thing, I believe Walman CO is just a finishing lab, the generating and AR work is done at another facility. The more things change hands the more unpredictability in the system. Midland is one lab, and its a complete digital generating, AR coating, and finishing lab.

You can stick with the same Essilor products either way, both are majority Essilor owned. Walman will give you cheaper options because they have their house branded Prolens if you are interested, Midland mostly sticks with proprietary brands.

Most the issues you have with Midland are staff errors. All labs are still suffering from pandemic staffing disruptions, and there is no telling if any other lab will do better. That leaves pricing and the prism redos. Yes Midland is premium priced, but that is ammunition for you to demand more from your rep. Compare apple to apples on Essilor product with Walman, and if they're not comparable, I bet your rep could make them so. As for the redos, are you hoping some lab will give you unlimited free redos? If your doc's business model is "might need to remake every pair 5 times", then he needs to build that into the patient pricing and cover the costs himself. Labs shouldn't absorb that, it's not their error. 1 carte-blanche free redo is already generous, but that's become industry standard. That said, Essilor did just launch an unlimited redo guarantee option, that sounds like something your doc would happily pay for.

[HarryChiling]

I would say the staffing issues are self inflicted. Go with Midland I've recently heard good things about them!

[KrystleClear]

Luzerne works with some of the vision plans. I wasn't super happy with the quality though. Prism jobs would take a month or longer. Lenses with AR coat kept coming in with defects (scratches or spots where the AR was missing), lenses being cut too small and being loose, etc.. We still use them for glass lenses but that's about it.