I like the 25 rule! $25 for measurements, $25 for adjustments, & $25 to check RX for accuracey. Or make your own rule, $30 rule, etc. Just make it short & simple for everyone in your office to adhere to!
But of course, before doing anything, tell them that you have no idea of the quality of the product they walked in with & will not be responsible if anything goes wrong. If anything goes wrong, tell them this obviously was not opthalmic quality!
Wrong............................
Originally Posted by eyechick1969
Wrong............................if you have no idea about the quality of a frame by looking at it and touching you are not a professional.
So if you tell them what you are suggesting, you are putting down the customers chosen
product and that is a wrong move.
You should tell him that he/her has nice glasses and you will do your best to adjust them properly and as they are new they must be on warranty by the seller, so you have no problem.
"Why Mrs. Smith what a lovely pair of glasses you got! You payed what? $9.95 for them? What a deal! No, I don't blame you for buying them online. I wouldn't blame you if you never bought another pair from me! Sure I'll adjust them for 25 bucks. What? Yes that's over twice the cost of your glasses. Oh, you'll just go to YouTube to see how to adjust them yourself? I understand...But you sure got a nice pair of glasses..."
For those of you without spell check it's OPHTHALMIC
Or, it could be an opportunity to take the offending glasses from the patient who purchased from the unscrupulous internet vendor, load them into the lensometer and say OMG, I can't believe how far off your Rx is and the inferior quality of these lenses, I surely hope you didn't pay more than ten bucks for these cracker jack box glasses. Are you getting headaches more often?
Seriously, are you really charging for these services when someone brings in internet glasses? It is so tempting, but we haven't had big enough problem with it to warrant it. YET........
+1
You say I'm wrong. I rarely tell anyone they are wrong, especially when it is a matter of opinion. (But everyone is different in how they communicate.) My first & simplest indication as to the quality of frame is distributor, manufacturer, reputation over the years & where it's made. Yes, after examining a frame thoroughly I can tell it's level of quality, but I'm not going to that added effort for a frame purchased from someone else. That service is for my paying customers.
So, for example, someone comes in with a frame with a premium name & marked made in Italy. Knowing there is a company in China making total knock-offs marked with high end names & made in Italy, etc. & that I didn't supply the frame, I cannot say with 100% certainty that it is authentic & I'm not going to offer my expert eye in determining this. That's what my clients pay me for. "SERVICE" I don't tell them their frames are junk, average or premium. (Putting down the customer's chosen product as you mentioned). I simply warn them that I'll use my 23 years experience & if something goes wrong I'm not responsible. True ophthalmic quality frames should positively be able to take some heat if needed & bending without breaking.
At this point in my life, I'm more of a housewife than an optician, so I don't ever see myself being able to attend a big show like NYC, or Vegas. I'm content to let the other gals in the office go, as I'm only part-time, and am more passionate about healthy recipes than free-form lenses. I do like to dream however, and last night, as I was perusing the new styles on the VEW Blog, I noted that at the end of each article, they had a "Available At" section. I thought it was ironic that more than 95% of the vendors ended w/ "dot com". I'm not talking opticals w/sites, but rather sites for optical.
I guess the VEW doesn't see the irony in this, or has shifted their marketing to online retailers.
:hammer::shiner: The mere fact that anyone in this business misspells that word- and many others, shows why we are where we are. :finger:
Chris Beard
The State of Jefferson !
I'm a Medford man – Medford, Oregon. Up in Medford, we take our time making up our minds."
It's probably just a typo- it's easy to miss the first 'h', even when you know how it's spelled.
I typoed optician (reversed the i and a) at sci.med.vision about 13 years ago and caught hell for it. "I didn't even know how to spell my own profession" and so on. Now I proof read all of my posts. I suspect the OP will learn to do the same.
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. - Richard P. Feynman
Experience is the hardest teacher. She gives the test before the lesson.
I am amongst the worst spellers.
But I know where I am...I think.
Where does that *mean* I am?
B
I made myself an optrician once on an online application. I spell better with pen and paper.
BTW I love online glasses because we charge $30-40 to solder them back together.
You're on the right track with at least formulating a plan. More than many others here have shared about their plans. Perhaps they don't have one. I hope for their sake they do because without it, this board will be quite a bit smaller in a few years.
I'm a bit mixed on this, but agree more with Chris. You don't want to insult anyone. There's a lot of judging a book by it's cover going on in terms of why consumers buy online. Perhaps take the opportunity to listen to their decision process and what made it a logical choice for them. Price is only one reason, not the only one. People buy value not price, so what would they see as driving them to pay more?But of course, before doing anything, tell them that you have no idea of the quality of the product they walked in with & will not be responsible if anything goes wrong. If anything goes wrong, tell them this obviously was not opthalmic quality!
The optician could probably match..........................
Aso we should not forget that nearly 100% of the frames and lenses come from the far east, made on European machines and on some even more modern ones. The onliners are selling the frames as the B&Ms do, however they buy direct most probably cutting out the middleman.
The optician could probably match or nearly match their prices by aelling a la carte, material cost plus a similar profit plus hands on service charges.
Good Point. I see a lot of patients going online to avoid costs because as we all know, the mass retailers like LensCrafters never discount their frames. I had a fellow walk in yesterday and told one of my staff that he was surprised that we were lower in costs on our frames than the retailers in the mall. That gave us a perfect opportunity to explain why and that how perhaps that may not be true on all of his options in lenses, but here he would have MORE options in lens choices not just the cheap stuff they typically lost-leader with. I also explained he has virtually limitless frame choices as typically retailers appear to have a huge selection, when in fact it's just a handful of frames styles in hundreds of patterns.
He walked out with a pair of Frames and we filled his Rx that came from a retail location :)
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