Doctor Question<-----------------------------
QUESTION?
Alright answer if anyone knows.
Is there someone you can get
a hold of, if say you have this
doctor in your town that keeps
hassling you about giving out
Rxs, just cause your prices are
way lower than his.
J&J tired of jumping through hoops. :angry:
You need to Contact your State Optometric Licensing Board and file a complaint. He/she is is violation of Federal law!
Secondly, you could get a complaint from from the FTC and have a patient file a complaint.
Don't be bashful or fearful as most opticians are! Get the complaints filed in writting ASAP.
Homer
Have you ever filed a complaint.
I've heard that it can somtimes
it can be a real pain.
Is that true?
Oh!
And iv'e also heard that most of the optomitrists
take the side of the doc instead of the
opitcian.
While there might be a tendancy to want to side with the doctor, when the OD's are appointed to the State Board they become public servants, not peer servants.
This is a Federal issue and once a written complaint is filed, especially if there is a complaint from both you and the patient.
Remember the complaint to the FTC is a completely different issue. You may want to attach a copy of it or let them know that this will be the next step.
If you really want to put a bee in their bonnet, file a complaint and then attend the next meeting of the State licensing board ... that will put them on notice that you care and will follow through. It also reminds them that they are no longer OD's in that meeting but public servants and you are one of the public.
Even if it were a pain, my guess is that it is also quite a pain to be poor or have your business fail. Choose your poison![b][i]JandJOPT said:
Have you ever filed a complaint.
I've heard that it can somtimes
it can be a real pain.
Is that true?
No, it is not a pain. Write a letter! Have your patients write a letter. Set up a sting operation and then write a letter. Legislators / government need documents.
Find out all you can about your state licensing board on the internet. Get aquainted with the people (administratiors) in the office by e-mail or phone - preferably in person. Your voice will be very loud because everyone else says nothing .... and so the beat goes on.....
When I was managing a chain store, we had a Dr. near by who was very reluctant to give out script, but instead of refusing to give them out he would right them in .12 D increments, and would inform his patients that only his office could make them up properly. Fortunately he has since retired.
Jedi
Homer said:
Even if it were a pain, my guess is that it is also quite a pain to be poor or have your business fail. Choose your poison!
No, it is not a pain. Write a letter! Have your patients write a letter. Set up a sting operation and then write a letter. Legislators / government need documents.
Find out all you can about your state licensing board on the internet. Get aquainted with the people (administratiors) in the office by e-mail or phone - preferably in person. Your voice will be very loud because everyone else says nothing .... and so the beat goes on.....
Homer is 100% right.
Every commercial venture, optical or other, that feels threatened to loose some business, money , or some customers through a competitors actions, that includes lower pricing, better service for the same or better quality for the same, will:
hassle................badmouth..............downgrade....... .....and try to kill you commercially by any means possible.
You have no choice than to keep a very positive mind and use every means possible to fight back.
I have been, and still am in the same position as you are. My competitors, small and large, have taken over (stolen) ideas, products, and have advertised them as their own for a long time and are still doing it They go as far as buying your products and or services just to find something faulty in your setup or products so they can either, hassle, badmouth or copy you.
Give your customers better service, better or same quality including you lower pricing setup and you have won step one.
Never use the same tactics as your competitor, find some novel way to fight back.
__________________
Advertise better quality, better service or some new service that is unique to your area while still keeping up advertising your pricing policy.
Give your customers more for the lower price, if pricing is the source of your competitors actions.
------------------------------
Advertisng is the hard part, because it is extremely costly specially if you work on lower pricing and markup it can kill you. Newspapers and magazines are also very political and are always on the side of the heavier advertiser so dont expect any help from the media besides them printing your ads for money.
-----------------------------
Start your own website. Buy Microsoft Frontpage, get a website addess and start going at it. It is very easy and handles like Microsoft Word and you can copy back and forth, and you will learn and improve as you go along. The time used to do it will be well invested.
-----------------------------
Use your website not olny as advertising your services or products and prices as everybody else does, use it as an informative tool, it is your amunition, your tool to fight back. In your case as a retailer include local "stuff" of general interest. Never use names, you can get sued but refer justy to competition
Most important: Use any advertising means on your budget to advertise your website in your area to get people looking at it and you will have the least expensive fighting tool that nobody can censure. All it takes is your time. Update your website on a daily base, which a 5 to 10 minute job and will find a way to combat the other guys.
(I just checked my own website statistics and have an average of 100 visitors a day spending 5.41 minutes average)
Last edited by Chris Ryser; 12-14-2002 at 06:48 AM.
Chris Ryser said:
I have been, and still am in the same position as you are. My competitors, small and large, have taken over (stolen) ideas, products, and have advertised them as their own for a long time and are still doing it They go as far as buying your products and or services just to find something faulty in your setup or products so they can either, hassle, badmouth or copy you.
So did you turn them in ?
What happend?
JandJOPT said:
So did you turn them in ?
What happend?
In my case it was more the stealing of ideas and copying of new products and then take credit for it. Took me over 20 years to realize that there is no decency in commercial life. It's like being among predators in animal life, kill or get killed if you have no protection of one sort or another.
On my last venture I decided to get the idea patented in 49 countries. This is quite a feat. You go through the international process and then a few years down the road you get the OK from the international patent office. This allows you to register with the individual countries which also take their sweet time. The US Patent Office has been the first one to come through on October 15th of this year. The rest should be coming through very soon.
This gives me now the right to have exclusive control over the product and application and does not mean that some predator competiton is not going to sneak in. If that happens, one can take them to court.
My only beef is that the optical media never even bothered to mention that a patent had been granted for a renewed optical concept and process that is used on a regular and daily basis. That is the same media that took $ 1200.00 a month of advertising in one case for the last 14 years and more in others. Therefore I do have a very low opinion of a biased industry like the trade media that is heavyly influenced by the big advertising dollars.
Conclusion: When competition tries to get at you, big or small,you got to fight back, but in a way that you are not going to end up the looser. It has to be done within the intellectual and financial means of every commercial entity itself..
In my case I went the way of the internet, and to ........ with the advertising dollar grabbers. I took over my website, update it daily myself, learned to work the meta tags, and it has done wonders. Every visitors is there because they want to be there. If you manage to attract them to your site, you are much further ahead than paying advertising dollars and you can inform website visitors on any subject you want, because they only look at the subjects they want to look at. But if you can guide them to want to look at what you want to show them, you are a winner. Besides spending some time the cost is not exhorbitant and you get more people looking at what you have to tell them.
JandJOPT Said:
"Have you ever filed a complaint.
I've heard that it can somtimes it can
real pain. Is that true?
So did you turn them in ?
What happend? "
Hey Jan, reading between the lines it says to me that you are afraid to spend the energy and more afraid of the outcome. If this is the case, you are not ment to be in your own business. Go get a job and you won't have to worry about the question and or the results.
Otherwise, just do it or you will loose it.
HOMER
Thats pretty rude.
I'm just not trying to cause a big stink
because if you start looking like the
bad guy you will start losing customers.
And if you don't think the doc will
start telling their patients your sadly mistaken.
And who said I was new, all I wanted
was a few opinions. Maybe you should
keep your opinions to yourself.
--------------------------------------------------------
Chirs thanks for the opinion
I'll think about it.
By the way what is your web site?
It sounds like you don't have a Doc yourself and must rely on walk-ins and referrals. If that is the case, I feel for you; you are in a tough position.JandJOPT said:
And if you don't think the doc will
start telling their patients your sadly mistaken.
Is this Doctor just not releasing prescriptions to you and his patients or his he telling you that the Rx's have expired?
JandJOPT said:
HOMER:
Thats pretty rude.
I'm just not trying to cause a big stink
because if you start looking like the
bad guy you will start losing customers.
And if you don't think the doc will
start telling their patients your sadly mistaken.
And who said I was new, all I wanted
was a few opinions. Maybe you should
keep your opinions to yourself.
Jan, I said it was tough love! If you can't handle that then you better just leave the Doctor alone and do your little optician's job and settle for less than you can be.
It would help if we knew more about your situation. I started a new optical shop, 13 years ago, in a town of 50K where there were 3 MDO's and 7 OD's and I had no Doctor in my office. I went from $0 to 400K in 5 years.
While the MD's did not dispense, they also would not see me when I dropped by. So I made and appointment for my son and went along. Finally got to meet that MD and after 4 years finally gained the confidence of the 3 hired MD. I also went to meet all of the OD's to let them know what I was doing and could do and offered to help them with repairs or emergency lens replacements since I had in-office finishing.
Chris said: "Give your customers better service, better or same quality including you lower pricing setup and you have won step one."
I think this is good advice.
The only hope for independent opticians is to take our case to our customers. The letter to the State Licensing Board will not even be know about by your customers. Even if they did, you could point out that the OD is the lawbreaker "bad guy" not yourself.
I once made and Raido ad with the opening line: "Does your eyedoctor blind you ........... to the fact that you have the freedom to have your prescription filled by the optician of your choice?"
I have also taken out newspaper ads that stated the FTC ruling - If you do not mention you place sepcifically, you may be able to get this as a public service announcement.
Sorry to seem rude, but surely you know that life is not all warm and fuzzy and business is even less warm & fuzzy. Get your customers to back you. Put together a customer / consumer advisory group. Get speaking engagements with local service clubs to tell your story. If you are not already in the Lions Club or a Rotary Club, get involved - it will make a great difference.
If you are one of those businessmen who sit in their stores and wait for business to happen, you will be looking for a job soon.
Last edited by Homer; 12-15-2002 at 05:40 PM.
J&J, You asked for opinions and you got some, but there,s no need to be nasty when you get one you don't like. This is not the first time either.JandJOPT said:
HOMER
Thats pretty rude.
I'm just not trying to cause a big stink
because if you start looking like the
bad guy you will start losing customers.
And if you don't think the doc will
start telling their patients your sadly mistaken.
You see someone breaking the law you got 2 choices. Bite the bullet and talk to the proper bodies to deal with the case or just walk away and stop moaning.....
Dont just sit there moaning at us do something about it.....
I didn't realize that there was a law that requires a doctor to give you an RX. The law says that upon examination that the doctor must give the patient their RX. In my neighborhood all of the doctors are very cooperative in giving me an RX over the phone or they will fax one to me.
I have called doctors in other towns and have been asked for a faxed request signed by the patient. I think that technically that is problably correct, as a matter of doctor-patient confidentiality and privacy.
The RX release is to the patient not to an optician or any other filler of the prescription.
What I think will happen is that some OD's will use the new privacy rule to make it more difficult for outsiders to obtain the RX.
What needs to happen is for patients to require the Rx upon completion of the exam(while still in the office), because once they leave, the process could be make long, frustrating and embarrasing.
What the OD's who play this game forget is that their paients begin to think they are jerks. This can't be good for business. In fact I thought their business was Eye Health Care not, God forbid, making a profit from the Rxs they write.
Still boils down to the fact that the Doctors are breaking the law by not handing over the RX at the end of the test.Homer said:
What I think will happen is that some OD's will use the new privacy rule to make it more difficult for outsiders to obtain the RX.
This is really a matter for the governing optical bodies to make public. That you Must be given your prescription after your eye test.
If the public are aware of the full facts they will start to question and avoid the doc's who are persistent offenders. Its also down to other optical professionals to take these doc's to task and make sure they toe the line, not give the rest of the profession a bad name.
I have more trouble with an OD or two that put a 1 year expiration date on EVERY RX! Now that is against the law...at least in the state of California!
Drivers permits in Florida are valid for seven years. Florida issues drivers licenses to Candian snowbirds.CME4SPECS said:
I have more trouble with an OD or two that put a 1 year expiration date on EVERY RX! Now that is against the law...at least in the state of California!
In my case I applied for one I was told to come back with an RX from a Florida Doctor. I got an exam from an OD who marked "valid for one year" and who charged me $ 180.00.
I got my drivers permit for one year, and the had to go back 12 month later for an other exam and another $ 180.00.
Third year I went to one of the fanciest "Eye Clinics" in town, got another exam by an opthalmologist which cost me $ 85.00 who then marked on the RX "good for seven years"
Moral of the story...Just because you bought cheap, Don't mean you got ripped off....I got my drivers permit for one year, and the had to go back 12 month later for an other exam and another $ 180.00.
Third year I went to one of the fanciest "Eye Clinics" in town, got another exam by an opthalmologist which cost me $ 85.00 who then marked on the RX "good for seven years"
Its prats like the first one that are holding optics back....
Report them then.....CME4SPECS said:
I have more trouble with an OD or two that put a 1 year expiration date on EVERY RX! Now that is against the law...at least in the state of California!
Or warn them that they are in breach of the law and if they carry on you will have no choice but to take the matter up with the governing bodies.
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