June is a concert-rich month here in New York so I figured I ought to go and get an eye exam, since even with my glasses on things at a distance were getting a little blurry. Because I no longer live near my old Lenscrafters location, I picked at random the one nearest my office, which happened to be on Broadway at 8th St. This was an error. The first problem I had was that they failed to mention at any point until after I’d already had my exam, picked out frames, and paid a hefty some for the whole endeavor that they don’t have a lab. This means that instead of getting my glasses in an hour, it would take at least one business day and up to four. I was reluctant to wait that long and considered taking my prescription to a different location (which as it turns out I ought to have done), but the woman ringing me up was extremely reluctant to cancel the charge and assured me that I would have my glasses well before the event I needed them for. Fine.

A day later I got a call saying I could go pick them up, which was good news as it was indeed faster than I’d expected. But when I get down there and try them on, it’s immediately obvious something is wrong. Looking straight ahead my vision is fine, but if I look slightly up or down or left or right, everything is blurry and has a strange halo around it that’s blue on one side and red on the other. They take the frames, heat them up and bend them slightly, which accomplishes nothing but making them wobble when set down on a table. I explain that I can’t actually use the glasses if 90% of my visual field is fucked up, but I am assured that the issue is merely the change in prescription and my brain will adjust shortly.

So I go home and wear the glasses for a few hours, and nothing gets better although I do end up with a headache and some serious nausea. I decide to take the glasses to a different location to get fixed, one with a lab so I don’t have to wait a day or more as time is pretty tight by this point. The new location I picked was on 13th St and 6th Avenue. The person I spoke to there realized the problem immediately – the lenses are in fact made from a material my eyes can’t deal with, and there’s a big note in my Lenscrafters file saying exactly that, meaning the people at the Broadway location didn’t even bother to look at my file. And better still – without asking me, and without even saying that they were doing so, they added an extremely expensive anti-glare coating to the lenses, which is something I neither want nor need. So even though the material my new lenses are being made out of is about $50 more, I got a $62 credit once I told them not to use anti-glare. The guy at the 6th Ave location was upset that I’d been given glasses that were so obviously wrong, and promised he’d get me my new ones before my event even if he had to go pick up the new material from a different store. This will be my new Lenscrafters location of choice, from now on.

But let’s review the failings of Lenscrafters at 8th and Broadway: during my two visits they never once glanced at my history, even when I complained that I couldn’t see with the glasses they made for me. I’ve been a Lenscrafters customer for nearly ten years now, and there’s a wealth information about me in their system, but they decided to ignore it completely. And they added a coating costing $110 without ever asking me if I wanted it or even telling me that they were adding it (it does not even appear on the receipt except as “PKG”). They also don’t have a lab but are careful not to mention this until you’ve paid, and are very big on the hard sell – unwilling to give refunds and always trying to push a second pair of glasses or sunglasses. In conclusion? Fuck you, Lencrafters.