TL;DR: Doctors are good. Customer service is not.
I guess I'm going to rain on the parade here. The doctor is good and the staff seem nice enough, but for some reason--maybe the pandemic, maybe a lack of accountability--my experience was not good.
Went in for an appointment booked 4 weeks in advance and arrived early. I waited 15 minutes past my appointment time, got my initial exam done, and was immediately asked about booking my appointment for next year. Went ahead and booked it, and then when I was walked to the next station, another patient was in there and I was escorted back to the waiting room. Simple mistake, but not a good first impression on a new patient.
Doctor conducted the exam, and it went very well. Got contacts, and after two days, realized that I wasn't seeing street signs clearly enough and called for an adjustment, having to revert back to my glasses. After several days of no response, wrote a strongly worded message and the issue was said to be fixed. Unfortunately, the message must not have been clear enough, because they gave me the exact same prescription that didn't work before. Finally got that straightened out, and went through a couple of additional strength lenses, and finally found something that worked.
Yesterday, I received a second bill. I'd already paid at the office on the date of the initial visit (which is now more than three weeks ago) and I still haven't been able to buy a year's supply of contacts. I'm not really clear on the billing, but something smells fishy here. It would seem to me that $500 ought to cover the works (and that does not include the contacts themselves--that's just for the exam), but for some reason, I'm being nickeled and dimed.
This operation has wasted a great deal of my time and their billing makes it seem as if they may be taking a few too many bites of the apple. The zeal with which they pursued an annual appointment doesn't match up with the careless customer service errors they have made. As of this morning, I'm actually back to wearing glasses, since I've run out of test contacts and, again, nobody will call me back.
And since the process of ordering a year's worth of contacts involves a cumbersome rebate, I've decided that I've been doing too much heavy lifting here, and locking myself into more paperwork is just beyond my level of patience now.
I'm going to call, pay the remainder of my bill, cancel my appointment for next year, and take my prescription to Costco, who actually care about building a customer relationship and have managed to convince me to sign up annually for about a decade now. It's unfortunate, because I would prefer to support a small business, but small businesses ostensibly offer a more focused customer experience, which I did not get. Think twice. read more
