Great ophthalmologist, terrible practice.
We had been coming to Children's Eye Care (Dr. Epley's office) for years, and put up with the rude and frequently-confused front office staff, because Dr. Epley is indeed a good children's ophthalmologist. The front office has always been a mess, with hours-long waits, super short cancellations, and just general ineptitude. You can see that pattern in many of their reviews on Yelp and Google, but we plugged our nose and dealt with the terrible staff, like everyone else says.
Today, we called to schedule our twins for a checkup, as always. The front office got very confused, and insisted that we needed to schedule the children on different days, because of COVID. They have a "one parent, one child" rule, which is obviously a very reasonable policy during a pandemic. My wife said she understood, and that I would come with our other child, wait in the car, and then swap - aligning with their policy, and making sure that no more than two of us would be in the building at any time. They had two back to back appointments available, so should be easy, right?
This idea blew their minds. They had to get a manager on the phone, who stumbled through the policy a few times again. After I pointed out that there was indeed a way to make their policy work AND not require us to schedule on completely different days (using math), the manager stumbled around about how some people miss appointments, so they can't schedule families anymore (a new reason!). I think she realized she wasn't making sense, so she just started shouting at me that "...if I didn't like their policies I could...."
So, we did. The new office is magical. Appointments on time, courteous staff who (gasp) treat you like a valued customer, a clear COVID policy that demonstrates they understand the disease, and appropriate prevention.
Sad that it took a pandemic to make us find a better ophthalmology team, but let our loss be your gain!! You don't need to put up with the ineptitude of Children's Eye Care - there are MANY new options that are far superior in the greater Seattle area. From the look of the other reviews here and on Google for Children's Eye Care, I think it's obvious why.
Avoid - you've been warned!! read more
