Be Wary of Optical4Less

Posted by Ira at Monday, May 04, 2009

This is hard for me to write.

I've had a decent relationship with the people at Optical4Less since the beginning of this site. Albert was routinely open to helping out or at least listening to reason when GlassyEyes users had issues.

That communication has pretty much stopped of late.

About six months ago -- maybe a bit longer -- I started getting a bit of a runaround. Nearly every time I went to bat for one of you, I'd get a response from one of the two people I know at Optical4Less like, "Could you please ask the customer to reply us through our ticket system so we can deal with him? It is not much we can do if he is out of our ticket system." (sic)

I'm a big fan of well-defined processes, but I'd get responses like this when there was already a "ticket" going that was either being ignored or under served by customer service. Red tape is no way to deal with dissatisfied customers if you want to keep them coming back or telling their friends. Realistically, if you're in this business, your customers are your best salespeople -- and they PAY you for the privilege!

I still feel like there is a decent chance you will get what you order from them, but my recent pleas for help have gone unanswered and the number of issues I'm seeing are rising. It puts me in a place I don't like to be -- unable to help. With the other sites listed to the left, I can get through to someone pretty quickly and almost always get the issue dealt with to the customer's satisfaction (be it remaking the glasses or refunding all or part of the price).

I'm not sure I can say that with Optical4Less any longer.

Cavaet Emptor.

Perhaps they won't care that I write this, but I do. I've sent thousands of people their way with my blessing.

I'd love to be able to write a retraction -- and really hope I can at some point, but it's going to take some time and some significant changes to make that happen.

7 comments:

At May 4, 2009 at 11:36 PM Anonymous said...: Having used their ticket system, I would say that they respond pretty quickly there.
At May 5, 2009 at 1:50 AM Anonymous said...: There appears to be some issue with shipping items from anywhere in the PRC to the United States. I have no idea which side could be the problem.

Zenni now states explicitly you should not expect your purchase for a least a month even though they process the order in 72 hours to a week depending upon features.

O4L may have run afoul of the same mechanism, whatever that is.
At May 6, 2009 at 12:15 AM rockthesole said...: now i'm afraid to order a pair of eyeglasses. i'm trying to look for freeway eyeglasses for cheap. seeing as optical4less sells it for cheap i was going to purchase a pair. =/
At May 6, 2009 at 9:10 PM Unknown said...: Ira, based on this blog post you should update the header in the forums: http://groups.google.com/group/glassyeyes/web/optical4less still sounds like you like them.
At May 6, 2009 at 9:28 PM Ira said...: @michael s

I'm in the process of rewriting all of the reviews and adding new ones. Thanks for the heads-up.
At May 7, 2009 at 10:43 AM Obiwan said...: I just got 2 pairs I ordered from O4L. The glasses are fine, so I don't have any problems to deal with. (to ROCKTHESOUL - one was the Freeway - I heart them). The shipping was quirky. It took a while to from RoC to NYC, which I would expect. But then it took 7 days to get from there to Seattle. Additionally, the online tracking actually worked, until it got into USPS' system (go figure).

Sorry to hear that they have been having problems with, um, problems. That is the hallmark of a manufacturer that isn't going to be around long.

But then again, for $20 a pair, I can't complain. If they were borked, I'd likely just donate them and try again (somewhere else?). I mean... $20 isn't really worth my time and angst to deal w/ fixing.
At May 7, 2009 at 2:58 PM mindy said...: ^ when did you order the glasses? you didn't have no problems at all?