It's been a year since "the incident" that sent me careening into this world of "alt-eyeglasses". I figured apart from the much needed updating of the look and feel around here, I'd add a few new wrinkles and tools aimed at making all of this less confusing and more inviting.
New Feature Roundup
There are a number of new features I tossed in in hopes that you'd find them as useful as I have.
How It WorksI haven't done a very good job at aggregating the various "how-to" and definition postings into anything that a person could take a quick look at and move forward on. For people with more simple prescriptions and a broken pair of glasses on their desk, I think this will help get the ball rolling a bit more quickly.
Forums/ReviewsThe forums and retailer reviews have been around since day one, but the links were a bit difficult to find. No longer.
This is an exciting one for me. I've lost my prescription a few times over the years and frankly, don't really see a need to carry it around in my wallet any longer. I built a simple little application that will allow you to keep your prescription handy wherever and whenever you feel the itch to order a pair. This one will show some additional features and improvements over the next few weeks.
Another new feature, this one is pretty simple. Send out the word to all of your farsighted and nearsighted friends. Let them know that you know the score and that they can too. This has been a highly requested feature and only takes a moment.
Glasses StoriesWe've got the forums and the reviews, and we've even got the Flickr Group. But I thought it would be great to have a place for people to show off their new specs with a quick picture and a paragraph (try to keep it close to 500 characters) describing something interesting, fun or surprising about the experience of buying glasses online. Send them to glassyeyes@gmail.com. Prizes will be awarded to get the ball rolling.
The remaining buttons couldn't be more obvious and I'm sure there are only a few of you who managed to claw your way all the way through this.
Anyway, I'm excited for the changes and hope that you continue to find this the go-to spot on the web for information regarding affordable eyeglasses online.
Thanks!
Ira
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It appears that a few of the retailers that were having such issues a month ago have gotten their collective acts together. The number of problems posted in the forums, has dropped significantly in the past few weeks. I've sent a number of emails with a concerned tone to them and have gotten replies that lead me to believe that they are at least trying to improve.
I'm thrilled with that -- and hope the trend continues.
I read somewhere (and really wish I could find it again) that people are something like 10 times more likely to complain about a product in a public forum than praise it -- which makes you wonder about Amazon ratings.
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NOTE: I'm working on a few things to help you out. One will be made known to the forum users in the next few days and the other will have to do with service level/customer satisfaction trends.
Keep your eyes open!
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