Optical Express

Had retreatment surgery on 1st March (Wavefront Lasek). Originally had Wavefront Lasik and was left with a prescription of -1 in my right eye and -0.25 in left. The enhancement was to correct my poor sight in my right eye only and had been really looking forward to this since my original treatment in June 06. The surgery itself went ok, but I dont know what has happened, neither have I been told, but I am left with sight WORSE than before my correction. Apparently they have 'over corrected' my eyesight and I cannot see close up. I am deeply upset and worried as I work on a computer yet cannot see the screen properly out of my right eye, but can with the left and this creates such a glare, terrible headaches and a ridiculous amount of time off work. After consultation with OE - they have given me glasses to wear, which make my headaches worse and defeats the object of laser surgery in the first place, and i find I am struggling with everything i do - simple everyday things like reading a newspaper - focusing on people, making a cup of tea. I feel utterly miserable and have lost faith in Optical Express. How many times will it take to give me my sight back. A 3rd retreatment??? Will it be safe? Please contact me if you have been unlucky enough to have been through this.

I had intralase wavefront 2 weeks ago, i posted my fiest review a few days after ststing that my vision was really good but suffering from slight blurring and that i was a little worried. I went to me 1 week check up and i was still 2 above 20/20 in one eye and 1 above in the other. I explained i was worried about the burry vision and i was told my eyes were still healing. That was a week ago and i can see they are getting better. I think you panic if you havent got perfect vision straight away but any part of your body needs time to heal so why should it be different for your eyes? if anybody has just had surgery and is worried about slight blurring & haze then dont, just let your body have time to heal its self. Your eyes/brain has to re-adjust. I was having quite severe headaches aswell which are decreasing, i have only had one or so in the last 5 days but initially i was having 5-6 day. keep using your drops and done strain your eyes is my advice to anybody who has had the surgery.

I had intralase wavefront LASIK on the 28th of April at the Shaftesbury av. clinic, and have a couple of reflections on my experience. First overall, I'll caveat this by saying that I still have a residual prescription in both eyes of about -1.5. While this has clearly biased my view on the process there are a couple of things I want to highlight for anyone considering Laser surgery. 1) Decide what is more important to you- price, or personalised medical care. The frustrating thing about large chains is the minimal contact you have with the surgeon. I first met him 5 minutes before the surgery, and have not seen him since. All post op appointments are done by assistants, and I often have gotten the feeling that they were giving textbook answers, and largely telling me what I wanted to hear 2) Look around, get different quotes, and ask friends for recommendations before signing up. I was pressured into signing up at the optical express clinic on the day of my initial consultation, and went ahead because my job takes up a huge amount of time, and I didn't have that much opportunity to look around. However, I have now had to invest more time in repeat visits, getting glasses , etc. If anyone has been in a similar position, and is considering getting an enhancement procedure, please get in touch. Thanks

Service the worst I've ever encountered, and post op continues to be dreadful. Do not go there. Customer services not much better either. I don't know how they do business.

Unlike the nurses, the surgeon @ Optical Express Birmingham showed NO empathy towards me before, during and after surgery. For example, during surgery I found it very difficult to keep my eye still during treatment, no matter how much the surgeon asked me (rather persistently!) to do so. This made me more and more anxious at a time when I needed comfort and reassurance that the way I was feeling was normal and not an issue. I had to call out for a nurse to hold my hand to help calm me down, and at the end even apologised for being a "Bad Patient", and enquired whether my eye movement would jeopardise my results. Perhaps angry with me (although as the customer and patient and having parted with over £2500 towards having the work done - this would hardly be fair!), he failed to offer any kind of re-assurance that my movement would make a difference; in fact quite the opposite with "we'll see tomorrow" being his remark. Furious, my husband contacted head office on our return home (whilst I tried to rest, still really upset and now besides myself in terms of anxiety), and to our huge relief was told the equipment tracks normal movement and if movement extends beyond the distance the equipment can track, the laser will simply stop. Therefore the only problem I had really caused was a slightly longer procedure. Why couldn't the surgeon have told me this when I asked...? Frankly this dreadful customer service has marred what should have been otherwise an excellent appraisal of Optical Express, Birmingham. *Zeus* (surgeon name provided but withheld)

Have now got to have treatment again as it did not work first time, have had no help from Watford Branch, i am still waiting for confirmation of date booked last week.

I visted the Optical Express branch in Peterborough. They charged me £200 straight away, which they said was to ensure booking for the surgery. They arranged to telephone me in a few days to check how I was getting on as we had agreed I shold experiment by wearing just one contact lense. They forgot to call. When I telephoned to complain it was obvious that they had not entered in their records that they should contact me. I asked for the £200 fee to be refunded to me. They said this would take 7-10 days but that they would chase after 7 days. This was 9 days ago and I have heard nothing and the money has not been refunded.

This is a long winded account of my experience but if you are considering having treatment I think you need all the info you can get before you even start considering going for treatment. Having been thinking of surgery for years I have recently been to a number of consultations, the first and worst was at Optical Express in Birmingham. Upon arrival I was greeted by the manager who told me he would be seeing me later once I had booked in. I got to reception, where the receptionists friend was seated in the clients chair chatting to her;they continued until completing their conversation (not exactIy giving the right first impression) and I was then asked for my health form & 'told' rather than asked to take a seat & wait. 10 minutes after my appointment time no one came and explained what the hold up was but there was alot of prancing around done by staff having personal conversations and not really doing anything constructive. I was then told the manager was in a meeting and I would be seen by someone else first & then the manager, again unprofessional I thought as I had had the appointment booked for 3 weeks & I had just seen him. The girl I saw was pleasant enough, but I felt quoting from a script, especially the bit when she said 'no-one esle can match their treatments no matter what I am told at other clinics', I have to say I found this a little condescending as I have done enough investigating of my own to discover what treatments were unqiue. I was then returned to reception, where I was again expecting to see the manger; no, this time it was the optomatrist, who again was very pleasant and could answer most of my questions satisfactorily. She quoted me a price of £1495 per eye(for their best treatment) She then told me I would having one more test done and to wait in reception. The manager finally appeared, who then proceeded to tell me he would not shake my hand as he had been clearing out cupboards all afternoon!! - I was appalled at his sheer lack of professionalism telling me this and the fact that clearing out cupboards was important than seeing potential clients.( I never did have any other tests) At this point I just lost interest and half listened to his sales patter. I then said that I was interested in what finance deal they could do for me & could they match one of their competitors with their finance deal. I was told that they only did 10 months credit at some ludicrous rate. When I told him that the competitor did a year of not paying he then told me their interest rates would be higher, I hardly think 0% for 2 years is more expensive than their 10 month rate at some 14%+!!! Once again a clear lack of professionilism no knowing what his competitors were offering. I left the clinic pretty quickly after that vowing never to return. I would also like to add that following my consultation and having the drops that dilate your puplis put in my eyes I had a severe headache for the whole evening after the appointment; my vision was imparied for at least 20 hours, and I felt unwell most of the following day. I have had 2 other consultations at other clinics since this one and have had no problems having the drops, and my sight was back to normal within 2-3 hours. The only difference with all 3 consultations was that at Optical Express I was asked to keep staring into a light while the drops took affect, which I feel may have made the experience a lot more unpleasant than it needed to be. The one positive about going to the Birmingham branch of Optical Express was that they gave me a card directing to this web site, where I have found Accuvision, who I have my treatment booked with in a week - what a world of difference with them; not only in terms of the way they treat potiential clients but also their charges, which were less that £2000 for the same sort of treatment!! (the feedback on this site for the clinic is all excellent with most rated at 5) Following my experience at Optical Express I emailed their Customer Services with the details of my experience. I have had an excellent response to the feedback from the Regional Director of the Birmingham store who was appalled at the level of service I recieved there. She went to great lengths to explain the experience I should have had and has assured me that as a result of my feedback there will be a follow up with the staff at the branch, who had not used the correct procedure for my consultation. I have to say that my impression of this member of Optical Express staff was tthat she was extremely professional, very customer focused and she has assured me that no other potential client will have an experience like mine. I just hope that this is the case and that the staff are closely monitored. I feel sure having spoken to her that the Birmingham Branch are not a typical example of the company when it comes to levels of customer service, as the company actually pride themselves on this, but I do think that following the feedback I gave things will be changing at that branch in the very near future. Please go to Optical Express in Birmingham to see if their service levels have improved,I will be re-visiting this site to look for some positive feedback about them, and would be interested to see if my feedback has been taken on board, and after all its only an hour of your time for the consultation. Please note that the reason the customer service rating is at 4 is mainly due to the excellent way in which my feedback was handled by the Regional Manager. If all the staff at the Birmingham branch were only half as good as she was it would have been an easy 5/5!!

It wasnt me but my mum who went for the surgery. The laser procedure went very well itself, but the care she got afterwards was terrible and unexceptable. My mum was unfortunately very short sighted which can cause a retinal detachment. My mum went for at least 3 check ups after the procedure complaining of floaters which are a good indication of a retinal detachment. The optom she saw in the Woking branch just said that my mum had to get used to them and nothing could be done about them. My mum couldnt take it anymore and went to our local A&E. They told her that she had the detachment for at least 6 MONTHS which optical express did not see after having many checks with them, one only a month or so before she went to the hospital. Their patient care was appauling and i would empasise the fact that my mum has lost some of her vision due to their optoms in woking not doing their job properly.

I was very disappointed with my consultation. I expected someone warm, reassuring and informative. What I got was a consultant who some might generously describe as straight-talking but who I regarded as brusque. There was much talk of the "mechanical" as opposed to the laser method of preparing the eye, which I found very off-putting. Within 10 minutes the consultant said that her 11 years of experience told her that I was not going to have the treatment and that I was wasting my time. I found the barrage of information about the alternative treatments very difficult to take in and, on leaving the consulting room, both I and my wife were uncertain as to the type of treatment recommended for me. We were then seen by another optician who presented me with an information pack which contained no details about either the type of treatment recommended for me or the prices. Both these had been supplied almost in passing by the previous consultant but I was amazed that we were being allowed to leave with neither a written price quotation nor details of treatment. On asking for both the optician proceeded to write down some prices on a piece of scrap paper and on another piece drew some scrappy diagrams in an attempt to explain in more detail the alternative treatments I had been offered. Neither of us was totally happy with the explanations provided and we left saying we would do more research on the internet in an attempt to make sense of what we had been told. Needless to say, I shall not be having laser eye surgery with Optical Express.