So after finding the chip on the lens yesterday, back we went to Specsavers, and again, no problems replacing the lenses, and the damaged frame.

Slightly worryingly they now know us by name having visited so frequently over the past few weeks. Having said that there was one new face, according to his badge responsible for dispensing, who queried the use of the 1.67 lenses I’d quibbled over before. Whilst I hadn’t noticed the same level of fringing with the new pair, there were still problems, and I still fail to see the advantage, and argued the point. He did go through the whole 1.67 lenses are 40% lighter routine, however since on their price list it nearly doubles the cost of the lenses, and in my opinion makes my vision worse. I also pointed out that my existing pair were 1.6’s, and that my new pair had slightly smaller frames, and a weaker prescription. Anyway, they gave in, and are going to put in 1.6 lenses as are in my sunglasses, however he is going to keep the 1.67’s to show me the difference!

On top of all that, they also spent some time improving the fitting on Beth’s glasses, as she was finding them uncomfortable.

So although all these trips to Specsavers are getting somewhat tedious, and I’m sure the staff are probably dreading Mr and Mrs Peat walking in, they are always polite, and always happy to help.

After a call earlier in the week saying that my new glasses were ready, and a call today for Beth’s pair, we dutifully went back to Specsavers in Lower Earley again. After the problems with the previous pairs the new prescription and frames were comfortable, and my eyes seemed to adapt pretty well. Certainly there wasn’t the blurring problems, nor the fringing problems that occured before. In fact it is a noticeable improvement over the old pair. Beth’s eyes seem to be taking slightly longer to adapt, currently she says that they feel different to the others, but not noticeably better at the moment.

However, to my annoyance, cleaning the new clear glasses just now I spotted a small chip in one lense. It’s position is such that I hadn’t noticed it when wearing them. Looking at the bottom of the frame, there appears to be a couple of similar chips on that also, so it’s back to the shop again tomorrow to get them to sort it out. Whilst it isn’t causing me a major problem vision wise, it’s annoying, and certainly not what I would expect.

We’re just back from Specsavers, getting our new glasses sorted out. As I wrote earlier in the week, I was having problems with my new glasses, with one eye having problems focusing, and also issues with fringing. I went in yesterday morning, and spoke to the assistant manager who confirmed that the lenses matched my prescription, and then without any prompting offered to retest my eyes for free this afternoon. When I got home Beth said that she hadn’t adapted to her new glasses, and since she was tested at the same time as me, thought that she would like to have hers double checked too, so I phoned and they booked her in too.

Anyway, we arrived today and there was a guy not in uniform who I assume was the senior optician who retested both our eyes. He found that both our prescriptions were slightly different from what had been tested last time. In my case the distance numbers were correct, with one eye 0.25 out, but the angle of my astigmatism was wrong – hence the bluring.

On top of replacing the lenses, which could be argued was down to mistakes on the original test, I also discussed the fringing problems, and also the choice of frame, and whereas last week I doubted whether they would they allowed me to pick a different frame.

We had a discussion about the lenses, as they still recommended putting in the 1.67 high index lenses, as opposed to the 1.6 lenses, which were half the price, the argument being that I would get better vision with the 1.67 lenses. However I did get an assurance that if I still had problems with the 1.67 lenses they would replace them with 1.6 index lenses.

All in all, I’m really quite pleased with the whole experience. Producing an eye prescription is a pretty tedious process as it relies on asking questions, and half the time I’m saying that I really can’t see much difference, so I’m not too upset about the problem with the original test. What made the difference was that they were willing to put themselves out, even to the point of allowing me to change to a different set of frames.

Whilst I’ve seen a number of people grumble about poor experiences at Specsavers, I’m glad to report that in Lower Earley they are honouring the promise:

We want you to be completely happy with your purchase at Specsavers Opticians.

If you have any concerns within six months of the date of purchase, we will put it right. No quibble, no fuss.

Beth went to pick up her new glasses yesterday, and since mine were ready as well, picked up mine too so I could try them out, and go in on Saturday if there were any problems.

I tried them out today, but have to admit that by about 4pm I was just frustrated with them and swapped back to my existing battered old pair with scratched lenses.

There are actually several problems, the first is that the right arm is a little too short, so is a bit uncomfortable. However more of a problem is that my left eye is having a lot of trouble adapting, and seems to be working significantly harder than it has done. Most of the time my left eye feels blurred, and then when I close the right eye it does eventually focus. There is some enevitable adaption to a new prescription, but it is somewhat concerning how much extra work my left eye appears to be doing – plus the fact that it doesn’t seem to focus until I concentrate on it.

From a bit of research on the Internet the third problem might be more complicated, and that is that at the periphery of the lense I get quite noticable fringing. Several comments on the Internet say that they have been told that this is normal with high power lenses, however apparently my prescription has got less powerful, my old glasses don’t do it, and the assistant in the shop told me that I had the same sort of lenses in my old glasses. Anyway, on the basis that my old glasses don’t have the problem I really don’t see what advantage there is in screwing up the clarity of my periphery vision.

The final problem is more a conflict of fashion over practicality. Basically the majority of current styles are fairly narrow in terms of height. When we were in the opticians I was told that my current frames were deeper than was fashionable, so after persuasion I ended up going for a style with less depth. However from a practicality purpose they are a pain, especially when working on a PC, as my fingers and the keyboard are below the bottom of my glasses, I effectively have a useless area of vision because the glasses don’t go deep enough. Much to Beth’s frustration, even if they sort out the new glasses, which she does think I look a lot better in, I think I’ll still go and get another pair in similar frames to my current pair, that will allow me to actually work as I want to. Of course the same missing bit is also the area I use to read the music when I’m singing out.

To be frank, fashion is not all that high on my list of priorities. My glasses are a tool that allows me to drive, work, sing in the choir and so on. Having lack of clarity in my periphery vision is a problem when driving, as I use those areas of the lense for looking at the mirrors in particular. To sing out properly in the choir I can’t look down into my book, so I need the same missing bit of glass that I use to look at the keyboard when typing. Specsavers do offer a Customer Promise:

We want you to be completely happy with your purchase at Specsavers Opticians.

If you have any concerns within six months of the date of purchase, we will put it right. No quibble, no fuss.

It will be interesting to see quite how far they will go to make me completely happy. It would be nice if I could change the frames, but I doubt they’d go that far, as to some extent I made my own choice. However I certainly expect that with new glasses my vision should be better and clearer than with the old pair.

After going to pick up the new phone, we went off to Specsavers in Lower Earley to have our eyes tested.

Neither of us had had our eyes checked for ages, so we thought it was about time, especially as my company would pay for my eye test, and also gave me £20 towards the cost of new glasses. Since Specsavers were doing a two for one offer on their under £100 ranges, and operated a ‘clear price policy’ I thought that it would be a good opportunity.

Anyway, we got good news when we had our eyes tested. Beth’s eyes had changed slightly, but having tested mine, the optician said that mine had got significantly better! Then we got to picking frames, and picked out ones we liked from the ranges with the relevant special offer.

Then we got to the extras. Since both mine and Beth’s eyes are pretty bad, we’ve always had the special lightweight lenses. To cut a long story short – the total cost of all the lightweight lenses, which aren’t covered by the special offer left us with a bill the wrong side of £500!

Depressing, but since we live with our glasses day to day, the lightweight lenses are worth the money, it’s just a bit of a shock on the wallet when you get them!