I have been a patient at Image Optical in the Short North for almost 6 years and always exceedingly pleased. After an appealing experience the last few months, though, I will never return -- and am blanketing review pages and registering a complaint with the Better Business Bureau to make sure no one else falls victim to the same problems (although clearly I'm not the first one to notice these issues). \r
My story is, I called in October/early November and ordered 6 mos' worth of contacts because I was about to run out. Contacts usually take about 2-3 weeks to come in there. After about 4 weeks, I started calling on about an every-two-weeks schedule to inquire when they were expected. Each time, I was told things like, ""it looks like those are scheduled to get here next Thursday,"" but they inexplicably hadn't arrived the next time I called. They did mail me a new pair of contacts in the meantime because the ones I was wearing were well past due. By the end of December, I was very concerned because I had $100+ left in my flexible spending account that I wanted to use for the contacts, and that money expires at the end of the year. So I called to urgently request their arrival, and the secretary told me I could pay in advance (thereby using my money before it expired), so I did that on Dec. 30ish. From there, I've continued to be told excuses for why they haven't arrived, including that the doctor puts the order in and that something was wrong with it, but he was out sick. Katie (the secretary and the only person I've spoken to this whole time) said she'd call me back after she spoke with him as well as mail me a second set of contacts to get me by, but she did neither. On many occasions, my calls to both Image Optical office locations have gone unanswered all week, and my messages weren't returned. The (seemingly) only difference-maker was my showing up in the office in early February and encountering both Dr. Clark and Katie, who were quick to apologize and scramble around, getting me samples and promising my order would arrive by a date the next week. Incredibly, it did, along with some extra boxes to ""apologize for the inconvenience."" \r
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That didn't keep me from leaving the practice, however. The months of waiting, knowing the whole time that Dr. Clark is aware of an eye ulcer condition I have that overused contacts would only make worse, made me have no faith in him as my or anyone's eye doctor.
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