Yesterday, I took the day off to take my daughter to the eye doctor. I usually go to the “doctor” at the vision centers but this time, I decided to go to a “real” doctor.
His office was about 20 minutes from my house and we got there a little late. (As always, there was so much traffic!)
We sat in the waiting room, filled out the necessary paperwork and read magazines from June of 2009. We waited nearly two hours before we were taken in.
My daughter went first. I followed. The technician looked at our eyes and asked us to read an eye chart. After that, she took us to see the doctor. He started to ask my daughter a series of unrelated questions like, where do you go to school? What are you studying? And he talked about his own daughter doing the same thing.
All I kept thinking, why doesn’t he get to work? Stop shmoozing and start working!
He gave her a quick exam and told her to look at his store where he sold designer glasses at a “discount.”
While I had my exam, she looked at the glasses. She didn’t see anything she liked. So I told the doctor after my exam that we were just going to get our prescriptions and buy the glasses at a vision center.
“Then you owe me $25 bucks,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I said
“Yes, you and your daughter signed the paper that said if you didn’t buy glasses from me, you owe the office $25,” he said.
To not pay the $25, I ended up spending a fortune buying two pair of glasses for my daughter and two pair of glasses for me. When I asked if they could ship them out to me, the woman told me it would be $10 a pair for shipping. (This is unbelievable!!!!)
I was really upset. I went to a medical doctor who was selling glasses in his office and almost forcing patients to buy his products! He had such a strong sell. And at first when my daughter couldn’t find anything, he tried to guilt her into buying a pair of glasses.
I don’t know about you, but I really thought that was a conflict of interest. As we left, I paid my $50 co-pay and when my daughter and I were talking in the hall, the rude receptionist told us to shut the door. I wouldn’t call that customer service, would you?
