Stanton Optical

Jack up price to cover buy 1 get 1 and sold highest quality but delivered lowest quality lens

18th of Feb, 2012 by Allen57

Stanton Optical Scam

Looking at Stanton Optical's website, you would think that their "Buy 1 Get 1 Free Plus Free Eye Exam" or "2 Complete Pairs of No Lined Bifocal $99" are too good to be true. They are. I was taken in buy the ads on their website and on 12/17/2011 went to their store at 2125 Arden Way, Sacramento, California 95825. My rimless glasses were broken and I needed a pair of glasses as quickly as possible.

They were able to give me an eye exam right away and the store manager was very helpful at first. I had brought a few pairs of older glasses with me and asked if he might be able to either fix the ones I had or use an older frame. He had his optician look at them and said that they wouldn't be able to repair my current frames but could use one of the older frames. Since it was a "buy 1 get 1 free" deal, the store manager said I could pick a new frame and he would do the lenses in the second pair for free and give me 50% off if I wanted to have another older frame made into sunglasses. I told him I was very happy with the lenses in my current glasses that I had purchased at NuVision in Elk Grove, CA a couple years ago. He said that he recommended that I go with their top of the line Varilux lenses and that these would be as good or better than my existing progressive lenses. I asked him the price and he said they would be around $200. So, it would be $200 plus the price of the frames. I picked out a frame that was $199. So, I'm thinking $400.

He measures the glasses and discussed coatings. I agreed to get the anti-reflective coating and hard coating. He said they couldn't do progressive lenses in my Serengeti sunglasses frame, but could do just straight lenses with my prescription for distance. I agreed.

So then he prints out the Statement of Charges and Payments. He had not charged me $200 for the lenses of the pair I was purchasing, but $244 PER LENS, which he had applied a "marketing discount" of $41.50, making each lens $202.50. He applied a $69 "marketing discount" to the frames making them $130. The coatings cost was $74. So, the price of the "buy 1" pair was $609. To that, he added the price of the coating for the second pair (using my frames) making the total price $658. When I first looked at the rather confusing printout, I thought it was $658 with the due to adding the price of the sunglasses. I asked him why he didn't take my sunglasses frames as well as the other two. He said, "Oh, this doesn't include the price of the sunglasses lenses." My son was very restless by that time and wanted to go. I just about turned and walked out of the store without paying because I felt he was trying to make it look like it was a "buy 1 get 1 free" deal and then jacking up the price such that I was actually paying the full price. So, the store manager said, "I want you to be happy, I'll throw in the sunglass lenses as a courtesy". He ran over and printed another sheet out showing the price of $103.50 for the sunglasses lenses with a balance due of $0. I still felt like I was getting ripped off but my glasses were broken and the manager said they would be in within 2 weeks.

It took 4 weeks to get the glasses in. The sunglasses were ok, but the glasses with the Varilux lenses were terrible. With my current pair of glasses, I could read their whole sheet of paper they use for testing the reading glasses without turning my head. Virtually the entire page was clear, not just the center. But with the pair they had finally delivered, I could only see a space the size of a nickel clearly and the rest of the page fell off into a blur very rapidly. Not only that, but I had to slightly cock my head to see through the tiny clear spot. To read a line I would have to move my head or the page to read the entire line as only a word or two was in focus.

To make it worse, the clear spot was different in each lens so that I couldn't see clearly out of both lenses at the same time and would have to move my head one way to see from one eye and a slightly different way to see clearly out of the other. I told the store manager these were the worst pair of progressive lenses I had ever seen and that they were no where near the quality of my existing lenses. He insisted that I try the glasses with my frames for 3 days and that in the mean time, he would send the ones with the new frames back to the lab to be redone. He said he would have them back in a week.

A week came and went and I had to stop wearing the glasses they gave me. I was getting terrible eyestrain and headaches from them. I called and they said they would check and give me a call back. No one called back. I called again and was told by the manager they would be in on Friday. Friday came and went and it was the following Friday that they finally were available for pick up. I went to the store and these glasses were no better than the first. I told the manager I wanted a refund. He said that the store doesn't give refunds but that he would call the lab and see if there is an even better quality of lens that they could provide. He would call me on Monday. No call. I called and I was told someone would get back to me. No call. Finally, I went back to NuVision where I got my current pair of glasses. The optometrist there said that I was overcharged for the lenses to make up for the cost of the "buy 1 get 1 free" and she looked at my lenses that they had replaced in my frames and said that they were charging me for the top of the line quality lens and then using the lower quality lens, which explains the "fish bowl" effect and the very narrow reading comfort zone. She said that she could have a pair of glasses in within two weeks. So, I picked a frame and within two weeks, she provided me a pair of glasses with lenses similar in quality to the original ones she sold me 2 years ago. The glasses with Prada frames were $413.

To this day, February 18, 2012, two months and a day since I ordered the glasses from Stanton, I still have not received a call from them and can only assume they have no intention of delivering.

I'm disputing the charge of $658 with Bank of America Master Card and will also post this on as many scam report websites as possible until I get a full refund

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