Ranting and Raving

First The Rant:

Yesterday, while I was attending the event at the Coliseum, I got hit in the face with a beach ball.

(For some reason, throwing beach balls is a common activity at motivational seminars.)

This time however, it knocked my glasses off my face, on to the floor, and in two pieces.  There was most of the glasses in one piece, and one of the lenses as the other piece.

After working with it awhile, I was able to at least get the lens back, almost where it belonged.

Last night my wife and I both tried to repair them with no luck, so today I went back to where I bought them.   

45 minutes later, they said they could not fix them.  I asked if they had the same model frame in stock, and they tried the new frame.   20 minutes later they said they could not get the lenses to fit either frame.  They said they would order a new frame but by now my confidence in them was zero.

Another 30 minutes later, they come out with my lenses partially in the new frames.  My head and eyes were pounding due to eye strain, and now these glasses were in worse shape than when I came in.

They were apologetic, but geez, you are  trained professional opticians (there were 3 of them) and I am your only customer and two hours later I'm in worse shape then when I walked in.

Without naming names, oh, sure I might as well, Wal-mart is a place I'll never go to again for anything like this again.

But there is a happy ending to this story, and here it is:

The Rave is about a 40 minute visit to Marschand Optical in Fort Wayne.  For years, repairing glasses has been their business.   I drove over there this afternoon after another appointment and explained to them the whole story.

They fixed the glasses, the way they were supposed to be fixed and asked for $3.00.  No, that's not a typo.  Three bucks.

I gave them a 20 and told them to keep the change.   I can see again, the headache and eye strain are gone and once again, they have earned another loyal customer.