I have taken my teenage son to Dr. Sweitzer's office, S. Eye Care in Lewisberry, for a few years,…read morebecause of my desire to support local businesses and its convenience to my home. My son wears contacts and has a very basic, slight prescription. His last annual checkup was in June, and I have been generally satisfied with the care, until recently.
Last week we ran into an urgent problem and the staff at S Eye Care were surprisingly unhelpful and quite rude.
My problem: We were leaving on Thursday 12/6 after school for Vermont -- my son was registered to race in two ski races. On Wednesday evening, my son told me he was out of contacts. He knew I had placed an order for contacts on November 9th through lens.com and that I had received a shipping notice on 12/3. However, when I looked online to track the delivery, they were not scheduled for delivery until 12/8.
So, on Thursday morning at 9:00am, I called S. Eye Care to see if I could buy enough contacts at their office (he wears a daily disposable, very common prescription, same script in both eyes) to get us through the weekend. The woman I spoke with (Stacey, I believe) took my information, including my explanation of the URGENCY of my problem, and told me she would check to see if they had any of his prescription in stock, would speak with Dr. Sweitzer, and would call me back.
After leaving my last meeting at 2:00pm, she still had not returned my call. So I called her back, and she told me that Dr. Sweitzer was not willing to sell or provide us any sample contacts. I asked her if she explained the urgency of our problem to him. She said she had but his policy was simply not to dispense any sample contacts. I was admittedly upset and asked her why she could not have bothered to call me back with that answer. She claimed she had JUST spoken with him. He had been too busy all day to be interrupted, presumably. At that point, I told her I would like to talk to Dr. Sweitzer directly when he was available, and then I also asked to speak with Vickie, the front desk staffer who I thought I had developed some rapport with, since we had previously discussed some of the challenges of raising teenage boys. I thought Vickie might be more able to understand the dilemma my son and I were in, and she generally has seemed a bit more "with it" than the first younger woman I had been working with.
Vickie got on the line and told me she was uncomfortable with being put in the middle of this problem. She repeatedly and quite rudely told me that "this is YOUR problem, not mine" (she said those exact words at least three times). I was shocked and upset by her response but tried to calmly reply: "Yes, I know this is definitely my problem, as well as my son's, and I was asking for your help in solving our problem."
Not only would my son not be able to race without contacts, but I would be out at least $600 with non-refundable lodging, race registrations, and lift tickets. All Stacey could say is, again, "this is YOUR problem, and you are trying to make it mine, and I don't appreciate that." I finally accepted that I would be getting no where with them, so I asked again for Dr. S. to call me when he was done seeing patients and she assured me she would give him that message. Two staffers assured me they would give him the message. Dr. Eric Sweitzer NEVER called me.
At any rate, I quickly called LensCrafters, briefly explained my problem and asked if I could purchase contacts in their store, with a valid prescription. Tim, the assistant manager at the Colonial Park store, told me they could, checked his stock, and confirmed they were available.
My son and I stopped there on our way out of town that evening, and Tim was everything you could hope for in customer service. He ordered us one box (a requirement for dispensing samples), and gave us enough samples (3 boxes or 15 contacts) to safely last us until the order would arrive (which arrived only 6 days after placing the order).
We had a great weekend, and I was only MILDLY annoyed by the automated text I received the next day from S. Eye Care, wishing my son a Happy Birthday. Gee, thanks.
LensCrafters has one new customer, and Dr. Sweitzer has one less customer. I'm not sure why he cares so little about his patients, or this patient in particular, but I figured since he doesn't care about losing us (or he would have called me, at the very least) - maybe he would care about a negative review on Yelp (something I have NEVER done before.)
