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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my 3 favorite film composers are John Williams, Michael Giacchino, and Hans Zimmer, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson I learned buying glasses.
You might remember that I previously mentioned that Golden Spiral Media has started a new podcast for Falling Skies, called Berserker Cast. The first episode of Berserker Cast is already out. I’m also excited to announce that we’re starting a podcast for Under the Dome this season called, Chester’s Mill Gazette. Chester’s Mill Gazette will be hosted by Doug Payton and Karen Lindsay. They hosted the Under the Dome podcast for TV Talk last summer. I’m also very excited to announce that we’ve also added a podcast for all of you Arrow fans! Arrow Squad will be hosted by Brian Kane and Kevin Bachelder and they’ll be releasing a podcast every month or so during the summer. It’s great to have Karen, Kevin, Doug, Brian as part of the Golden Spiral Media Team.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
I don’t know how long my vision has been bad. I’m sure it’s been bad pretty much all of my life, but I was in the 6th grade when my teacher contacted my parents to tell them that I should have my eyes tested. I’ll never forget my first eye exam. My dad took me to an eye doctor in the city. We went back to the office area and they blew air into my eyes. I had no idea at the time what glaucoma was or why they would test for it. They also dilated my pupils.
I then went into a room and sat in a big chair with strange contraptions all around it. The doctor put various lenses in front of my eyes and eventually arrived at the obvious conclusion: I had very poor eyesight. I was very nearsighted and had astigmatism in both eyes. I then got to hang out with my dad for the rest of the day. It was terrible. No, really, it was. They had dilated my eyes and my dad had to drive around and pick up supplies for a carpet laying job he was working on. Even though the doctor had given me a pair of the dorkiest looking sunglasses ever known to man, they were not blocking enough of the sun. It was hard for me to see and I had a really bad headache.
My glasses came in a few days later and I was amazed. If you wear glasses then you’ve probably had a similar experience. I did not know what I’d been missing. What had been a green carpet in front of our house was now revealed to be individual blades of grass. I could see each leaf on the trees around our house and I no longer had to sit 3 feed from the TV to understand what was happening. It was truly amazing. Sometimes I would just stare at stuff and be amazing by all the details that were new to me.
My parents always took care of all the bills, of course, so I had no idea how much my glasses cost them. I still don’t. We were fortunate to have some friends that owned an optical shop, so we always got my glasses from them. For my senior year of high school I wore contacts and we got the contacts from the same store.
When I moved out of my parents house and went to college, I continued to get my glasses and contacts from the same store. I only wore contacts on occasion, so it was mostly just glasses that I purchased. They always made me a great deal. I never asked for anything special, but they always seemed happy to offer. I never paid full price for the lenses, and I don’t know that I ever paid anything for the frames. Keep in mind that I only got new glasses about every 2 or 3 years, so I probably only got glasses from them twice where I had to pay for them.
Shortly after Kari and I got married we moved to Lubbock, TX. By that time it had been a couple of years or more since either of us had purchased new glasses or had an eye exam. If you can believe it, Kari’s eyesight is worse than mine. One day we were driving by the Lubbock mall and noticed than an optical shop was having a big sale. They were offering two complete pairs of glasses for $99. We went in and checked it out.
Once inside we read the signage and it seemed pretty straightforward. It said something like $99 for two complete pairs of glasses*. The * read something like some exceptions apply. We asked someone about the sign to make sure we understood it okay and then we signed up.
We each got an eye exam, and Kari also got measured for contacts. We then picked out some glasses. I got a pair of prescription sunglasses and a pair of regular glasses, Kari got a pair of contacts and a pair of regular glasses. They told us that the contacts and the sunglasses would be extra. I don’t recall how much extra they told us it would be, but we agreed.
They had all the supplies in house that were needed to make our glasses so we waited around while they did the work. We expected to pay a little less than $300 for our glasses so you can imagine how surprised we were when they rang up our bill and it was nearly $800.
We pointed out that we had purchased the 2/$99 special. They then broke it down for us. The eye exams? Not included. The contacts eye exam? Extra charge. UV protection? Extra charge. Scratch resistant coating? Extra charge. Sunglasses? Extra charge. Oh, and here’s the kicker. Both of our prescriptions were so bad that we required specialty lenses. Those lenses were not covered by the special. Therefore, paid full price for everything.
We thought there had been some sort of mistake. We spoke with the manager. No concession was given. Our specifications did not fall within the parameters of the sale and we were out of luck.
We went ahead and bought the glasses. The excitement we had when we walked in that day had now turned into shock. We got into the car and we both just sat there. We stared blankly out the front windshield for several minutes, neither of us uttered a word. We felt like we’d just been hit by a truck and had our money stolen right out of our pockets.
Here’s what I learned.
Always read the fine print, and always ask questions. If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. If it says there are exclusions or exceptions, find out exactly what those are.
I don’t think the store was trying to rip people off. I think that most people found the sale to be a great value. I do think that someone should have warned us that our order was not going to qualify for the sale price.
I’ve since ordered glasses several other times from stores offering a very similar deal. I now know what questions to ask and how to better protect myself. Of course, every offer since that day in Lubbock has covered my prescription and special lenses just fine.
That’s the life is. Sometimes we learn stuff the hard way. Sometimes we get suckered into something and pay for it. Don’t let it hurt you again. Learn from the experience and use it to be better prepared for the future.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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