Profiteering Opticians!

[jayuk]

Look at this

The thing with the above article is that this is the case for alot of things! Low value but highly marked up!

[Sweet]

Yes i agree. Sadly this is a 'branded' world where top names will always get customers and profits regardless of the care or treatment they receive in the long term. I avoid top names for this very reason and am more than happy to see someone independently as i can trust on their decisions more as it is being based around me and not the money i can spend with them!

Hehe ... now where does the name Moorfields come in comparison??!!!!!

Sweet X x X

[Lynn White]

Hmm..

You know I could really go to town on this lol....

For one thing, James Murray Wells is promoting his own website here. He is relying on other people's prescriptions and other people's measurements of the distance between your eyes and the advice you get as to which lenses etc are suitable for you in order to run his site.

For another... there is the whole issue of high street spec prices. Yes, actually, the price of specs and contacts are high relative to their production costs. There is, however, a reason for this in the UK as opposed to other countries.

The UK is fairly unique in its health service. UK optometry is REALLY unique! Back in the days when the Health Service was developed, optoms were recruited to the NHS as private contractors. The actual fees given to optoms fell woefully short of actual running costs... so a culture developed whereby charges made to private patients subsidised the costs for NHS patients.

This was dubbed "cross subsidy" and still is alive and kicking. The NHS still does not pay an economic fee to optoms for the work they do. Therefore optoms claw back monies to keep in business from private patients on lens and frame prices. This is so much a fact of life that optoms actually won a court action against Customs and Excise concerning VAT returns on "dispensing" frames and lenses...

Sooo.. enter the opportunistic web supplier! They do not have to worry about NHS patients. They do not have to worry about how the patient reacts to the type of lens they provide (which is a very real problem for high power lenses). They just take your prescription and go.....

Which is absolutely fine from a consumer point of view. This is what comnp0etition is all about.

[Sweet]

Hhmm ok i don't think i read this right then! LOL! I only read the first page and thought it was written by someone complaining about paying so much for glasses etc, i didn't read into it being a way to it gain information for a website!

I hope that he doesn't get a lot of response from this then as it would mean more increases in prices for those who need to order something. I think though that people should stick with their optometrists as we all need someone to check our eyes for us and how lenses fit etc regardless of whether we have KC or not.

Sweet X x X

[John Smith]

At least this form of e-business doesn't leech the life out of optoms in the same way many of the electronics goods e-sellers leech the life out of the high street.

In the latter case, they relied on customers browsing the shelves in the high street and then buying online. Of course, this put the real-world retailers at risk, and now the daddy of them all, Dixons, has retreated to being online only.

I think that in the former case, optoms are still needed as a customer cannot test their own vision or order a pair of glasses online based on their own perception. The professional is still needed to carry out the measuring.

Somewhat perversely though, I suspect that it will be the "big four" who have the most to lose here. To the man on the street, they are turning into specs warehouses and not a lot more, so the guilt factor of purchasing the glasses from someone cheaper would be less. I feel that as long as the independants continue to provide the quality service that they currently do by and large, they are much more likely to retain the business.

And so say all of us!

[jayuk]

Lynn

You forgot to mention the Supermarkets and contact lenses as well LOL

Now that was a kick in the teeth to Opticians in the UK!

J

[Lynn White]

Hehe Jay... don't remind me lol!

John.. I am sure online optical businesses would love to do the same as the other retailers. In some respects you can't blame people for wanting the cheapest deal - but you do lose out on service in the end.

The thing about independents though is that the sight test fees are not enough to cover costs if all your patients come to you for testing and then take their prescriptions elsewhere. This is already true for contacts as Jay says. For certain brands, supermarkets and websites sell contacts cheaper than we ourselves can buy them, so we can't compete.

As you say though, at the moment, independents do survive because they provide a service.

[Ali Akay]

As Lynn says NHS sight test fee is well below the cost of providing the service.However, the fee structure of a practice is invariable based on the NHS sight test fee as typically 50% or more of appointments are NHS, and this figure is much higher in some areas. I think we will,in time, see more and more optometrists opting out of NHS and go fully private like dentists have done. In our practice it costs probably £35-£40 to provide an appointment, but we only charge £22.50 due to "market forces" and we only receive £18 or so for NHS tests.So,the only way we can survive is to make money from selling glasses! Most of us are happy to pay £80+ per hour to have our car serviced, but would find say £40 for a 30-40 min eye exam excessive.Opticians are probably their worst enemy as there's always someone down the road who will do cheap sight tests with the hope of selling glasses at the end of it! If we could charge a realistic fee, then would happily supply specs at cost+a small handling charge, but I cant see it happening!

[GarethB]

Ali,

I do not know what car you drive unless servicing costs have sky rocketed in Hitchin in the 15 years I left.

The main dealers for my cars charge £50 per hour, but the reliable independant garage that has done a roaring trade since they were named in the Witch magazine for being best independent only charge £35.

Think you should move out of the south like I did

[jayuk]

Gareth

The Main dealer for mine has said it costs £87 per hour! ..so things clearly have progressed since your last visits!

J