Okay it's been a while... the Walmart Robots

I lived in downtown Montreal until August 1998. So my exposure to Walmart had been limited. The first time I went to one was when I was visiting my sister in Sarnia, Ontario a year or so before moving. I had always hated what Walmart was doing. Sure great prices for shoppers, but at the sacrifice of jobs and small businesses. The same people that bitch about the employment opportunities are the ones that do as much of their shopping as possible at Walmart.

Anyhow, my contempt of Walmart somewhat lessened when I moved to a small city in Ontario. Basically, it's the only place you can go here to buy most things. Since I travel a good deal, I've also been to Walmarts in many other cities too.

Every Walmart is essentially the same. Predictable experience. They've applied the system format that originated in the restaurant industry. People like knowing what to expect.

I had a recent Walmart robot experience I needed to get off of my chest.

I wear daily contact lenses. Daily contact lenses are also very expensive. I've been buying mine from the same place in Montreal for about 10 years, if not more. It's a downtown boutique store. I pay $180 for 6 boxes of lenses. Basically enough for 3 months. I also get a manufacturers coupon I can use to get $40 back 3 times a year when I purchase 6 boxes at a time.

If you do the math on it, thats a lot of moolah I'm spending on contacts. Obviously if I can save a bit of money somehow, then great.

About a year ago, I went to the local Walmart's optical store. Found out that buying my contacts there would be about $100 more a year than through the opticians in Montreal. Online options were about the same price as Walmart too.

Earlier this year when reviewing my budget, I decided to investigate things. I had switched to these lenses maybe 2 years ago when they first came out on the market. So I figured that maybe prices elsewhere had gone down.

I go back to my local Walmart and talk with a sales clerk in the optical store. Had one of my lenses with me in the package to make sure I was getting the price for the right lenses. I was told that to buy an individual box of 30 lenses it would be $28. Prices would go down starting at 2 boxes. At 6 boxes, it would be $20 a box. $120 in total. Net result would be saving $140/year and I didn't have to deal with the hassles of ordering lenses from another city. Long distance call to order and then getting husband to pick them up when he commutes into the city. So overall, it seemed worth it.

After writing down the pricing I was quoted, I asked the clerk what I needed to do. He said I needed to go to my opthamologist to get an eye exam done.

Unfortunately OHIP (Ontario's Health Insurance Program) no longer covers eye examinations. My health insurance company doesn't either. My exam was $35.

I made my appointment on a Monday since my husband works from home that day so easier for him to take me around. I then headed on over to Walmart and handed over my prescription along with a sample of the lenses I wear.

I was told I needed to get an eye exam there to be fitted for contacts. Of course, the optician doesn't work Mondays. Appointments are available Tuesday through Friday. Saturday is open clinic. Oh and there is also a $15 charge for the fitting too.

So I make an appointment for the next night. It's the only night the optician works late. (I guess Walmart's optical center caters to the unemployed and retired!) Husband rushes home after commuting to get me there on time for my appointment.

Optician spends about 10 minutes with me. Half of that writing down a brief medical history and the other half looking up pricing. Well, it turns out that it is $30 a box and there are no discounts for buying multiple boxes. No manufacturers rebate. Huh? This makes no sense. It didn't matter to the optician that I had just gotten a quote from a sales clerk a couple of weeks ago for $140/year difference! Why the heck would I go through all of these hoops to pay more money than I was already spending. At this point, my husband says to me, "Lets go. Just get them from Montreal." But I was there already and figured I may as well get two boxes.

I'm then told that it takes a WEEK to get them in. I didn't expect them to keep them in stock, but I'd at least expect a little faster time than that. The place in Montreal I've been going to normally gets them in 2 business days after I order. Why would Walmart be slower than a small store??

So a week later, I get a call. I'm told to make sure that the pick up is done when the optician is in. I figured that since I didn't need an appointment or see the optician, I'd just get my husband to pick them up when he does his errands Saturday morning.

Wrong. Husband gets there and he's told that the optician needs to see ME personally. After all of this hassle, my husband just blew up. It takes a lot for him to reach that level, but it happened.

A couple of hours later, we head back over to Walmart. The optician, it turns out, needs to do a check of my eyes with and without my contacts in. Now as much as I've been wearing contacts for eons..... I still have problems with getting them in. I actually ended up in the ER earlier this year after breaking a contact in my eye. I also don't put the same lenses back in my eyes. So I didn't want to do it. The lenses were exactly the same I had been wearing for 18 months. No change. Why did he need to do this now? So my darling husband says lets forget it and get them in Montreal. Unfortunately by this point, I was wearing my last pair of lenses. With it being a Saturday, it would be Wednesday or Thursday before I'd be able to get them from my Montreal store. The optician at one point in all of this says if he doesn't do the exam, he can lose his license since its a legal requirement in Ontario. I reminded him that I had told him I had been buying from Montreal... so it would have been nice to have been informed of this before.

The staff there just looked like robots. No emotion. No sign of sympathizing. It was kind of like - this is the way it is. They didn't seem to get that I had been quoted a substantially different price just a few weeks earlier for the same thing. They didn't seem to get the sheer hassles and negligence when it came to explaining to their customers how things worked there. The only good points are that in all the confusion, I wasn't charge the $15 fee for the exam and the optician gave me a container of contact lense solution and a case for when I took out the pair I was wearing.

When leaving the store, I stopped at the Customer Service counter and asked if they had a complaint form. I was directed to a box of slips to nominate an employee for exceptional work. Sigh.

Not only did I not get the savings I was expected, but I spent money on an unnecessary eye exam, had to go to the eye exam and either my husband or I made a total of five trips just to pay more than what I was paying before.

Vent over.