Lens Crafters is one of the handfuls of optical retail brands in America offer one hour service to the buyers of eyeglasses. This service frees the patients from the hassles of coming back and forth for eye exam, choosing the frames and lenses and finally picking up the eyeglasses. As a new thing in the recent years, the one hour service of Lens Crafters was discussed in the boards hotly. There are pros and cons for this new matter.
Lens Crafters once started the one hour service as a way of promotion just like other retailers. Some insiders from Lens Crafters revealed that it is very costly to keep a simple yet full-functional optical lab behind the store due to the equipments and human costs. Normally one Lens Crafters store doesn’t have too many traffic and orders per day, it is uneconomical to provide this service. It is more rational to set up a convergent regional lab for a couple of Lens Crafters stores just like before.
As eyeglasses are medical devices, some eye care professionals argue that one hour service of prescription eyeglasses will increase the variances of lenses powers, thus affecting the prescription accuracy. One Lens Crafters store won’t stock every possible prescription lenses customers need. In order for one-hour delivery, some opticians may choose to enlarge the lenses strength tolerances by using the available inventory lenses. This enlarged tolerance is harmful to patients’ eye health. On this point one hour service of Lens Crafters only works for the simplest prescriptions.
Investment on one pair of eyeglasses is not small, so people usually think the eyeglasses need delicate and big job to be fitted and done. One hour service of Lens Crafters gives the consumers the feeling that eyeglasses can be done in one hour therefore the quality of eyeglasses is also in the manner of fast food. Of course, this is truly a misperception, but on the hand shows that the one hour service is probably a failing strategy.
Another argument centers on whether it is necessary for patients to use one hour service. In fact only very few customers who don’t have backup glasses break their only eyewear may ask for the quickest possible delivery.
It was heard that the Lens Crafters was testing to get rid of one hour prescription in some of its stores. Maybe the answer is pretty apparent after above analysis.