So we got a 1 star google review recently which we think is a very unfair assessment. Normally we would just leave it. However, if it’s allegations about our professional competence, we will not take it lying down.
Despite the explanations and clarifications given, this customer would not accept our explanation. As a layman, how does he know how the eye works ? We respond on the allegations he made below.
“Very unprofessional and defensive attitude by Winston in dealing with my son’s myopia issue”.
We have tested his sons eye and carry out every test professionally. The father was in the testing room every time we did the testing. Not once did he complain about our professionalism or how the test was conducted.
“My son has been placed in their myopia control program since Feb 24 using Stellest lenses. In Aug 24, his eye power increased and we paid for a new pair of lenses. On 20 Nov 24, we were told that there is no change to his eye power and to seek the doctor’s assessment to further help control his myopia and to consider atropine to supplement his myopia treatment.“
Every customer who bought myopia management lenses / solutions are enrolled in our myopia management program . This is FREE and at no extra cost to our customers and it’s not compulsory. It’s for the benefit of our customer so that we can monitor their myopia progression closely.
Our Myopia management program consist of either 2 (6 monthly) or 4 (3 monthly) follow up checks and includes autorefraction, measurement of visual acuity with their current glasses, and subjective refraction ( if needed ) and last but not least axial or eyeball length measurement using ZEISS IOL Master 500. .
Axial length measurement is the GOLD STANDARD in myopia management. Many optical shops in Singapore do not offer this measurement even if they are practicing myopia management.
They paid for a new pair of lenses in Aug24 as the prescription has increased by -0.50. This is not covered under the warranty as Essilor states that they will only change the lens under warranty if the myopia increases by -0.75 or more within 6 months. It has to be full price of course since Essilor are not going to give us any discount. Bernard ask us for a 30% discount which we are not obligated to give but do it anyway because we wanted to track his son’s myopia.
In Nov 24, we did a 3 month follow up. We measured his son’s visual acuity and found it to be very similar to the visual acuity in Aug ( 6/7.5+ ) after the change of lenses which was ( 6/7.5– ) Any competent eyecare professional would have interpreted it as no ( significant ) change.
However for the axial length measurements, it has increased by about 0.31mm average over a 3 month period . This is definitely not normal as the average axial length increase for young children is about 0.1 to 0.15mm per year .
So even though we did not notice a significant change in the prescription, the axial length has changed significantly over a 3 month period. Based on this finding, we recommended that Bernard bring his son to see an eye specialist for atropine drops to more aggressively manage the progressing myopia.
“To our shock , when we visited the doctor on 4 Dec (ie 2 weeks apart) , the doctor assessed my boy’s eye power and found that his right eye has increased by +125 and over eye by +50.”
We are not sure why Bernard was shocked when he found out later that his son’s prescription has changed that much 2 weeks later when we already told him 2 weeks prior that his son’s myopia is going to progress very fast from the axial length measurements that we did . Otherwise we would not have advised him to bring his son to see any eye specialist for atropine.
Was he shocked to know that his son’s myopia was 175 degree when it was first detected ? The parent should be blamed for not bringing their child for eye screening earlier
We asked Bernard repeatedly for the doctor’s report but he refused to give it to us. From the doctor’s report we would be able to ascertain what kind of refraction that the doctor carried out and if they had ruled out pseudo myopia. Children’s eyes can sometimes be unstable and their eye degree can fluctuate within a short period of time. Any competent eyecare practitioner would know what to do to measure a children’s eye degree properly in this situation.
“As the prescription is highlighted suspected to be under corrected , we approached Winston for clarification especially since the assessment was done only within 2 weeks apart.“
As we have mentioned above, if the son’s prescription has already progressed by about 1.00 diopter (or 100 degree) when we saw him in Nov follow up, he would not be able to read the 6/7.5 line that we measured.
Bernard would not accept this fact and presumed that we did not detect the 100 degree changed. We managed to detect a 50 degree change in Aug and now he is alleging that we failed to pick up the change in Nov. The visual acuity check alone shows that there was no significant prescription changes . For myopia , there’s more likelyhood for practitioner to over correct by (100 degree) than to under correct by 100 degree. Again, we are not saying the doctor over correct. We can only find out from the doctor’s report which Bernard refused to give us ( see conversation below)
“Instead of showing care and offering us another review of my boy’s eye conditions, he was defensive and defended his optometrist’s findings despite my Stellest lenses are well within the warranty period.“
Bernard went to our lens supplier Essilor, not once, but twice to complain about his unhappiness with us. He alleged that his son’s lens is under warranty and we refused to change the lenses under warranty. Never once in our conversation that we mentioned we are not going to replace the lenses under warranty.
Bernard also told our supplier that he don’t trust us and do not wish to come back to us to do the review. Under such circumstances, why do we still want to offer another review ?
Instead of being grateful that we did 3 monthly follow up (at no extra cost) to monitor his son’s myopia progression closely and even alerted him that the myopia progression might happen very fast and see an eye specialist, he instead try to discredit us by doing a 1 star google review.
Our optometrist high professionalism is confirmed in the google reviews by our customers. We do not throw our optometrist under the bus just because the customer is unhappy and most importantly, unreasonable.
Below are the screen shots of our full conversation on 14 Dec 24. Readers can decide if we are professional in handling Bernard’s questions.
Did he make the conclusion that his son’s myopia was under powered from the doctor’s prescription and not progressed ? Or the doctor’s conclusion ?
As a layman, we can understand why it wouldn’t make any sense.
If the prescription changed from 200 to 325, a 125 degree myopic change, does he seriously think we won’t pick it up when we picked up a 50 degree change in Aug ? When his son’s myopia was detected, it was a175 degree. Did he imagine what he put his son through before it was detected ?
Recommended to maintain in Nov because we did not detect a ( significant ) change from our test . If there is a 25 degree change, would he spend another $600 to change the lens ? Again, we would have picked up a 100 degree change if indeed there was .
How could it be so different ? To be honest we are not sure why. Possible reasons are chart memorisation and eye squinting. Again our visual acuity assessment would have picked up a 100 degree change. We can’t miss by that much.
We did not recommend a change because there wasn’t a need at that particular time. But we did recommend to see an eye specialist for atropine to manage his son’s myopia progression more aggressively because of the rapid increase in axial length. Why didn’t he mention this ?
Again, we wouldn’t expect a layman to understand. Sometimes you just have to accept that . Our assessment did not indicate a 100 degree change at that time and that’s a fact.
Why change when there wasn’t any indication ? 6 monthly check is the recommended but we are doing it 3 momthly for him. You are always welcome to get his eyes check every month if you want.
The follow up service is FREE . We do it as a value added service. The axial length measument machine cost us $40k. If you think our assessment is not accurate and we do it for fun, you may choose not to come for the follow up. Go to a private eye specialist, it will cost you at least $100 per visit. Recommended follow up is 6 monthly. How does a 3 monthly follow up not more useful? Especially for fast progressor.
When they got the doctor’s prescription, they did not come to us and tell us that they visited the doctor and has a new prescription . We would gladly do a reassessment and change the lens under warranty. But instead send an email to Essilor singapore telling them that we made a wrong assessment and think we are unprofessional and do not wish to come back to us. They also alleged that we don’t want to change the lens when it’s under warranty. Which is totally false.
Essilor refused to change the lens and refer Bernard back to us. So he has no choice but to contact us and started this conversation.
Have we been defensive ? We have provided explanation which he refused to accept. At no point did we say that we are not going to change the lenses under warranty.
As for saying we were reluctant and defensive before deciding to help his wife, this is totally false. Here’s the back story. His wife made a pair of progressive glasses and had some adaptation issues. The complain was kind of vague so we have to ask more questions before deciding what to do. The wife got fustrated and complain to the husband that we asked too many questions . Hello, if we don’t ask , how are going to best help you ? We could have just do some checks and dismissed your complains but we didn’t. And this is apparently is not good enough for them. What the ……….
Bernard sent a letter to Essilor after our whatsapp conversation alleging that we are not going to honour the lens warranty.
Read through our whatsapp conversation above and see which part of our replies that we mention we are not going to change the lenses under warranty ? Is he lying ? Neither did we say we are not offering to reassess his son’s prescription again. However, given that he has no faith in what we do and constantly telling us that we are not accurate in our assessment, we don’t see the need to reasses his son’s vision again. We will just change the lenses according to the prescription given to us.
In fact, we told Essilor Singapore that they can refer Bernard to another optometrist for the lens warranty.
Yes we refuted his allegations that we made a wrong assessment during the follow up visit. We have records to show that the assessment is correct.
On 18 Dec 24, Bernard finally decide to release his son’s prescription on our google review page, which he refused to do so during our whatsapp conversation. We are not sure what his motive is other than to prove us “wrong” . I mean, why the F does he wants to do that ? Just because he thinks we do not want to do a warranty change for his sons’ lenses ? Something wrong with this guy.
So he posted an update. He brought his son to do another assessment and it’s the same as the doctor’s prescription dated 4th Dec . Maybe he would also like to let us and 10 other optometrists do a check and and see if it’s the same as the doctor’s and the optometrist’s results ?
The conclusion is the prescription would most likely be the same as that of the doctor’s . It’s a no brainer. The myopia has progressed. (We would probably get the same measurement too if we do the test again lol ) .
Again the thing Bernard cannot accept is the myopia has progressed rapidly when he brought his son to the doctor. Instead of accepting this fact, he kept claiming that we made a wrong assessment. Our axial length measurements already tell us that his son’s myopia will progress rapidly even though we did not see the increase at the time of his visit.
(We want to remind Bernard that the doctor’s and optometrist’s recent prescription is not proof that we made a wrong assessment. We hope you consider rewording these defamatory remarks )
Based on the family history of high myopia and our measurements (especially the axial length measurements) and how fast the myopia progresses even with intervention using the Stellest myopia control lenses , we can predict that the myopia will probably progress beyond 600 degree ( -6.00D ) when the son (now 7) reaches 9 to 10 years old or even earlier .
However, combined with atropine treatment ( if it works for him ), hopefully the myopia progression will slow down . We also recommended using ortho k lenses ( with atropine ) . But they wanted to wait 1 or 2 years . This is a mistake that many parents make because if the myopia progress very fast, delaying by 2 years would mean the myopia would increase by 200
Anyway, we are glad that he took our advice and bring his son to see an eye doctor for atropine to more aggressively manage his son’s myopia. Because many parents actually ignore our advice. So please be grateful for this . An we wish the best in his son’s ( a very nice kid and easy to work with ) myopia journey.