Hi there
I wanted to have laser eye surgery for ages, so when the opportunity came that I had enough money and time I decided to book a consultation. I had it on Friday, 19th February in Manchester and was pretty excited. I possibly naively believed that because Optical Express is a big name I could trust that they would have my best interest at heart.
The consultation went fine and all the staff were really nice. I got lots of tests done and as I was speaking to the clinician I said that I've been having issues with contact lenses for the past 2 years and she said that it was dry eye, but didn't take this any further. Earlier she mentioned that one of the common side effects to LASEK/LASIK is a dry eye that can last up to 6 months (as it did for her). She went through some common side effects even sayng that this surgery is against nature, but no alarm bells have been ringing in my head at that point. The price was a bit steep, so I said I'll think about it. The customer advisor said he'll give me a call the next day. He did and I decided to go ahead when he said that with iDesign you get 20/20 vision or your money back, so I thought "
well, they must be pretty sure about their abilities to offer that!", but I wanted to make sure I was in good hands so I asked how many surgeries has the surgeon performed. Turns out my surgeon was supposed to be Dr Muhammad Kazmi who performed over 47000 surgeries and that they will send me his profile. I paid my deposit thinking that anyone with that amount of completed surgeries must be a good surgeon. They told me I'll have another consultation with a different clinician within a couple of days.
When I had the time to actually sit down and look at Dr Kazmi's profile, I googled his name and the second google result was ''Optical Express Ruined My Life['' website. So I got a bit worried seeing how his OE profile said he had 100% patient satisfaction, yet I found quite a number of dissatisfied patients, including one big case on YouTube. And I started researching this more and more and realised that if you have dry eyes you are not a good candidate for laser surgery! I came across so many horrible stories on this website and on YouTube that I decided not to take this risk, especially that I didn't trust OE statistics anymore, and I was confused as to why the clinician at my initial consultation didn't bring the issue of dry eyes up in more detail. I wanted to discuss this with the other clinician that was supposed to call me, but as I am based in Manchester when a call came from Belfast I didn't pick up because I was expecting a call from Manchester. Coincidentally I was expecting a call from someone in NI and figured they just called at a wrong time. I was expecting to speak with Dr Kazmi, so for OE to call me from Belfast seemed awfully bizarre. I wanted to discuss the dry eye issue with him because I was so anxious the night before that I couldn't sleep, but they didn't try calling me again and I couldn't reschedule it for the same day, so I told them I would like to cancel the whole treatment because I have dry eyes. The lady on the phone told me that she has sent my request to the retention team and that they will contact me.
So far, I heard nothing back. They were really good at getting in touch when I was booking the consultation, but not now. After reading so many success stories about people getting their deposit back, could you offer me some advice on how to proceed with this now?
Thank you
Gosia
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