Diary Wednesday 9th December 2015 – Afternoon / Evening
@arthurchappell (44941)
Preston, England
December 9, 2015 5:31pm CST
After the stress of a sensitive welfare hearing in the morning I retired to the sanctuary and sanity of Manchester Central Library to kill a few hours before my appointment with my opticians’ to collect my new varifocal glasses. I expected this to be straight-forward as I was told they would be ready at 3 PM. I arrived to be greeted with ‘They are not quite ready yet. Can you pop back in half an hour’.
Furious, given the long delays even in my eye tests a week before I browsed round the city centre shops and finally got my glasses 40 minutes later. I purposely went back a little over time just in case they were still behind schedule.
The glasses are fine though walking is a little tricky as I usually walk looking closely at the ground near my feet which is a reading area on the glasses themselves. For reading and computer work they are alright.
I filed a formal complaint against the opticians on their website – they are a branch of a major national chain. I did some online work searching and settled to a night of online writing like this.
Arthur Chappell
4 people like this
5 responses
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
10 Dec 15
@arthurchappell I knew that if I waited long enough I would hear about someone agreeing with me, but I never really believed it until now.
1 person likes this
@arthurchappell (44941)
• Preston, England
10 Dec 15
walking is a bit weird in them which I'm sure I'll get used to but otherwise doing ok - I have spoken with quite a few people who dislike them though so you are far from alone
1 person likes this
@Jessicalynnt (50523)
• Centralia, Missouri
11 Dec 15
gotta wonder what's with all of the delays!
1 person likes this
@arthurchappell (44941)
• Preston, England
11 Dec 15
at least I got compensated for all that in the end
1 person likes this
@Jessicalynnt (50523)
• Centralia, Missouri
12 Dec 15
@arthurchappell pretty much, when money is tight that's worth some inconvenience and loss of time
@GreatMartin (23670)
• Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
9 Dec 15
How long before you hear about your welfare?
If it helps any I went in to be tested for my new glasses which were ordered the next day and I still ahven't gotten them--that was September 27!!
1 person likes this
@arthurchappell (44941)
• Preston, England
9 Dec 15
@GreatMartin I covered that in an earlier post today but to summarize welfare want to see me once a week - subject to arbitrary change instead of fortnightly and gave me a bigger list of agencies and mandatory visit websites to search for work on daily, recording proof of my activity for them - they basically tightened the thumbscrews and it could get worse in weeks to come
@HebrewGreekStudies (1646)
• Canada
10 Dec 15
It's like that when I have to pick up medications for my parents-they tell me they will be ready at a certain time, and I show up then. Then they tell me 20 more mins. So I wait 40. Then they're still not done. After that I'm annoyed and just don't take what they say seriously period. I mean I get it, sometimes there are circumstances, sometimes it's honest mistakes...but sometimes, I kinda think they know very well and are just trying to soften the blow of how long they know it will actually take and wish they would have just saved me the time and been upfront.
1 person likes this
@arthurchappell (44941)
• Preston, England
10 Dec 15
exactly that, and in this case it happened several times over four different visits which was clearly beyond occasional circumstances
@arthurchappell (44941)
• Preston, England
9 Dec 15
It's the fact that they did it more than once over multiple visits - it was incredibly inefficient
1 person likes this
