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Review content:
I agree with the comment by J.C. about Craig, he was great. Unfortunately, this is the only statement I agree with J.C. about. I am 28 yrs old and have worn glasses/contacts for 15 yrs. Although my eyesight has progressively worsened over the years, I have no overt abnormalities and my prescription is high, but normal (around -6.0). My negative experience at this store involves mainly the head optometrist, Dr. Joseph Bistricer. I had a 4pm appointment for a typical eye exam. The Dr. didn't arrive at the store until 5pm. As I would find out, this was typical behavior for most of the doctors here, as they literally run 20 blocks between this store and the other on Lexington Ave. and give priority to walk-ins over appointments. Even though he was late, I felt he was friendly and personable. He examined my eyes briefly (~10min) and increased my prescription. I paid in full ($470 including insurance coverage) for the exam, contacts, and glasses. I went back 2 wks later for my follow-up exam when the Dr. realized he misdiagnosed my right eye and changed my prescription. My contacts and glasses lenses were replaced. I see perfectly using the contacts, but the glasses were never right. For some reason, the Dr. was unable to translate the contact prescrip. into the glasses. Over 15 years, I have never had this happen. I have returned to this store for a total of 10 times over 3 months. This is not an exaggeration. In his absence, I saw two other doctors on his staff, which only added to the confusion. I was misdiagnosed with an astigmatism, which was later recanted. All throughout, it was evident that none of the doctors actually communicated with each other about my ordeal. Every time I went in, it was like re-inventing the wheel and starting all over again. The final 2 times I saw Dr. Bistricer, he was visibly agitated at my presence and was impatient with me. He treated me as if I were wasting his time, and this is probably what bothered me the most about the entire ordeal. I am a paying customer and patient. I paid for his services, not the other way around. He was wasting my time and then treating me poorly on top of it. Is it wrong of me to expect him, a licensed medical doctor, to be concerned about my eye care and to treat me with respect as his patient? He ignored the diagnosis of another doctor on his staff and decided that mine was a lost cause. Upon our final meeting, he said he'd put my old prescription into my new glasses then walked out of his office where I was sitting. I waited 5 min alone before his staff informed me that he had left the store for the day. I was and remain very dissatisfied with this quality of service. His method of diagnosis was inefficient and incompetent. Instead of exploring all possible reasons for this seemingly trivial problem, he gave up. He never once considered that a property of the lenses themselves might be the problem (the width, the thickness, the material, etc.) and he never questioned why the pupil diameter measurement on my old glasses was different than my new glasses. Surely this can effect how I see out of the lenses. After all, I see out of my contacts just fine. In addition to my unfortunate experience, I witnessed on 3 occasions patrons complaining to the staff that the doctors were late for their appointment; twice customers actually walked out. I felt sorry for the staff, they had to deal with a lot of angry customers through no fault of their own and they did so while remaining friendly. I just picked up my glasses yesterday for the last time and they are still wrong. Despite what he said, the lenses in these glasses are absolutely not the same as my previous ones. However, I will not be returning to Dr. Bistricer or to Sterling Optical ever while I live in NYC. I'd rather pay more money to see a different doctor than waste more of my time only to be treated poorly and then have no guarantee that I won't end up exactly where I am now... unsatisfied.
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