Deposit Refunds

thank you for your support and advice Sasha!- I got a phone call to confirm my refund immediately - and an email confirming the details.
thank you very much

I had an appointment 30/01/2021 at the Birmingham Optical Express branch in Corporation Street.

I had my consultation with an optometrist and felt I must book on the spot. The sales person quoted me £4590 with a £500 deposit to pay upfront to secure my surgery date. I hadn’t met the surgeon and don’t know his name.

My prescription is pretty complicated with astigmatism and short-sightedness in both eyes, that are also different to one another.

I was recommended Lasek iDesign and the reasons were explained (thinning of the cornea etc) i was spoken to using stats and percentages, and was told that my prescription is on the brink - if it was slightly worse they wouldn't be able to offer me this procedure.

...as you do - I immediately booked being concerned that I if my eyesight weakens there's no hope for treatment.

After doing some online research i decided to cancel, On the 2/02/2021 i tried calling the customer services telephone number but due to the hold time i decided to open up a 'chat with an agent' at the same time to cancel my surgery and a refund. The chap i spoke to over text sent an email to the retentions team. By now my customer service representative answered the call - again i explained to her i no longer want to go ahead - she stated the procedure to cancel has already been executed by another colleague over chat.
She said i’d hear something back within 24-48 hours.

72 hours later.. i've still not heard anything - so i make another phone call - the lady said she can see a ‘non-procedure form’ has been issued and a refund will take 28 days but she cant confirm this just yet as something needs to be actioned. I explained my frustrations as i haven't even received an email to confirm my cancellation.

i just dont know what to do... help!
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admin: Pls send your phone number and I will call you sasha@opticalexpressruinedmylife.co.uk

Finally got my £500 deposit back. It took many emails and time,but they paid up in the end.
So much hard work by Sasha, I cant thank you enough,I wouldn't have got it back if it wasn't for all your help. I will never want any type of procedure on my eyes after reading many stories on the forum. Wished I seen your site before I ever stepped into Optical Express. I was lucky it was only my deposit I needed help with.

Thank you again Sasha for helping me and i hope all your work pays off to stop them deceiving people that lens replacement is safe.

Cheers

admin: Within hours of posting here Mrs Nelson was contacted by OE and her £600 refunded
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Good afternoon,

I emailed the Cheltenham store today to cancel my procedure.

I paid a £600 deposit yesterday and cancelled today quoting my cancellation policy which states full refund with 3 days notice from booking.

I got lots of mixed messages about cancelling from them but finally got a reply after chasing from the store saying that my correspondence has been passed to the retentions department. I have a concern that they will try to delay just so they can try to keep some of my deposit. Any help or advice appreciated as I do not want to lose my money.
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admin: Pls send your phone number and I will call you sasha@opticalexpressruinedmylife.co.uk

Hi ok so I wrote earlier that my husband and I had paid £1000 in cash at the Bradford Optical Express store.
We cancelled within the 3 day refund policy but they then said it would be 28 working days to refund even though we paid CASH!
They fobbed us off until I contacted Sasha and followed her advice to the letter.
Lo and behold the emails started to come with a sudden interest in my complaint when I told them my husband and I would go and sit in the store if we didn't have our money back by Friday (today).
Cheques for the full deposit was delivered via courier yesterday and deposited into my account this morning.
Sasha knows what she is doing and I am so glad I found this site because she had my corner - Sasha you are the man!!! ?
I got a follow up call from a person from Optical Express today and he was a decent chap but I did tell him that unfortunately out of all the experience we have had with Optical Express the time he took out to make this phone call was the best bit of the whole process. Thanks for OERML and Sasha - you are a very important lady indeed, you are so needed by people just like me who have no experience of dealing with big companies who are quick to take our money but have no interest in customer service. No Trust Left.
For you Sasha ?

Got my money back today, thank you for your advice.
Jose

I paid deposit on 23rd and cancelled on the 31st Dec. I'm still awaiting my refund (£500)..is there anything you can assist me with??

Thanks
Mark Connah
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admin: Pls send your phone number and I will call you sasha@opticalexpressruinedmylife.co.uk

As of today I've been waiting 27 workiing days for my £1500 deposit for lasik to be refunded from the Milton Keynes store. If I go to the small claims court which one do I use because the head office is in Scotland but I live in England?

Cheers
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admin: Pls send your phone number and I will call you
sasha@opticalexpressruinedmylife.co.uk

Hello All
My husband and I are in our early fifties and both wear glasses for reading, mobile, etc but have almost perfect distance vision.
We didn't know much about lens replacement surgery but our son thought it would be a fantastic gift for us so he made an appointment for us on 7th January 2021 at the Bradford Optical Express store in Manor Row and said he would pay for it.
We went and an optometrist went through the details of the procedure and the side affects that could potentially come about after surgery.
We had the tests done and at each point we were asked to digitally sign on a black iPad type device. We’d had eye drops and didn’t see what we were signing but understood that we were agreeing that she had told us everything.
Both my husband and I have almost perfect 20/20 distance vision and have nice clear vision even at night and just need glasses for close up.
One of the questions asked was if we suffer from any anxiety or depression, which I thought was odd but said we don’t.
The optometrist said that the surgery would definitely fix our near vision but that my husband had dry eyes and they could become worse, and common side effects are that our distance vision might be affected with glaring lights, halos, starbursts, dim lighting, etc but this only lasts for maybe 3 or 4 months.
She said it’s more of a mind thing and you have to rationalise in your brain not to panic and to say to yourself that you have had surgery and that it will get better, and then your brain adjusts and it falls into place.
So we signed all the paperwork and each paid £500 deposit with a date for surgery at the end of Jan 2021. We paid cash and asked for hard copy receipts with a breakdown of the deposit and the outstanding sum to be paid 7 days prior to the surgery date. All well and good.
The same day I get texts that a leading clinician will ring and go through it all with me to check that we have both read the terms and conditions. So I did, but reading the side effects page made me very anxious realising that our vision is not so bad and it didn’t make sense to pay a lot of money to destroy and remove our perfectly good natural biological lens to replace with plastic lenses and risk the potential side effects that could happen. I don’t understand why these people push customers who have healthy eyes to do this.
I watched the surgery online and then I came across so many bad reviews, not only with the surgery but most with Optical Express!! This is when I realised why we were asked about anxiety and depression because many people must suffer this if the procedure is not what they were told they could expect. I know that not only would be in a state of breakdown but I would more than likely put my whole family through hell too (knowing the person I am) wanting it to go back to how it all was before surgery. I super panicked and thought maybe to have surgery in 10 to 20 yrs if cataracts occurred, but not now.
I called my husband and I explained my thoughts and that I wasn’t going to go ahead and his choice was his. We watched the surgery together later and looked at the reviews on Optical Express some really good and some not so good, some super scary actually. My husband decided to cancel because of the bad reviews for Optical Express alone!
So we went to the Bradford store on Saturday 9th Jan and talked to the same optometrist and told her about the really negative reviews we'd found, but she dismissed our concerns and said no-one ever prints their good stories as they are happy, but I said that there were good and bad stories and that we needed more time to look into it and research it.
We didn't even know the name of the surgeon we were supposed to be having but when she realised we were going to cancel the store manager (Faiza) offered to tell us but we declined.
We cancelled and ONLY THEN were told it will take 28 working days to refund our money and that head office would deal with it. I asked to be copied into the email the manager said she was going to fire off to head office about cancellation but she told me she would do it in front of me and someone would either call or email for my details as we paid cash.
Still waiting as no-one has been in touch and I have phoned at least 3 times every day but no one picks up.
Hmm what a mess and a scary thought if we had gone ahead.
Any advice would be helpful how I should go ahead to recover our deposit. Maybe going to the media? Or should we just go to the branch and refuse to leave until they give our cash back?
Thank you.
Mrs Hussain and Mr Rahman.
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admin: You need to make a complaint to the GOC as they had no right to sell you lens exchange without providing the name of the intended surgeon!
Pls send your phone number and I will call you
sasha@opticalexpressruinedmylife.co.uk

Hi Sasha,
Just checked my account and the refund went in over the weekend. Thanks again for all your help.
Sean ?