An ABC affiliate in Fort Worth did what can only be considered a hit piece last week in which they had bifocal prescriptions filled at WalMart, Costco, Target, and LensCrafters then had three optometrists inspect the resulting lenses to determine if they met their standards. The WalMart and Costco lenses were within tolerances although the ODs failed Walmart because they used a material other than that written on the Rx. LensCrafters and Target (both owned by Luxottica) failed because their lenses were either out of tolerance or had crooked bifocal segments. The conclusion (as implied by the ABC news piece): LensCrafters opticians suck. They even quote one OD as saying, “On Friday you can be flipping burgers and on Monday you can be fitting people for glasses.” While the article may appear beneficial to independent opticals, I didn’t even consider writing about it last week since I see it as just another example of disgustingly sloppy journalism. A ‘test’ consisting of seven pairs of glasses, in one city, across four different stores can hardly be considered scientific or statistically significant; certainly not enough to crucify a chain with almost 900 stores across the U.S.
So, why am I writing about it now?
Apparently, the folks at ABC headquarters liked the piece so much; they decided to run it nationally on Good Morning America.
What do you think?