Playbook, optician
Which broken glasses can be sorted while somebody waits
Most of what arrives at an optician's counter as a repair is a screw, a nose pad or a frame that has gone out of shape, and it is done while the customer stands there. The rest divides into a frame that has to go back to the maker, a lens that cannot be repaired at all, and a frame nobody makes any more.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for warranty and repairs holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A large share of optician repairs are counter work done in minutes with no appointment and often no charge, which is a genuinely useful thing to publish and almost nobody does.
- Adjustment is not repair: a frame that has spread or twisted is reshaped and handed straight back, and customers who do not know this wear badly sitting glasses for years without ever asking.
- A lens cannot be repaired, so a scratched or chipped one is a remake rather than a fix, and it is priced as a lens rather than as a repair, which is a much bigger number than the customer is braced for.
- A frame that has snapped at the bridge or the joint may have to go back to the manufacturer, and if the model is discontinued the honest answer is glazing the lenses into a different frame, which is a purchase rather than a repair.
How it arrives
- can you fix my glasses while i wait
- the arm has snapped off can it be repaired
- how much to replace a nose pad
- i sat on my glasses can you sort them
- can you put new lenses in my old frames
- do you repair glasses you did not sell
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What is done at the counter and what it costs | Screws, nose pads, reshaping, tightening a joint. State whether there is a charge and whether it applies to spectacles bought elsewhere, because both are asked constantly and answered inconsistently. |
|---|---|
| What has to be sent away, and what that involves | Which failures go back to the manufacturer, that the customer is without their glasses meanwhile, and how you let them know. The waiting is the part they have to plan around. |
| Your reglazing policy | Whether you will fit new lenses into a customer's own frame, what you check before agreeing, and what you will not accept. Asked often, answered differently by every member of staff, and worth writing down once. |
| What happens when a frame is discontinued | That a model no longer made cannot always be repaired or matched, and what the options then are. Far better said on a page than said to somebody holding two halves of a frame they were fond of. |
The reply
A lot of repairs are done at the counter in a couple of minutes: a screw, a nose pad, or a frame that has gone out of shape, and our page says whether there is a charge [1]. A frame that has snapped is different, because it may have to go back to the manufacturer and you would be without them meanwhile, and if the model is no longer made we would be looking at glazing your lenses into a new frame instead [2]. Bring them in and somebody will look. I cannot tell what has broken from a description.
It leads with the outcome most people get, a quick fix at the counter, so the message ends in a visit rather than in worry. It names the two harder outcomes honestly, the discontinued frame included, because that disappointment is best delivered in advance. And it declines to diagnose a break it cannot see.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor describes a specific break and wants to know whether it can be fixed, what it will cost, or how long it will take.
I cannot tell from a description whether something can be repaired. Bring them in, or leave me your name, an email and what has happened, and the team will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a repair is possible, or that it is not, from a description or a photograph.
- Never quote a repair price that is not in your own published material.
- Never say a frame is still available, since a model in production this year may not be next.
- Never say lenses can be moved into another frame, because that depends on the shape and on the prescription.
Questions
- Is it worth publishing that counter repairs are free?
- If they are, it is one of the better lines on your site. It brings people through the door for a two minute job, and a fair share of those people are overdue a test and have been meaning to come in.
- Can it tell somebody whether their glasses are still covered?
- No. It cannot see a purchase, a date or a job. It can quote whatever your terms publish about a period, and the practice checks whether a particular pair falls inside it.
- Why keep the reglazing policy separate?
- Because it is a commercial decision with conditions on it rather than a repair. Answered as a repair, the assistant promises something the dispensing optician may well refuse the moment they see the frame.
Keep reading
- Everything for a opticianEye test prices, NHS entitlement, frame ranges and prescription rules are all answerable. Vision symptoms are not.
- Handling warranty and repairs in generalCustomers conflate a manufacturer warranty, an extended plan and their legal rights. Keep the three apart and never close the third.
- Sending back a pair of glasses that was made for one personMade to order lenses sit outside the usual change of mind rules. What a practice offers instead, and the adaptation period.
- Answering where my glasses are with no view of the laboratoryA single vision lens and a complex varifocal come back on different timescales. What to say when nothing can be looked up.
- Splitting an optician bill into the parts somebody else pays forEmployer screen schemes pay for part of a pair, so the paperwork has to split the bill. What an optician can issue.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.