Wrong glasses prescription

MummyMario

Hi, need a bit of advice about specsavers inputting my prescription wrong. 

After my last eye test with them I was overwhelmed by the choice of glasses so asked to take my prescription home. After a while I found some online I liked from a different retailer and sent them a picture of my prescription to make them up. 

In the meantime I returned to specsavers for my free contact lense trail and discovered I couldnt see a thing. We think the left eye axis is meant to be 80 (like my previous prescription) but had been input as 8.0. 

I was apologised to and assured they would change it and re order the contacts but I left pretty quickly wanting to contact the place where I’d order online to let them know the prescription was wrong. 

I spoke to the online retailer and they said they’d already been made up and they don’t refund on lenses (£98!) but could refund the frames. They then rang back and said specsavers should be liable as it’s them who gave me the wrong prescription and have sent me the invoice to show specsavers. 

Ive logged a complaint with specsavers online chat who will raise it with the store but I’m wanting to know if specsavers are liable? If they refuse compensation what should I do? I haven’t even paid for the glasses yet, I got them on KLARNA, the lenses are meant to be amazing for driving which is what I need but extremely expensive. The online glasses company have put my order in hold for now. Any advice? Thanks if you got this far. 

Mark_d

Specsavers are certainly responsible however I suspect their smallprint will say that they're not liable for consequently expenses in situations such as yours.  Having said that, due to the amount involved they may well be willing to make a goodwill gesture.  If you're asking for a £100 Specsavers voucher then I think that would be reasonable.
I always check the prescription my optician issues to me, and I would certainly notice any significant changes.  Should you have noticed that axis had gone down to 8.0 from 80?

DullGreyGuy

Mark_d said:

I always check the prescription my optician issues to me, and I would certainly notice any significant changes.  Should you have noticed that axis had gone down to 8.0 from 80?

The OP has a stigmatism and so their eye is slightly more rugby ball than football shaped. The Cylinder value will state how far off from a perfect sphere they are and the Axis will be a value from 0-180 degrees to say in which direction they are imperfect.

As far as I know axis has to be a whole number so the ".0" would be irrelevant and so an immediate flag something was wrong. As a contact lens wearer they only come in steps of 10 degrees so a prescription of 8 degrees wouldn't be possible. 

Axis certainly can change over time but going from 80 to 8 would be a sizeable shift and would have been noticeable by the fact old lenses wouldn't have worked any longer. It's not really "up" or "down", it's simply different. 

The CRA allows for damages to be claimed however if buying a set of lenses elsewhere will be considered to distant is another matter. Would imagine they'll offer a pair of equivalent lenses as a guesture of goodwill given a £98 pair of lenses will cost them less than £98 to make.