Critical Consumer Pat Sidley
CONSUMERS needing glasses and looking for cheaper or quicker alternatives to traditional optometrists may have noticed a growth in new and different forms of doing business among some optometrists.
They’ve been at it a while — and hassled by officialdom for doing it. But their type of practice appears to be growing in the face of the more antediluvian approach of their colleagues.
Some of the different ways of buying correcting glasses now include chains of stores which operate under a trade name, like Spectacle Warehouse and Eagle Vision, and which offer a quicker service, with laboratories on site. Some offer a discounted service so that spectacles can be acquired for a lot less than at many other optometrists. Spectacle Warehouse, for example, trades generally in working class areas and sells a much cheaper service to customers than the store’s rivals would have done in the past.
These newer types of operations are complemented by smaller practices which operate under trade names (instead of the name of the optometrists) and which, these days, are offering deals and undercutting each other in a bid for the more competitive business.
Some optometrists have offered deals to medical aids which give members of particular schemes preferential treatment for certain items.
Still other optometrists offer the same familiar service in a small shop with a personalised service and a type of professional, old world courtesy along with the often steeper prices.
It all adds up to a changing scene for changing times. This seems to be an answer to consumer needs in cash- strapped times and consumers may think it’s all approved, official, legal and above-board.
Well, it’s not. And operations such as Spectacle Warehouse regularly feel the brunt of arcane and outdated rules and regulations governing optometry.
One of the rules regularly infringed by Spectacle Warehouse (and others) is that it is technically against the rules to operate under a trade name. Chris Faul of Spectacle Warehouse has faced interdicts in the supreme court and constant complaints laid against him by his own professional association, the South African Optometric Association. The most recent occasion was only months ago and he is in the process of answering the “charges” against him.
His main “crime”, however, was to enter a closed and artificially rigged “professional” market, and offer a fresh, cheaper service to people who needed it. He is not the only optometrist in this position; several others have been prosecuted for the same “crime”.
Executive director of the Optometric Association, LS van Zyl, however, does not quite see it that way and believes that optometry is one of those groups of professionals which are governed by rules, regulations and laws. Those who belong to the group have to abide by its rules — and if a change is sought, this should be done by trying to get the rules changed, rather than by simply breaking them.
The Medical and Dental Council is the body which regulates the behaviour of optometrists and other medical professions. Eventually, it is this statutory body which ensures that Eagle Vision or Spectacle Warehouse’s owners either stay in business serving the public — or have their livelihoods and service ended.
The Council operates, says registrar Nico Prinsloo, on behalf of the public in order to protect public
While there is likely to be some scepticism among the public about this view, the council and the Professional Board for Optometry are in the process of looking at the rules which govern optometry.
Prinsloo says a decision is likely fairly soon. He cannot say what the decision is likely to be, but all indications are that the council and the board will have to recognise that times change.
Hopefully they will also take into account the likely view among consumers: there should be a wide choice of types of suppliers, prices and services to deal with optometric requirements.
Prinsloo said the council had changed the rules around advertising for both doctors and optometrists, with certain provisions relating to optometrists.
Advertisements had to be factually correct and should not mislead patients. (They should also not be derogatory towards other optometrists — a clause clearly designed by optometrists and not by consumers!)
While frame prices could be advertised, lens prices could not. This is, again, a rule which does not take into account consumer needs and which means a consumer hearing about a R50,00 frame would get a dreadful shock at receiving a bill for R600,00 — because the lenses were pricey.
The argument proffered in support of the rule is that there is a great variety of lenses and prices — but surely the accurate advertising rule would ensure that information is correct.
The council is also not happy about advertising discounts. As Prinsloo asks, “discount on what?”. This critical consumer discovered that there may be more to that than consumers imagine. According to one optometry source, some in the profession have taken to inflating certain of their prices in order to make it look as though they are offering discounts.
Meanwhile, the council itself is in the process of change. A Bill before parliament will see to it (when passed) that an interim council is formed to deal with transformation in the following two years.
According to Prinsloo, this transformation will change the council into a body which will more effectively represent “community” needs — and he assumed this too would take account of consumer needs.
He believed also that more “transparency” would be needed by the council to make itself more acceptable to the community.
That is true as far as it goes — but one hopes that whatever the Council transforms into, it will have a range of well-qualified people who understand both the professions and the environment in which they operate, and will also have an acute feel for the public
This may ensure that when groups arise spontaneously with much-needed changes (such as the chains of optometry outfits) there will not be a powerful gang of dinosaurs there to retard the process.
At the same time, an eye will be needed to watch out for consumer interests so that any shady new practices are kept in check.