Screwed By Oakley: Chapter 3

If you want to get caught up on the Oakley screwing I have been receiving for more than 4 months you can read this.  We left last our hero (me) at the counter of the post office trying in vain to get a overly friendly (said with sarcasm) postal employee to stamp some piece of paper so I can send back the Whiskers…..for the second time. 

 So much….actually I take that back….nothing has happened since you heard me complain about Oakley and their non existent customer service.  After I got the frames and lenses back and mind you the lenses and the frames came separately.  After numerous phone calls and hours upon hours of waiting on hold I finally was approved to send them back once again to Oakley.  The excuse for the lenses not fitting in the frame….that year or some year I cant remember what they said the Whiskers changed frames or something to that effect apparently I was sent the wrong style. 

I will break from regular complaining to bring up point one:  Attention to Detail, Oakley has none for if they did they would have recognized that they were sending the wrong frame for the lenses the first time.

So I am told that I will be emailed a shipping label and I just need to send them back and bing bang boom they will send me out the new frames the ones that will supposedly fit the lenses I have.  About 48 hours later I get the label this is on August 20 only this time it is not a UPS label it’s a US Postal service label.  What’s worse is I have to now drive to the USPS and follow these directions:

PLEASE HAVE MRL SCANNED, PROOF OF EMPLOYEE INITIALS AND ROUND DATE STAMP BY THE POST OFFICE.  WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOST OR STOLEN PACKAGES IF THE ABOVE ITEMS WERE NOT TAKEN CARE OF AT THE POST OFFICE.  ALSO, HOLD ON TO ALL OF THE PAPERWORK, AS WELL AS THIS EMAIL UNTIL YOU RECEIVE YOUR PRODUCT BACK.

-OAKLEY CUSTOMER SERVICE

I wonder when the last time someone in Oakley Customer Dis-Service has had to deal with a postal employee.  So I follow the direction which takes, including drive time, exactly 1.2 hours.  How do I know it took that long….why I am keeping a running record of exactly how much time Oakley is wasting out of my life?  Off they go on August 21, I receive a phone call the following day from Oakley which I allow to go to voice mail telling me that once they get the glasses they “will overnight them back to me.”  On September 17 I call Oakley and am going to bother them once again to find out where my glasses are…..because you know it’s been like almost 4 weeks.  I am on hold for 54 minutes waiting to talk to someone.  I finally get to a human and he tells me the glasses have not made it to them yet but will in a few more days.  HUH?  Oakley has seen fit to have me mail my glasses in using the worlds slowest method that they admit usually takes 6 weeks for them to receive the item when mailed this way. 

I will break from regular complaining to bring up point two:  Does it make sense to anyone that you would choose to have an already unhappy consumer use the slowest method possible to mail back a product that the company (Oakley) has failed to fix?  Does not make sense to me either and apparently does not make sense to the Customer Dis-Service Manger type person either because he admits it was probably not the proper way to handle such a thing.

Now after being told this I am literally dumbfounded and nearly speechless.  Instead of escalating the customer service model to match the inept customer service department….in other words my butt should have been getting kissed harder as they screwed up more….they actually attempt to screw me harder?  Curious management philosophy at Oakley, don’t you think?

Now I am talking with apparently someone who has some kind of authority according to the first customer service rep.  Only this guy has almost a screw you attitude and actually uses statements like “These are the cards we have been dealt”, “There is nothing I can do about it right now” among other statements.  It actually would have been less offensive if he would have just said “Screw you, your SOL” Total on the phone time is exactly 1 hour and 22 minutes.  Incidentally, average on hold time through this whole ordeal is 51 minutes if we go all the way back to the first call I ever placed to Oakley.

I leave for Colorado on Friday morning and sometime over the weekend the glasses arrive at my house.  I open them up on Monday morning to find….wait for it…..frames and lenses in a separate padded envelope.  I try to pop the lenses in the frames and guess what?  THEY DON’T FIT, I drive to the optometrist where I purchased them….AGAIN and they can’t make them work either.  Seriously I am furious.  Please keep in mind that I have already paid 49$ for the warranty repair and have spent hours on the phone, hours driving back and forth.  Through this whole nauseating process there is no talk of refunding my money, no talk of anything they are going to do to keep me as a customer. 

So I fashion this letter and email it to the guy with the “screw you” attitude:

Dear XXXXXXXXX,

Apparently my Oakley Whiskers came via UPS while I was out of town this weekend so I only opened them this morning.  Unfortunately again I found that I have been duped by your company as the glasses once again arrived with the lenses taken out and in a separate padded envelope.  Again, like the last time they were shipped and again like the last time I drove out of my way to take them to the store where I purchased them to have the lenses put back in the frames….surprise surprise they don’t fit.

This whole long disgusting process would have been made infinitely easier if Oakley had some or any for that matter had even the slightest hint of a skill called “attention to detail”.  When I sent them the first time for warranty repair some one….anyone could have attempted to put the lenses back in the frame.  They would have realized a few months ago that the lenses did not fit nor were they ever going to fit either style of Whisker frame.  Why the lenses fit in the original frame that broke is beyond me? 

It is clear that Oakley does not value its customers, and as I have stated before I have been a loyal customer of Oakley for over 15 years.  Every purchase I have made both for eyeglasses and sunglasses have exclusively been the Oakley brand.  Not to mention the near wardrobe full of Oakley Mountain Biking clothing.   I don’t know if I am fortunate or just plain lucky that I have not had to use your customer service before now because if I had I would have stopped purchasing your products years ago solely based on your company’s customer service practices alone.  I am appalled at your inaction and your complete unwillingness to make this situation right.  I do apologize that the reason the glasses were damaged was me being struck by a car while cycling, clearly I should have known better. 

It is obvious that the broken glasses are now my problem and have been the entire time since your company never really intended on repairing them, if you had intended on repairing them better attention would have been paid to the fit of the lenses in the frames.  Better attention would have been paid on the phone all of the times I have called and quite frankly your attitude on the phone would have been a lot better instead of the seemingly “screw you” attitude you personally showed me on the phone when we spoke last week.

Your customer service representatives clearly need some remedial training on how to handle customers and just what products Oakley is willing to repair.  I was told far after the start of this nearly 3 month process that you don’t do warranty work on prescription glasses which is not what I was told when I initially called your company.  I was told by a customer service rep that it’s no problem “Oakley stands behind their product”….not so much. I was also told by your vendor where I bought the glasses they don’t do warranty repair on Oakley’s.  It stands to reason that if Oakley will not do repairs, and the Optometrist will not do repairs that in fact your out of luck when your Oakley’s break.  Its also stands to reason that when you purchase prescription Oakley’s which are far more expensive than off the shelf Oakley’s your are gambling with your money should you ever have the misfortune of your glasses breaking. 

I refuse to gamble with my money which is a nice way of me saying I will never purchase another Oakley brand product again.  I am also going to contest the charge I was forced to pay by your company through my Credit Union because in essence you never provided me the service I was charged for.  I would have called you on the phone and told you this personally however your company has wasted enough of my time on hold where the average hold time has been 51 minutes, I kept a running log on my hold times.  Finally I will be featuring this story on my Cycling Blog.   Hopefully if just a small percentage of the readers can avoid being screwed over like I have by Oakley then I have succeeded.  I will be sure to forward you the link when I get done writing it so you can fully enjoy and perhaps use it as a training tool for your inept customer service reps.

Thank you for wasting my time and my money, for the hours I have spent on hold, for the wasted numerous trips to the Optometrist, and for the constant frustration I have felt since this has started.

Gene Butcher

To which I get this response:  Please take note of the immediate grammatical error it does not say “Hello” it says “Hell” interesting Freudian slip. 

Hell Mr. Butcher,

I apologize for the consecutive failings that we have offered you in our attempts to remedy this situation.  I am not going to throw any excuses your way or try to explain what happened because you are right.  This is completely ridiculous and we have failed you.  I wanted to extend my complete and sincere apology for how this has been handled and believe me I would like to assist you.  As you may imagine I don’t like receiving these kinds of correspondence from our customers as that is not my goal and purpose here.  Regrettably I got your situation on the back end and there was not a lot I could do at the time based on the chain of events that had led up to our conversation.  If you would like to lodge a formal complaint about myself or this situation please email us at customercare@oakley.com.  Please let me know if I can be of any assistance to you or if you would like to reopen any talks regarding this situation.  Thank you for your time. 

To Which I respond:

If it weren’t for the fact I have wasted so many hours trying to talk to your company about this problem on top of the wasted time spent on hold, the wasted gas and time driving to an optometrist trying to fix your company’s mistakes I might actually consider in your words “reopen any talks”

I am a firefighter with almost no health benefits whatsoever, so I spent a lot of money on those glasses out of my own pocket and to be treated like this is sickening.  I have sent a letter to the email address you provided but as with my experience with Oakley I suspect nothing will happen.

Talk is cheap.

Gene Butcher

I receive this response later in the evening:

I understand what you are saying.  If you don’t hear anything back from that email address feel free to contact me again if you need anything.  Honestly I really understand where you are coming from on this and I’m really sorry.  You have my email is I can be of any further service or if you have any questions or concerns.  Thanks for your time today and again I’m sorry that we have wasted so much of it over the recent weeks.  Have a good rest of the evening.

I did in fact send a complaint to the Email address he provided me with and here is a big surprise….no response.  Also notice there is nothing said about any form of refund for the 49$ I spent initially.  Now I am for sure going to contest the charge and I am for sure no longer an Oakley consumer.