Complaint Review: 39DollarGlasses

Last November 2015 I placed an order with 39DollarGlasses.com for my Rx transition frames and lenses. The company took literally weeks to process my order. When it was finally shipped, I noticed that one of the embellishments on my frames was about to fall off. I notified the company but they wanted me to pay for express shipping back to them so they could examine the frames. This was in order to determine whether I had damaged them or they actually arrived that way. Right from the beginning this company was unwilling to stand behind their product. I contacted them by phone less than 15 minutes after the package was delivered to notify them of this. My concerns were not addresses.

Eventually the embellishment did fall off and I had to glue it back on. It was at this time, I noticed that it had never been attached properly in the first place, pins holding it to the frame were bent and the guide holes in the frame were uneven.

Fast forward 4 months. I noticed my lenses were beginning to scratch horribly and prematurely even though I had followed the care instructions exactly as written and only used the provided cleaning cloth to clean these glasses. I have worn glasses for 20+ years. I know how to properly take care of them and I have never had a pair that began to scratch as horribly as these did so soon.

Again, I contacted the company to let them know that my new glasses were not meeting my expectations and that I would like them replaced under the warranty. I explained that I believed I was well within reason with my request considering I spent over $100 on the purchase of their product under the representation that they stood behind their product and were a reputable company.

The response to me from the company at this time was that I did not purchase scratch coating and therefore they couldn't do anything about my issue because my glasses were now outside of the 10 day warranty period--that's right, only a 10 day warranty!  When I purchased them, there was a one year warranty offered and I had the documentation on that.

Within the next two months I noticed considerable deterioration of my frames. I purchased a pair of black plastic frames with two stainless steel embellishments on the top corners. The black was noticeably coming off of the frames leaving a cheap nasty looking white-ish filmy looking surface. Very unattractive and cheap looking. I'm not kidding, these glasses looked like something from the dollar store by this point! Aside from this issue, the lenses had further scratched and in only six months time! My lenses were now showing wear that was interfering with the use of the glasses. Once again I attempted to make contact with the company to let them know I was dissatisfied and to attempt to get a replacement of the lenses minimally. I was first ignored and then told that if I wanted a better quality product that I should have spent more money yet when I purchased the product, it was represented at equal or better quality than competitors and local eye glasses shops.

I then voiced my concerns on their Facebook page in hope that if I took my concerns public, they would be addressed. I was contacted first by their social media team. This is where it gets interesting--the social media team apparently accessed my file and came back with a detailed response saying that I had not purchased scratch coating (even though I have the receipt showing I did!) and because of this, it was not reasonably acceptable for me to even expect the product to last beyond the 10 day warranty period. When I notified them that I had made other prior contact with them about the issue over the past months, they then came back with a contradictory response saying that I did not pay for scratch coating because it was included.  This was just too much.

I ended up requesting contact from a manager at their company whereupon a Kat Kennedy sent me several lengthy emails trying to explain why they would not replace the faulty cheap lenses in my glasses. They did finally agree that they could replace the frames under the one year warranty though. I did not accept this because without lens replacement, the product is still not useable by any reasonable means.

Kat Kennedy argues repeatedly that the scratches are through no fault of theirs or their product she represents as "top quality" but are in fact through my own negligence. She repeated the care instructions to me and claims that I must not have followed them. This set of care instructions arrived on a business card that was tucked in a plastic holder with one cleaning cloth. They simply said "remove visible grit from surface by lightly brushing with the edge of the cloth prior to cleaning. Carefully wipe the lens in a circular motion. Machine or hand wash in warm water with mild detergent. Never use alcohol or acetone to clean your glasses"

So really, I am to carefully wipe the lenses in a circular motion--well when I pointed out to Ms. Kennedy that my scratches were ALL in a circular direction and that I had followed the directions exactly and only used their cloth and damage was visible to prove this and that their product was indeed faulty and cheap, she proceeded to tell me in some detail that the scratch coating my lenses featured was a standard in the industry.

She then told me that over time this coating scratches and breaks down and will continue to break down. Ok, right there you have it--the coating is not good quality and yet they refuse to replace the product, take my money and act like nothing's wrong! She also went on to tell me about how their glare coating is only designed to be effective during nighttime driving and serves no purpose for sun reflections. I didn't pay for AR coating but it appears that would have just been another useless product that they added on of low non functional qualitya s well.

So, here I am--I spent money on glasses that were represented as a "quality product" that turned out to be very low quality even under careful care sold by a fly-by-night company looking to cheat people out of their hard earned money by misrepresenting the products, warranty, quality and then completely contradicting themselves just to worm out of it when they have been backed into a corner by someone who is also knowledgeable of what they are doing. For these reasons, I would not recommend doing business with this company. Now I am out of more than $100 and stuck with cheap scratched glasses that are no good unable to afford replacements at this time.