Letters : July 28

Chasing orders

At this time of the year all we seem to be doing is chasing our suppliers for jobs.

We put delivery dates on them but this does not seem to make any difference. This is not restricted to any individual company but all of them. You get to the day before you require the job and what are you told. ‘We’ve had a rejection.’ Who has to face the patient? All the suppliers say is that there has been a rejection and the lenses will be another X days.

This is no good to the optician or to the patient. It puts us in an embarrassing situation with the patients and we have to come up with ideas to resolve the situation. The worst case recently was a pair of sunglasses ordered from supplier A. After checking that it could be done we sent it off, a week later we were told that it could not be done in the material that we ordered, but they could make it in another material. A week later we were then told that they could not do it so they returned the job to us. This was then sent to supplier B who said that they could do it but  failed to supply on time.

In an effort to make sure the patient had a pair of sunglasses for their holiday I took a simple plastic frame that the patient liked and took it to a lab 20 miles away to be glazed. I told them I would collect them the following morning. When I went to collect them they had been sent OCS the day before.

Our delivery does not come until after the patient was due to leave. I then had to wait for the lab to make a new pair and meet the patient at the station so that they had a pair of sunglasses for their holiday.

How true is the saying. ‘If it was not for the last minute nothing would ever get done.

Peter Sanders
Watford