I’m writing this on the plane to Munich for the Opti tradeshow, climbing at about 16,000ft, with manufacturing quality on my mind. Not that I’m worried that the side door of my emergency exit seat will blow out like one did recently on the Boeing 737 Max in the US.
This morning, before my flight, I had to go to my factory to resolve a quality control issue for one of my very best accounts in the world; a very nice German optician who is fuming and I don’t want to see him at Opti without taking care of his complaint myself.
I am a retailer, wholesaler and a manufacturer, so I get to see all sides of a story. Frames lovingly dispensed, which then spontaneously combust in their spectacle cases for no known reason have been something of a fascination to me over the years.
My German customer had a bespoke frame he sent in for repair this week. The rim had split. We had told him that we would be charging for a new front to be made, hence the outrage. Normally this sort of thing wouldn’t reach me, but it was the third frame in two months.
Of the other two frames, one was a titanium model that had snapped at the bridge and the other an acetate where the hinge had broken. Both these frames were remade for free. However, on the third one, someone in my team put their proverbial foot down. Hence the outrage reaching all the way to me.
But why would our customers think that this kind of breakage would be quality-related in the first place? How do frames spontaneously combust? First of all, and perhaps most importantly, the end user often doesn’t realise they actually broke the frame themselves. The actual event where the frame was broken could have happened days or weeks before.
From the customer’s perspective, it may as well have just fallen apart in their hands. There are customers who know they broke it and try it on. Some of them kind of know they probably broke it but in a feral part of their brain they disassociate the event, and they look to the optician for liability.
But I find most customers really do not know that the breakage is their fault. From their perspective, they woke up in the morning and the glasses were in bits. I’ve even seen this myself. At the end of a long day, the frame is skin temperature to the core.
You remove them, perhaps after a final stretch on one side reading in bed, and put your whole glasses on the night table. As they cool, that little crack finally splits, hence: ‘I just woke up and they were broken.’
Acetate split rims can take time to fully give up and come apart after someone has fatally sat on them, slept in, or stretched the frame. So, the breakage often happens days or weeks before it is noticed. When you get a titanium frame split in two, this is usually a customer trying their luck. It’s easy to spot a real fault.
If a frame breaks at a welding point, you can see if it’s a clean break or not. If it’s clean, meaning two perfect surfaces, it’s a dry solder. These are quite rare these days with laser welding but it still happens. If the break is all jagged, then the customer definitely crunched it and knows about it.
So, the customer often comes to the optician, whipped into an outrage that the expensive item the practice sold them is poor quality. You can’t call them a barefaced liar and perhaps even you might be thinking they are correct. Glasses shouldn’t fall apart after all.
So, you contact the brand. I checked all three of this optician’s returns personally this morning. All three were pressure fractures. There was another that had been chewed by a dog but at least he wasn’t complaining about that one.
I’ve told my staff in my retail stores to handle angry customers in the following manner. ‘Ah yes, this is an extruded acetate and so there aren’t any weak points in the material. You probably don’t remember doing it, but you might have leant on or sat on the frame in the recent past.
'Acetate material can take a lot of pressure and isn’t a brittle plastic. A pressure split can cling on for a few months. Maybe your husband/wife/child sat on them. Let me talk to the factory to see what we can do for you.’
After that we offer them a repair and charge them. After all, when I once damaged my suspension on a pothole, Audi didn’t give me a new car. No matter what kind of business you are in, it’s always better to defuse the customer without admitting liability.
Unless, of course, you are looking for an excuse for not screwing in the bolts properly to the window panel on an airplane. In which case, all bets are off.