Carlsson Family Eye Center

My son and I went to this office today for our exams, my son is 10 and has never had an eye exam before. The staff and doctor was great and so nice to him and myself for that matter. My son had an eye issue i had no idea about and i am so greatful we did his exam today! We both needed glasses and i knew that eye insurance is just awful but my son’s pair was not too expensive. I loved loved the lady that helped us pick out glasses, she explained everything to us and never did i feel pressured to buy the higher cost lens. They seem to understand that money is an issue for most families these days. The office my cost more then others, but seeing the doctor for his knowledge is worth every penny.
I am actually a returning patient after a few years away and i would never go anywhere else, he knows his stuff and has been the only doctor to get my husband’s prescription right!
He has also changed staff since I was last there and every one was great! This office is wonderful all around and i would highly recommend them!

It has been a year and the office has ALL new staff. Things seem to be running much more smoothly and I am SO much happier with customer service. Both of my children are now seeing Dr Carlsson and they really do love him. He has made some smart decisions changing the staff. I will continue coming back because of the great care and how comfortable everyone makes us feel.

I thought front desk staff was awesome & thought Arlene was so good w/​my 10 yr old daughter. My only complaint was longer wait time then needed. Overall good appointment though– Dr. Was very thorough & will be back!

I recently brought my 10 year old son in to see Dr. Carlsson. My son has had glasses for a couple of years because of an astigmatism and his glasses barely fit anymore (and had teeth marks from the dog).
Dr. Carlsson took his time to make sure my son was comfortable and was not in a rush despite a busy waiting room. He was patient and quickly identified that my son’s prescription had indeed changed. After the exam, we picked out new frames for and waited a week or two for the new glasses to come in.
The first day my son wore his new glasses to school, he came home complaining that the glasses turned dark in the sunlight and looked weird. The transition lenses would have been fine if the frames looked more like sunglass frames, but when the lenses darkened in the sunlight, he looked like he was blind :)
After returning to Dr. Carlsson’s office to explain, they immediately ordered new non-​transition lenses. no questions, no hassles, no charges… now that is what I call service. I expected to at least have to plead my case about not knowing the glasses were ‘transition’ lenses but they took care of everything without a question.
By far the best experience I’ve had at an eye doctor. The personalized service beats the strip mall chains by a mile!

LOVE the doctor – HATE the way the office runs!
(Down below, after I voice my complaints, I talk about how much I love this doctor. Please be sure to read to that part. My complaints about his staff, although highly annoying, are something that the doctor could easily fix with a re-​train session. I suspect the doctor does not yet realize how inadequate his staff’s service can be. If you are in the market for a good doctor, you might want to try him anyway… Maybe he will have seen this post and fixed the situation by then?)
Here are a few examples:
1. Stopped being a patient over a year and a half ago – moved out of state. I even withdrew as a patient before I left. But, despite me telling them I am moving (and deactivating my patient file) and no matter how many times I hit unsubscribe at the bottom of the emails, their automated system won’t stop emailing me. I have even called their office twice… no matter what I do, they keep putting me back on the list.
A couple of times I went off their list for a month or so… then suddenly there it is again– two to four emails per week.. The latest excuse I got was that they just started using a new email system but really? How many new systems could they have possibly gotten? This has been going on for a year and a half now.
This isn’t limited to email. I have moved twice since I have been a member of their practice, but even though I don’t update my mailing address they find me anyway. They keep sending me «time for your eye exam» post cards in the mail. How they keep finding me, I’ll never know. (Could they be a front for the CIA… naw our government is clearly not this efficient at tracking people down!)
2. First time I ordered contacts through their staff, the only option was to have them sent to the office. I got a call in the middle of the afternoon one day saying my contacts had arrived to their office but the box that was ripped open – and did they want me to accept the delivery anyway? I asked if any of the contacts were damaged or missing from the order – they said they had no way of knowing. I asked if they could check – they said no, they couldn’t open the box unless I accepted the order. I asked what happened if I accepted the order, whether they would replace anything that was missing or damaged? They said no they wouldn’t.
Clearly that was pure ignorance talking. They had charged me money, never delivered the product they charged me for – they obviously could not charge me if the order was incorrect. Undoubtedly the doctor would have fixed the problem if I had to take it to him directly… but that was the sort of thing that happened every time I went there.
3 By the following year, they offered to have the contacts delivered directly to your house at no additional charge. YAY! Well… it would have been yay if they had done it… but instead I got a call a couple weeks later saying my order had arrived into the office and I needed to come pick it up (I had to make a 40 minute drive due to their mistake.)
On that same order, I was supposed to get a rebate. First they gave me an expired rebate form. I called back to get a new copy – they forgot to mail it.
4 Later, I was traveling overseas and needed a copy of my prescription – of course they forgot to email it to me. When I called back, they emailed me one that had expired well over a year before. Finally, just before I left, and after several calls – I got the prescription I needed.
5 The other major problem is the upselling. Go in for an exam… and they offer every high-​tech exam option, contacts, glasses, an extra pair of glasses, sunglasses, accessories… and everything else you can think of. I have had less pressure buying a new car. (Seriously. That sounds like I am exaggerating, but sadly I am not.)
Now that I have told you the bad… let me stress that I LOVE this eye doctor. He really seems to care about eye health. He goes out of his way to have the most high-​tech diagnostic equipment available. He is happy to take as long as you need to get a thorough exam, answer any questions you have, etc. He is personable, charming, professional, and I always knew my eyesight was in GREAT hands! Really, really, really LOVED this guy!!! (His office was also clean, in a great location, and it was always easy to get an appointment.)
I just wish that I had received the same level of professionalism from his staff as I did from him.

Summary: Competent AND Honest. What else do you need?
Competence:
I’ve been visiting Carlsson Family Eye Center since they first opened (I think about 8 years ago). Prior to visiting Dr. Carlsson, I never really expected much from an optometrist other than to quickly and perfunctorily go through the motions of the eye exam and then to fulfill my contact lens prescription. Dr. Carlsson clearly takes immense pride in his work and truly focuses (got love the use of that word in this review ;) on each of his patients. He determined that I’d had the wrong prescription for several years and it was causing undue stress on my eyes. He was able to greatly improve my wife’s experience with contacts because she has a terrible astigmatism and had been given a dramatically over-​powered prescription by doctors in the past. I referred by best friend to Dr. Carlsson and the Dr. discovered a previously undiagnosed problem with my friend’s eye that was pretty significant. This condition had been missed by a multitude of previous optometrists.
Honesty:
Both the Dr. and his staff are extremely ethical and trustworthy. I was having some pretty terrible problems with contact lens irritation. Dr. Carlsson recommended that I consider Lasik which I ended up getting. Think about it, once a patient gets Lasik and has perfect vision, how often are they going to go back to the optometrist? Regardless of the fact that Lasik would probably mean I would visit the optometrist much less, Dr. Carlsson didn’t hesitate to encourage this option because IT WAS THE RIGHT THING FOR ME, THE PATIENT! You have to be able to trust your Dr. and you can trust Dr. Carlsson.
One more example: My wife left a box of very expensive contacts on the counter at the Eye Center. We didn’t notice that she didn’t have enough contacts until 6 months later. She called the office to see if they had any way to verify if she hadn’t received enough contacts. They went back through their inventory and were able to determine that, yes, they did have an extra unaccounted for box! It would have been so easy for them to simply say, «sorry, we don’t know anything about that.» Instead they 1) Put in the work to investigate it 2) had good enough records that they were able to verify it 3) actually told her about it and gave her the extra box!
When you have a competent and honest Dr. supported by competent and honest staff, you really can’t go wrong!

Dr. Carlsson is great. He’s really good with the kids. The staff there is really nice too. Definitely recommended if he’s in your area.

Awesome! Wonderful experience with everyone I came in contact with at the office!

Took my 6 year old son here for his first eye exam. Dr. Carlsson was amazing. He was patient, funny and did a very thorough exam. My son felt very comfortable and is excited to wear his new glasses. I like how they go over the cost before hand and give you different options to fit your budget. The office itself is organized, very clean and comfortable.

I hate to rain on the parade here, but my experience with Carlsson Family Eye Center left me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. On the strength of the Unilocal reviews, my partner and I made consecutive appointments for our annual exams. Neither of us has serious eye issues, but we find that our prescriptions now change on pretty much a yearly basis. Dr. Carlsson seems nice enough, but there were a couple of red flags right off the bat.
The first had to do with my contact lenses. Carlsson charges a $ 115 «contact lens fitting fee.» I’ve been wearing contacts for about five years now and have never been charged such a fee. Being new to the area, we thought maybe this was standard procedure in Arizona. Nope. Turns out that when the Carlsson clinic submitted the expense to our insurance (I’m a public employee, so we have EXCELLENT benefits), they rejected it as a «qualified expense.» In other words, it’s not a fee that insurance companies typically pay.
Since we were already in for $ 115, we decided to try and make the best of the situation. Dr. Carlsson recommended bifocals for my wife – strange, since she really only needs glasses to read at night– and we priced replacing lenses for her current frames. This is where we started to get mad. Carlsson Eye Center wanted to charge us in excess of $ 500 – just to replace lenses! This seemed exorbitant to us, so we called our old optometrist in another state. By comparison, they charge $ 50 per lens for bifocals. Needless to say, we opted not to purchase from Carlsson.
What’s more, my wife has MS, but has never had an issue with her vision. That being said, we routinely disclose her illness so that it can go into her records. Dr. Carlsson asked to dilate her eyes to perform a more throrough exam. Not a problem, but he wanted to bill as a «medical» expense. This would have run us another $ 300 or so out of pocket, since Carlsson is not a participating provider on our medical. Of course, the real problem here is that we’ve NEVER paid a «medical» fee to have our eyes dilated. Again, I thought this was a routine service on most eye exams.
That leaves the matter of my contacts. Despite the fact that I’m an experienced contact lens wearer, I had to see Dr. Carlsson four times. He gave me four different sets of contacts, none of which worked for me. The problems ranges from poor depth perception, to discomfort, to imjust plain couldn’t see. On one set, i couldn’t even identify dreeway signs. Prerty vad considering my current lenses get me pretty close to 20/​20, but aren’t great for closeup work. I finally asked my old doctor for my prescription from last year, as at least I can see reasonably well with my old contacts. At that point dr. Carlsson wrote me a script for my old contacts – although he told me that they were only 2 week wear lenses. Subsequent investigation revealed that they are indeed monthly wear lenses. Grrrrrr!
The kicker, though was when I went to purchase my contacts. Having never paid more than about $ 60 for a six month supply, I was absolutely shocked when the office quoted me $ 160 for a six-​month supply. A quick call to my old doctor proved it – they’d send me the same prescription for $ 88, including shipping. The next day, I went into Costco and found it for $ 55. Now, I don’t expect that a small operation would be able to match Costco prices, but more than triple the price is a little outrageous.
To his credit, Dr. Carlsson did give me an extra set of lenses for my trouble. He does seem knowledgeable and caring. But just be prepared to pay quite a lot for his services. To me, it’s not worth triple the price for the same services and products.

I discovered Dr. Carlsson by a google search as the optometrist I went to moved, and the one I tried once after that I wasn’t happy with. Being able to read the reviews from others was helpful in my selection so I want to ‘pay it forward’.
I am very satisfied with Dr. Carlsson and his staff. It was a great experience. He is knowledgeable and everyone explained things very well. Additionally, he noted I had allergies and offered a free sample of some eye drops. They were so much better than over the counter treatment for itchy eyes. I’ve had my glasses for a year now and have been very pleased with the prescription and quality of the glasses. I highly recommend him.

From the staff to Dr. Carlsson, this eye center is a step above the rest! Making appointments is super convenient — it’s online! And their staff calls back within 24 hours to confirm. Perfect! They are patient and kind. You will not feel rushed. Dr. Carlsson answers all of your questions and provides complete information as well as multiple treatment options. You’ll be more than satisfied with your care here. Both of my daughters have been treated by this office and really liked their experience! They aren’t afraid to come back!

From start to finish we had an amazing experience!
Dr. Carlsson and his staff are very friendly and welcoming. I came here because we weren’t positive but we had suspicions that our autistic son might need glasses. I read a great review about Dr. Carlsson on Unilocal.My son struggles with any kind of visit to «Dr. like» offices and here was no exception. He has anxiety with all the machines and it doesn’t matter how kid friendly the offices are or the staff for that matter. Dr. Carlsson offered to come to my home to see my son in a more comforting environment. It was amazing and we are very grateful to Dr. Carlsson. My son does need glasses and because he was willing to think outside the box and outside the office he was able to help us. We so appreciate his care. Thank you Dr. Carlsson. I encourage anyone who has children on the spectrum to consider the office.

I love Dr. Carlsson and his staff! I just got my third pair of glasses from him recently and each and every pair has been perfect. Being a progressive lens wearer they can be tricky to prescribe.
Dr. Carlsson takes his time with patients and very thorough. He is also friendly and highly knowledgeable and professional. We tried several pairs of contact lenses last year before deciding that my eyes were too dry to wear them for long. He even took me outside to test distance! Who does that at a mall store?
As for the staff… they are truly amazing. All are courteous and sweet! When I walk in the door it’s as if they are expecting me and know me by name. I never feel like I am intruding on their day which is what I get from many other retail stores. Keep what you’re doing ladies!
Eyewear selection is GREAT. I have purchased cool designer frames and their prices are in all ranges. I never feel like the staff is trying to up sell me me either. No pressure sales is shopping happiness!
My only suggestion is could they please be open on Saturdays, or at least one Saturday per month like my dentist??? This is not a deal breaker for me, however.
Bottom line, go here if you want personalized, friendly service in your eye care. I know I will be going here for years to come!

Ok, so I really only review places if I love them, or hate them. I love this place. Staff is all super friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.
I prefer private owned «mom and pop» places, they are more invested in the success of their business, it shows here. It is actually a pleasure to go here every year. It is clean, well decorated, well laid out… they have a fish tank to put kids in with video games in there so they are not running around screaming… or if they are, they are in the fish tank so you can’t hear them! I really like that.
They have an awesome selection of glasses, and their prices are reasonable, they have great sales to make things even more affordable.
Go here, you’ll be glad you did… and when i have kids… i think I’m going to put one of those fish tanks in my house!

We found Dr Carlsson’s office when we found out that my middle daughter needed some vision/​eye therapy to address an eye tracking issue. His office and staff are great, and even though it was a long way to drive, we definitely feel it is worth it.
In addition to the vision/​eye therapy, we have also had eye exams (for both me and my youngest daughter) as well as glasses and contacts for me. I am very pleased with the quality of service and friendliness of everyone in the office, and I highly recommend them.

I’ve been using the closest national chain that accepts my insurance for as long as I can remember. I figured it’s just an eye exam and glasses, just about anybody with the right equipment can do that. Then I stumbled upon Dr. Carlsson’s and figured might as well support a local business.
I don’t think I will ever go back to the «mall» eye centers. I actually received good service from everyone at the place, and service isn’t something you necessarily expect from a doctors office. I didn’t feel rushed like I was going through an assembly line and Dr Carlsson, actually took the time to explain what was happening with my eye health (his words, not mine… eye health just sounds… strange, but I can appreciate his professionalism and candor) rather then sending me off to the glasses display with prescription in hand.
The folks at the counter were nice and friendly and I really appreciate their sense of style, considering my own is lacking, and they didn’t let me pick out a frame that was too small for my head… which I fully intended to until they stopped me with a «Those are nice… but why don’t you try these on.»
I am really happy with my experience the only thing bad I would have to say is the place is pretty much a needle in a haystack, if you aren’t referred directly or looking for them you probably won’t find them. They are in a small commercial development nestled in a residential area with no signage… which is a shame, because they really are a hidden gem amongst eye care professionals.