After 30 + years of using a small, independent optometrist, his retirement was a real blow. Needing new glasses plus varifocals for the first time, I decided to give Specsavers a try. Let me start by saying that everyone who dealt with me was lovely — polite and professional. However, the whole experience was unsatisfactory and like being at a jumble sale or a cattle market, for the following reasons: — 1) You are passed from pillar to post, seeing lots of different members of staff for different parts of the process, so there’s a lack of continuity 2) You have to wait to see each new person — consequently there’s lots of hanging about and everything takes twice as long 3) because staff are so busy, you get little or no advice choosing new frames 4) despite them having racks and racks of frames the choice seems limited, with many of the frames being variations of each other(I really struggled to find a frame I’d be happy to have on the front of my face!) So my new glasses arrived — and both my reading vision and far vision are better with my old, single vision lenses than with the top of the range varifocal lenses. The new glasses have been sent back for modifying. Unless they are significantly improved I will be asking for a refund. This will almost certainly be the last time I use one of the big chains for my bins!