Questioned for our corporate optometry exposé, retail giant Specsavers said it “does not send percentage-based targets to optometrists”. Zacharias Szumer has seen otherwise. What’s the scam?
The scam is that Specsavers told MWM they didn’t give optometrists mandatory sales targets or conversion rates (how often a eye-health consultation leads to a sale). However, in a recent contract seen by us, an optometrist is given very clear conversion KPIs of over 50 per cent, with additional bonuses to be paid out for exceeding these benchmarks.
The mandate might’ve come from a franchise partner, but can corporate HQ really just wash its hands of the practice?
We also received correspondence from a former OPSM retail manager who said their time in corporate eyecare left them feeling that it “was one of the scummiest industries”.
The manager, who showed evidence of their former employment, said, “Despite not having any optical training, I was paid to exert sales pressure on the optometrists, including dictating how long they should spend with a patient.” He added:
Conversion was one of the most significant KPIs we were measured on.
“A result of this was feeling a lot of sales pressure to sell to the most vulnerable in our community,” such as elderly pensioners who had been referred by their GP or needed to get their vision checked as part of driver’s license conditions.
We were also contacted by an optometrist who worked across outlets owned by Luxottica – e.g. OPSM, Laubman & Pank and Sunglass Hut – for over ten years.
The optometrist told MWM they had “left the profession partly because of the priority that corporate optometry placed on store budgets over patient care”.
Zacharias Szumer is a freelance writer from Melbourne. In addition to Michael West Media, he has written for The Monthly, Overland, Jacobin, The Quietus, The South China Morning Post and other outlets.
He was also responsible for our War Power Reforms series.