Glasses On First

Dr. Wolynski is a professional and talented doctor and a great resource for low vision needs.

This family owned optometry practice & shop is amazeballs. First of all they are opened late, open in weekends too! And they have the best customer service! I have the pain of getting fitted for contacts and trying to learn to use them as an adult– brian and the staff have spent more than 2 hours helping me to learn how to out them on!!! For free ! They have a great designer frame selection– the women who assist you will basically not stop until they find you what you want!!!

I love that Glasses on First has store hours that can accommodate people who work 9 – 6. I’ve only been twice; once for a check up and once a week later for a brief follow-​up. I was there to get new contact lenses, so I can’t speak to their selection of frames.
My optometrist, Dr. Lue was very patient and knowledgable. I explained my concerns and she offered several solutions… literally, she provided me with a sample of a Clear Care solution.
The shop itself is very small, with only 1 exam room, but I haven’t had a problem with getting an appointment or having a long wait. Actually, I haven’t had to wait at all. I’m happy to stick with them as my primary eye care provider!

Dr. Sharon Lue conducts thorough eye exams (I wear both contacts and glasses) and she led me to contacts that fit perfectly so I no longer have discomfort. And Aliva helped me pick out great frames. Great service in a friendly environment.

I’ll give the good news first. Receptionists are accommodating. Salespeople are patient and help you with browsing frames until you find something you like. Also there is a nice selection of frames. Nothing too high fashioned but modern looking.
Now the bad news. The optometrist Dr. W. has little patience with hard to fit prescriptions for older eyes. Tried 3 times with miserable results each time. He was pissed when I complained about not being able to see with his prescriptions. Double visiion once, seeing better out of my worse eye another time, and burry vision with headaches the third time. A horribly frustrating experience. Avoid this place unless you bring your own prescription.

Not the selection we were looking for, but my youngest scored his Nike frames and I brought in my RayBans. Jean took excellent care of us and made sure we picked them up before he left for the day. Great service.

Where do I start with my love for Glasses on First? First, I have a very tricky prescription and the optometrist nailed it. She was incredibly thorough and really took the time to explain things to me. Second, I worked with Aleva to pick out the cutest glasses ever. I usually wear my contacts from the moment I wake up to the the time I go to bed, never to leave the house in glasses. They have always been in the past either too coke-​bottle, too outdated or something. Now I could wear my glasses all day. She also did a great job finding nice glasses for my husband. Definitely recommend!

I went here after having a not-​so-​great experience at another glasses shop. I wish I had come here before, because this was a much better experience! The optometrist was very thorough and recommended a better power on my glasses than what my previous optometrist had given me. My eyes already feel better.

This place is so convenient for me and the doctors are great. They really care. I always have a hard time dining a good place and offer contacts for my needs because u have two stigmatism’s. They had more then one selection for me. Made me so happy. I would just wish there front desk would get it together and a better selection and special offers for frames/​lenses/​contacts!!!

I’ve gone here before and think they are fine. The salespeople are nice and pretty helpful (not amazing but that’s ok, hence the a-​ok rating). Glasses selection is wide and varied and there is no pressure to buy.
The real gem is Dr. Wolynski who is excellent and VERY thorough. And nice. He comes highly recommended.
This last time I almost went to them but they were charging double what every other store was for an eye exam which I thought was weird. Actually most places include a free eye exam if you’re buying glasses there. So that was a turnoff and I ended up going elsewhere for my frames.

Dr. Lue was very thorough with her exams. She took the time to double check my vision several times to make sure she gave me the right prescription for my eyes and addressed my concerns with detailed explanation. Loved her!

I have to say that this place had great customer service and I appreciate all the help they offered me. I felt like I was never being sold something that I did not want and the doctor that saw me Dr. Mely Moin did a great job explaining the ins and outs of my vision to me.
The girl in the working reception/​billing was amazing. I am sorry that I am spacing on her name. But I simply have to commend her for the great job she did helping me choose a great frame for my first pair of glasses in years.

I thought they were really nice. The first time I came in the store, I tried on nearly every paid they had and took photos with my cell phone. I came back the second time after I had made my decision and a few days later, my glasses were ready! They spent a huge amount of time with me and didn’t try to coerce me. No games either, like the huge markups and then pretend discounts i.e. some of the chain stores. I would definitely go back, I spent about $ 275 for everything and it was a great deal.

terrible terrible terrible. They’ve been «fixing» my frames for the last month. I’ve had to call repeatedly to get an update and they’ve still not fixed my problem. (frames cracked after less than year of owning it). they have zero solution for figuring out how to get me temporary glasses while I wait for my «under warranty» new frames to arrive. it’s really bad.

The front desk employees here are some of the nicest I’ve encountered. The woman who helped me seemed genuinely excited to help me pick out new glasses and was also very helpful when it came to which insurance plan (mine or my husband’s) would give me a better deal on the particular pair of glasses I was purchasing. I’d definitely recommend it, and they’re open for long hours on the weekends too, which is an added bonus.

I moved to NYC last year, and of course had to find a new optometrist (not like I was going to schlep all the way back to Boston just to get new contacts), and chose this place because it was walking distance from my apartment and had weekend and evening hours.
My first optometrist there, last year, was Dr. Lisa Vo. She let me know my pressure was a little high, and she wanted me to see an ophthalmologist to make sure I wasn’t developing glaucoma. She recommended me to a great doctor, and she even followed up to make sure I was making an appointment with him. She took time out to make sure I did was was best for my ocular health, and I am deeply appreciative of that approach.
Since my contact lens prescription had changed a little from old ones, she had me to a trial run with the new lens and then tweaked it a bit when it wasn’t as comfortable as it could have been. The costs were reasonable, for both the lenses and the visit, and the receptionists were just lovely and friendly, and really made the effort to make me feel like I was a valued customer, even though it was my first visit.
Last Saturday, I came back for my yearly visit (can’t believe how time has flown!) and while Dr. Vo has moved on to another position, her replacement, Dr. Becky Forman, proved just as great, and also inquired to make sure I was keeping up with my ophthalmology visits, which I am.
Once again I purchased lenses — but this year, I also updated my glasses (they hadn’t changed enough for me to fork over the dough last year, but now they’re looking a little battered).
Glasses on First is a pretty small storefront, but that said — they were able to match my beloved frames (yeah — I’m picky) almost exactly, and helped me to understand how to best take advantage of my eye care insurance, and which options (anti-​reflective coating, etc.) were best for me.
Flash forward to yesterday: I’ve had my lenses since early this week, and I picked up my glasses yesterday. Because I was already wearing contacts, I didn’t put the glasses on to wear (other than for the tech to make sure they fit right, when I picked them up) until last night. I realized immediately, that something was amiss — my glasses were reflecting light like crazy. I compared them to my old glasses, and I began to worry that the anti-​reflective coating had not been applied.
I of course — having had to do customer service warfare to get things replaced or fixed many times in my life — starting getting knots in my stomach, anticipating that they’d tell me I was imagining things, etc.
I needn’t have worried. I walked in, calmly explained my observations, and the tech picked up my glasses, looked them over, and concurred that yes, they had been sent to them without the coating, that he was truly sorry for this inconvenience to me, and that they would have them redone and (hopefully) back to me by Friday. No drama. No treating me like an idiot who didn’t know what was what, no treating me like a nuisance for wanting what I’d paid for done correctly. Just straight up, good customer service and a speedy resolution.
And again — everyone on staff this year has been just wonderful, friendly, helpful, and very pleasant.
Needless to say, I plan to go to them for my 2012 check-​up as well. If you live in the neighborhood and are looking for an optometrist, I highly recommend this business.

Foreword
Not very happy.
This is the first time ever that I used Unilocal to locate a top-​rated service where I came out disappointed.
The personnel at the front desk have been very attentive and friendly on all occasions, so they must be left out of the review.
What I complain about is the lack of service from the eye doctor himself and the fraudulent /​unprofessional handling of insurance claims and explanation of my coverage.
Chapter 1: It’s Easy to Get In… But Hard to Get Anything Out
I’ll start from the top. I walk in and set an appointment quickly and easily. They were able to see me within days. Great! I arrive for my appointment on time, fill out my patient form and am seen with the doctor on time. Great again! Then, my doctor ends up being an obviously disengaged young man who clearly wants to get this appointment over with ASAP and who makes it quite clear to me that whenever I open my mouth to add something pertinent about myself concerning my vision he is not interested. WTF. I actually have pretty horrible vision that has declined steadily every single year for the last ten years. I had to wear a corrective patch as a child. My father is blind in one eye and has both glaucoma and cataracts. One of my eyes is in danger of a detached retina. I have «floaters» which means I sometimes see my eye fluid in my field of vision due to the slightly high pressure of my eyes. I know all this because vision is an extremely important aspect of survival — hey, I might even go so far as to say as important as hearing or being able to walk. And mine happens to suck. So I care about it. And up to this point in my life, I have had professional, top quality vision care form doctors who know and care. Well, let’s end that little streak.
This guy had me read the tiny letters on the wall — standard. Then he looked into my eyes briefly through his little eye-​examiner microscope thingy. Normally, eye doctors spend much more time at this part than he did and have many more questions and much more to say to me afterwards then he did — which was absolutely nothing.
And that was the extent of my eye exam. Oh, he might of quickly checked my eye pressure.
Did I get an explanation of any of my results, other than that my prescription was the same (which, after 26 years of steadily declining vision, I’m quite hesitant to trust)? Nope. That was literally it. A 15 minute (and I’m being generous here) meeting with the doctor which told me absolutely nothing about the state of my eyesight. I read some other review, where the person said they got an intensely thorough examination where the doctor even isolated things no others had before. I guess we could say my experience was the polar opposite of that.
Chapter 2: Insurance Fraud — It Could Happen to YOU
I work in healthcare and I happen to deal with insurance claims on a daily basis — so I am not naïve when it comes to the need to understand the extent and conditions of one’s health coverage. Enter, my knowledge of my VSP coverage versus the counter clerk’s version. He tells me I only have $ 150 allowance on frames — uhm, it’s $ 180. He tells me I have to pay outright for my lenses — actually, they’re 100% covered. He tells me my insurance only covers the single shelf of no-​brand glasses on the bottom, front of the store display. Upon consultation with VSP, I confirm that an office is not allowed to limit your choices of covered eyewear. WOW. Way to lie to my face on almost every single aspect of my insurance coverage that you possibly could. FORGET IT. I’m taking my prescriptions somewhere else and using 1−800-CONTACTS. I’m pretty sure they got me on the cost of my eye exam, too. Supposed to be a $ 10 copay for a COMPREHENSIVE eye exam, and somehow, I paid $ 69.50. Still couldn’t figure that out and don’t really want to know at this point. And I love they way he kind of hid the print out of my coverage details from me while going over it — as if it was some kind of protected information that I don’t have free access to. Moron.
I just feel sorry for the people who walk in here, clueless of their coverage, and get totally scammed. Oh, and the people who are not receiving thorough, accurate eye exams. That kinda sucks, too. Maybe I should have requested Dr. W. But maybe Dr. W also shouldn’t have hired disengaged, hurried optometrists and lying, uninformed counter clerks.
Afterword
Thanks, but no thanks, Glasses on First. Best of luck with the next blind sucker.

I love Unilocal.The reviews were great for Glasses on First and they accept my VSP insurance, since I was out of contacts, I had to go. I called and was able to get a same day appointment. I had Dr. Sharon Lue, who I found to be straight forward, efficient, and effective. She asked relevant questions, listened carefully, and was very thorough. When it came time to checkout, the salesperson had verified my insurance, so it went smoothly as well. I have to say that I have been to two other Optometrists on the UES and although Glasses on First was not as luxurious, this was the least expensive, and best experience I’ve had.

5 years ago I went to Glasses on First on a whim, I was out of contacts, called a few places and lucky me, Dr. Bryan Wolynski had availability to see me that day.
Dr. Bryan Wolynski is GREAT! He is a kind and patient guy who gives a VERY comprehensive eye exam. In fact, when I was having contact issues he was happy to see me a few times to ensure that I was happy with my new brand of contacts and new prescription. I have sent several family members to Glasses on First. Dr. Bryan Wolynski noticed an issue with my cousin’s eyes that others had missed. The Dr. recommended a specialist who resolved the problem.
PROS:
The owners are a father and son team who care about your vision.
They are open late and have weekend hours so you can always find a convenient time for an appointment.
They take VSP and are insurance savvy.
I am really picky about my glasses and if you can believe it, I was actually able to find a pair of fully-​covered (FREE!) glasses! Whooo hooo!

Dr. Wolynski is by far the best optometrist I’ve ever had the pleasure of going to. I’ve been wearing glasses since the 5^th grade and contacts since my freshman year of high school so I have had experience with quite a few eye doctors.
My biggest compliment to Dr. Wolynski is that, as others have mentioned, he really takes his time with his patients, explains everything he is doing and doesn’t rush to make sure you get the best care possible. You can tell that he knows exactly what he is doing, but he does it with a compassion and caring that you don’t usually find in that particular field.
He accepts many different vision plans and his administrative staff is very patient and helpful with any questions you may have. They also have a wide variety of frames available and are willing to take a lot of time with you to try them on and discuss the pros and cons of a particular frame. I won’t go to any other eye doctor in Manhattan now that I have found him.