WEST VALLEY CITY — Standard Optical clients trying to choose up their glasses or contact lenses are being met with locked doorways. On Monday, the 113-year-old Utah-based eye care supplier shuttered its stores.
At the Sugar House location, on the door and just under a rising stack of failed supply notices, we noticed an indication saying the retailer is “closed for the forseeable future.” Calling the contact quantity on the web site didn’t yield any higher outcomes – simply the message telling us the quantity we’re making an attempt to attain is at the moment unavailable.
But once we stopped by Standard Optical’s headquarters in West Valley City, I used to be let in by a buyer, Lily Salgado. She has a grievance very related to one we’ve been listening to.
“I’ve been waiting for about a year for my contacts,” she stated. “I’ve been to three locations and no update whatsoever.”
Salgado says she has been driving throughout the Salt Lake valley, determined to get her arms on the contacts for which she says she’s already paid about $1,000 for.
Standard Optical clients trying to choose up their glasses or contact lenses are being met with locked doorways. On Monday, Oct. 1, 2024, the 113-year-old Utah-based eye care supplier shuttered its stores.
The KSL Investigators have heard from a number of viewers who say they’ve ordered and paid for contact lenses or glasses however haven’t acquired them. In some instances, it’s an issue that’s been occurring for months. Complaints have additionally been stacking up with the Better Business Bureau Mountain West, which has slapped the firm with an F score.
“We did, as a company, struggle post pandemic,” Standard Optical’s CEO Stephen Shubach, advised me.
He says rising wages and different prices have put the firm behind. They have been getting ready to promote the firm however this previous Monday, that deal blew up.
Into the darkish
“We went dark,” Shubach stated. “It means that we have no employees – that we had to lay them off because we couldn’t meet payroll. Everything was set up for this September 30th deal.”
Going darkish doesn't imply out of enterprise insists Shuback. He says they hope to reorganize and reopen.
“We decided to lock up for now, restructure the company, and go forward from then,” he stated.
“What kind of timeline are you looking at?” I requested.
“Probably two weeks,” Shubach responded.
“You think your stores will be open again in two weeks?”
“I would hope so.”
In the meantime, Shubach says he's making clients a precedence.
“What message do you have for customers who have paid, but haven’t gotten their products?” I requested.
“We’re doing that right now,” he answered. “So, for example, our lab is open and it’s completing glasses jobs right now. There’s a little bit of a back-order problem with contacts, but we are rectifying that as we go forward.”
Indeed, as I sat in Standard Optical’s foyer, I listened to their pleasant receptionist calling folks to allow them to know their orders are prepared and handover the accomplished orders to different clients as they got here in.
I identified to Shubach that the telephone quantity on the web site is disconnected, so he gave me one other quantity for patrons that want to attain him to name. That quantity is 801-972-0203.
