Buying from rally gypsies – a cautionary tale

I wanted a purpose-made pair of riding sunglasses, the wrap-around kind with the foam liner to block the wind on those cool, early morning rides. But since I wear prescription lenses, the off the shelf stuff at the local dealer just wouldn’t do the job. And no opticians in town carried what I was looking for.
So when I was in Daytona in February I was glad to see Biker’s RX there, offering just what I was looking for, and at what seemed to be a reasonable price. I found a brand-name frame I liked, selected a lens type, and had a pair made based on the prescription they read from my eyeglasses. A couple of hours later my new sunglasses were ready. Unfortunately we were running late, and I didn’t really have much of an opportunity to test them out beyond a quick, “Yup, they seem okay.”
But they weren’t. After wearing them for an hour or so it became clear that there was a problem with the power of one lens. And after I got home my actual optometrist’s prescription confirmed that the one lens was not to spec. A quick email to to Dr. Dan at Biker’s RX and he readily agreed to replace that one lens to match my prescription.
Great, I thought.
Then the real problems began.
The optician they use refused to ship just a replacement lens, and instead insisted I send the sunglasses back to him so he could do the work: “im the optician that made your glasses unfortunately i can not just send you lense Du to my safty conserns i must install all lenses in our frames we would be liable if you injured  a eye if the lense wasent installed properly” (Exactly as written – honest. The attention to detail in written communications should have been my first clue.)
Even promises to have the replacement installed by my own optician wouldn’t fly with this guy, so I sent them off, but not without some trepidation. Four weeks, numerous e-mails, and $20 in shipping and handling later I finally got the sunglasses back.
Great, I thought.
Except they were worse. Back to my optician who measured both lenses and found them both to be off my prescription (which Biker’s RX had on file by that time and which was supposed to be the basis for this pair). More emails, more assurances they would be repaired to my satisfaction, and more insistence on shipping the whole lot back across the border.
As the saying goes, in for a penny… So hoping for third time lucky they were mailed back again – another $20 shipping. That was 6 weeks ago. The penultimate email was dated May 17 from “Mertyl Beach” where they were set up for the rally, assuring me my sunglasses would be processed right away. And then later (May 29, from Rolling Thunder) confirmation that my glasses were shipped back to me May 21.
They arrived last week and are now finally correct – although I did have to pay another $60 in duties and taxes to spring them from the grip of the postal service, which I should be able to get back but at the cost of more letters and aggravation.
Now had the glasses been made correctly the first time, I’m sure I would have been very happy with them, and possibly even written a “great product” posting. However I have long believed that the value in any company is best measured by the quality of their after-sales service, and in this case Biker’s RX failed badly. While I never actually got any pushback about fixing the problem, the execution was totally unacceptable. Throwing a new lens in the mail to be installed by my own optician (to address “safty conserns”) would have solved this issue in a week. Instead I didn’t have the use of my sunglasses for 3 1/2 months, have had to chase the vendor from rally to rally across the US to get updates on progress, and am out of pocket more than $100 in extra shipping and customs costs – which means the glasses were not such a deal after all.
So would I recommend Biker’s RX? Based on their after-sales service, not a chance.