Have a look at what you could have won! Spoke to a guy at networking today who'd bought new single vision glasses from his usual optician. He told me that he would have used us except for the fact that he knows his current optician well and feels a sense of loyalty towards him. Many people feel the same loyalty to their current optician - but is it reciprocated? I looked at his specs - he has a very high plus prescription but the lenses did not seem as thin as they could have been (certainly not the aspheric lenses we would have suggested). The frame was also too large for his prescription - meaning that the heavy lenses were pulling the frame down his nose so he constantly has to push them back up.
He would have paid over £460 for them, but his optician gave him a £40 discount (only after a bit of haggling though). I then did my Jim Bowen impression. I told him that we could have put him into a more suitable frame, with flatter and thinner aspheric lenses and saved him over £170.
I think he realised that loyalty can have its limits and he's going to come to us when he replaces his specs next year. Indeed, as he gets £200 a year from Medicash towards his specs, his next pair will cost him virtually nothing!