MY EXPERIENCE WITH POLETTE EYEWEAR

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Disclaimer: This is my blog, and quite frankly, I am entitled to my opinions and thoughts. Please be prepared for a wordy post.

Polette.com is born from a man’s vision, a man who decided to put an end to the monopole of optics.
No more expensive eyeglasses. His idea? Break up the chain of intermediates and offer, using the internet, a massive selection of frames and lenses provided by his own factories.

Meet Pierre Wizman, a young and one of a kind entrepreneur who decide to quit school and build his first company -bought up for a peppercorn rent- in France, at the age of 16. With the help of Pauline Cousseau, his associate, he launches the first website in August 2011. They learn to do everything by themselves. In October of 2011, they make their first sale! As of today, they still remember the name of this very first customer.

The team:
Polette is also about a young dynamic staff, defined by different atypical profiles. (Movie school, Tech school, Arts school) They all carry one mutual interest: the strong will to share this universe and make you live a very nourishing and one of a kind experience from every point of views. (customer service, products manager, design, networking, and even the emballage).

The company has 4 main selling points:
1) A new mean of distribution – Polette lies on a simple yet groundbreaking idea: being the only intermediate between the factory and the customer. The frames and lenses are provided straight from our workshops, there is no stock nor intermediates to high margins
2) The lowest prices on the market – With such a business model, L’usine à lunettes by Polette offers highly-competitive prices- no compromise on the quality. This concept allows an 80% discount on the usual optical invoices, offering frames from $9.99 to $49.99 and lenses from $9.99 to $89.99.
3) A range of original frames – With a huge variety of designs, the purpose is to allow anyone to afford style and quality (e.g the frames from ‘Collection’, exclusively made out of acetate and handpolished).
4) The laboratory and the lenses – In our laboratory, our opticians take good care of your lenses from their conception to their shipment. They work on assembling the lenses on your frames.

OLD SCHOOL GOLD $29.99 USD with the BASIC POCHETTE $5.99 USD
These frames along with the lenses cost about $39.99 USD, which is pretty affordable considering that they are made out of metals. I loved the vintage and retro feel you get with these lenses. I didn’t have any problem with the prescription because I used the one that I got from my optometrist to fill out the required info on the website when I was ordering. The quality is what you paid for and please note that the glasses didn’t come with a case. If you want a case, you would have to purchase it separately. It came in these little pouches (photo below), which didn’t really protect the glasses at all. I had purchased from other online glasses shops before, and they all came with a free glasses case.

CHOPSTICK BROWN $19.99 USD
The final item that I had picked out was this pair of sunglasses. These sunglasses look great on and really suits my face shape. But please note that if you look carefully at the ends of the sunglasses where it hooks onto the ear, it doesn’t have a rubber wrapping around it. It’s pure metal. This means it doesn’t really sit comfortably on my ears.

So… after talking about the products from the website, I want to go ahead and talk about their customer service. A representative from Polette, their Community Manager (you can find the names of their entire team here), contacted me in November regarding this review post. The manager offered me a press account so naturally, I ordered the products that were of interest to me. I wanted to style the glasses into my outfit posts, like what I had done previously here with another sponsor. I had no idea that I was only supposed to order ONE pair of glasses at the time. When I clicked the order button with the 3 products (the 3 listed above) in the shopping bag with my press account, I was able to check out without having to pay. Then after I had placed the order, the manager kindly said this in her email to me:

I guess this was when the first red flag was raised. Was the manager suspecting that I was giving away the items? Since she said…”Hope these 3 products are only for you”? I got a sense that the company didn’t want to sent me all 3 products and honestly, that’s okay! If they had only wanted to sponsor a pair of glasses to me, then why couldn’t they have canceled the order and asked me to reorder? They didn’t have to sent me all 3 products. I won’t complain about it because I also run a business and I understand expenses. However, please don’t suspect that I have other intentions with those items.

Next, please understand when I say on behalf of many bloggers that it’s really difficult to keep track of what products you’ve received from which company and whose emails you’ve replied to. On top, most bloggers do have a full-time job aside from keeping their blog running. Thus, I’ll admit that I am guilty of not replying to emails from companies regarding arrival of products. For that, I will gladly apologize for. Furthermore, quality posts take time. Companies should understand that if they want a post with BEAUTIFUL photos and INTERESTING content, it TAKES TIME. If companies want cheap and uninteresting content, I can easily write a post in 10 minutes.

With that being said, the Manager from the company sent me about 2 emails asking about the arrival of the products and also about the review post. When I replied to the manager of the company and explained to her that I updated my blog posts in the order of when I had received the products, so it was fair to each sponsor, her response was rather shocking. (Note: if it’s an advertisement post, I, of course, will put that as the top priority. That’s the difference between an “ad” versus a “sponsored” post). With that being said, this was the response from their Community Manager:

It isn’t exactly professional from my point of view…don’t you think? Plus, it doesn’t sound like she has the mutual interest of having “the strong will to share this universe and make you live a very nourishing and one of a kind experience from every point of views. (customer service, products manager, design, networking, and even the emballage)” as stated on their company website. I am sadden by this experience.


EDIT: December 25, 2014
This is the response that I’ve received from the company:

1) Since when it’s an email filled with spelling and sentence structure mistakes professional? Yes, everyone makes careless mistakes more time to time. But When I review resumes and cover letters during my day job, spelling and grammatical errors are one of the first items that I notice right away. Also, if it’s my job as the PR of a-not-“small players” company, I would triple check my emails before sending them off.
2) Not a single apology in the email.
3) I don’t know if I’ll be “glad” to receive items that aren’t decent quality.
4) I have also collaborated with many big companies (see list here) and have yet to experience the same kind of “professionalism” as Polette.