Bennett Optometry

Staff is professional and pleasant. Large variety of frames with good price points. Glasses arrived within a week of being ordered.

Overall great service with warm friendly staff. Decent selection of frames limited only because my insurance allows discount only on certain frames.

My last experience was unorganized, disjointed, rushed (including the eye exam when I wasn’t given enough time to say which view was better, the choice seemed to be made by Bennett himself) and bouts of opening the exam door bellowing to reception with an inquiry as to whom insures me for eye care. One moment the conversation was about being the perfect candidate for a new type of contact to directly being lead to be measured for bifocals. What? I finally looked at the nice gentleman explaining new methods of measuring for progressive lens and told him I needed to leave. I checked out and they asked if they could mail my prescription to me and they have, twice. I am going to have my eyes examined again to make sure I get the right prescription.

Bennett Optometry has been a great eye care provider. I’ve been using them for 5 years for eye exams, contact lens fittings, and purchasing contacts. The clinic tries valiantly to compete with 1−800-CONTACTS for my contact purchases, including price matching, doing rebate paperwork, and allowing contact lens trade-​in if the prescription changes (please verify with them in case my memory is hazy), but 1−800-CONTACTS is just so easy!
When I first went, I had shopped around town a little for eye exam prices and was confident that Bennett Optometry was a decent value. They are also familiar with vision coverage and procedures of both UM’s vision insurance and MPremierCare health insurance. Their downtown location is also convenient to my daily routine.
What earns them 5 stars is the service. I’ve seen Dr. Bennett once and Dr. Wieringa the rest of the visits and both are thorough, personable, and responsive to patient concerns. The rest of the staff are very helpful and personable as well. The clinic is generous with trial contact lenses to ensure your prescription is correct before you invest in a long term supply. They also helped me with minor glasses issues at one of my exams. Highly recommended.

Our son was in town over the holidays and of course didn’t tell us he wanted to have his eyes checked until he arrived. We made a call and Bennett was able to fit him in. Saw the doc, diagnosis made and new glasses ordered. Son happy, mom happy.

I have been going to Dr. Wierenga at Bennett on Main Street for many years for my contact lens and to check the health of my eyes. I have usually received good customer service. Everyone on this last visit was friendly and efficient.
While this has nothing to do with their service, it is often hard to find a parking space, the girls behind the front counter are sometimes noisy and the walk outside in the cold and up the elevator for another test is a bit much.

My husband and I have been going to Bennett Optometry for several years and have been pleased with the level of service they provide. If you’re able to make a morning appointment– as soon as they open, you’ll be in and out in no time. Sometimes in the afternoon appointments can get backed up and you’ll be stuck there for a while longer. The staff there are always friendly and the atmosphere is nice as well. They also validate parking, which is nice since the location I go to is in downtown Ann Arbor. I highly recommend this optometry!

My ten year old son recently started wearing glasses, and the folks at Bennett could not have been more helpful. Thanks to the great experience that my son had there, he loves his new glasses, takes great care of them and wears them all the time. From the moment he was greeted by Ms. Joyce – who is so warm and puts everyone right at ease – to the exam with Dr. Jamie Barnes, we had a great experience. Our entire family will be going to Bennett Optometry from now on!

I’ve always been a SEE eyewear fan girl, and I’ve also never had insurance, so SEE not covering insurance was never an issue for me. However, I feel like SEE glasses are getting less cute (or maybe I’m getting older, I dunno), and I now have insurance. Bye-​bye, SEE.
I headed down to Bennett’s because it was the closest place to my work, and I was pleasantly surprised on all counts. They got me in for an eye exam the very next day. Dr Wierenga was very polite, very fast, and very good about answering my many questions, and he was also knowledgable about retinitis pigmentosa, which an obscure eye condition, and was able to discuss it with me. And the glasses selection is actually really cute. You might accidentally pick up a $ 400 pair of frames, which is a bummer, but I ended up with $ 190 frames that I’m absolutely crazy about, so cool!

We’ve been going to Bennett Optometry for about seven years now. The past several years, we’ve been seen by Dr. Bennett himself. He comes across a little intimidating at first, but really, he’s a crack optometrist. I don’t know if arrogance is the right word, as another reviewer used, but he tells it as he sees it and does not beat around the bush. At all. It can come off as a bit brusque, but I appreciate his candor.
I was super impressed when last time I was in to buy contacts, I brought up the difference in price between what he charged and what I could find online. He matched the online price for me. That was great. I really didn’t expect him to do that.
And I’ve found that they are very accommodating with my schedule and don’t seem to mind that I have brought small children into their small waiting room.

I’m shocked by the negative reviews! To be honest, I passed by their very prominently located Main Street office all the time but assumed that if they were right downtown, that they were a «frou-​frou» office than wouldn’t give me the level of customer service and expertise I needed. Well, I was very wrong. Dr. Bennett himself, although he may come off as arrogant at first, is extremely knowledgeable about his field. Having gone to two different optometrists, one through UHS’ Eye Clinic and another through UM’s Kellogg Center in Ypsi, I was really disappointed in my vision with the corrective prescription I had received. So, trusting my instincts, I decided to get a third opinion and I am very glad I did.
Dr. Bennett was recommended to me by a coworker in downtown Detroit who makes the trip all the way to Ann Arbor to see him because of the low vision specialty. I have a very strong lens prescription, high astigmatism, and a very visually-​demanding job, so anything less than near-​perfect, crisp vision is unacceptable. Dr. Bennett thoroughly examined my eyes, listened to my concerns, and was able to diagnose a problem that the previous doctors had never found. Given the reviews below, I’m curious how good they will be with follow-​up, but so far, I was pleased and felt like I was in good hands.
Note: To further help diagnose vision problems, they have a specialty Vision Clinic upstairs at the Main Street location.

Hmm… read the other review below, and was a little surprised. So, I’ll write this not to contradict the other review, but to give my experience.
I’ve been going to Bennett for about 10 years now, and they’ve always taken very good care of me. The staff is very friendly, has always been on the ball, and has at times bent over backwards to make sure I was happy.
They’ve got a great selection of glasses, and when I’ve ordered contacts, they’ve always arrived quickly without much fanfare.

I was really excited when I recently got vision insurance. I’d been putting off getting new contacts, and it was time. I already had a current RX from another eye doctor, so I thought it should be easy to simply order the contacts through here.
They were one of my vision plan’s designated providers, so I thought that the slightly lower price would warrant giving them a shot.
Everyone was very nice, but this wasn’t easy at all. When I ordered the contacts, they gave me an estimated ship date. When they hadn’t arrived a few days after that ship date, I called their office (it was getting close to the holidays) to check in. Evidently, the contacts were on back order, but no one had bothered to tell me.
Ok, well, now that I knew, could they provide me with a sample pair to hold me over? Sure, they said, just come in to pick them up. So, I traipsed over there only to find that no one at the desk could find them, and the woman I’d spoken with didn’t recall at first that she’s said she would put them aside. It was annoying, but still, everyone was trying to be nice, if not particularly efficient.
So, last week, I did finally get my contact shipment. I got two separate boxes, but didn’t really think anything of it, since I figured maybe one was my initial order and one was the back-​ordered portion. Wrong again!
While I was out of town on business, I got a call from Bennett that they were sorry, but their distributor had made a mistake and double-​shipped my order. So, could I please sort out those other contacts and bring them back into their office? Another trip?
Arg! As I say, everyone throughout the process was nice, but life was much simpler when I just ordered from 1 – 800 Contacts. I have a feeling that’s what I’ll do next time. I really don’t need to spend hours of my time just to get some darn contacts!