Dolland & Aitchison

Really helpful staff at this store. Came here looking for new glasses for my other half as his were literally falling apart. The staff here were very helpful at advising on the cheapest possible options, spending time to calculate what would be the cheapest option based on deals on offer. They were also able to advise on style and steered us away from a more expensive style of glasses which didn’t quite worked.
Highly recommend if you are looking for new glasses or prescription glasses. The excellent service and upfront attitude would lure me back to this store.

After months of complaining of headaches and not being able to read the subtitles on TV, my girlfriend finally forced me to go and have my eyes tested. So, I reluctantly made my way down to the Broadmead branch of Dolland and Aitchison (I had a half-​price voucher). The eye-​test took about half an hour; first they did the checks for glaucoma (clean — yes!) and then the checks to see exactly how badly my vision had deteriorated. Once it was all over, he handed me my prescription and sent me downstairs where another member of staff took my details and payment. My existing glasses were being held together by a paperclip, so she very kindly fitted me a brand new screw, free of charge. I wasn’t at all pressured into getting new glasses there and then, which was lucky considering that to get my existing frames reglazed was £115 and payday wasn’t until the following week! When I got home, I went online and found that I could have the same thing done for £25 through an internet-​based company. So in summary — D&A is great for eye tests and customer service, but pretty bad for your finances.

Staffed entirely by really nice friendly people who obviously enjoy working here, when I was looking to update my glasses recently this was the last shop I went into because of its fuddy duddy image compared to the newer chains shouting in the high street.
However it turned out to have a great choice of glasses, not at all any dearer than those chains, with some big name designers if that matters to you plus their own range which is actually pretty funky. I picked up a pair of red rimmed glasses with leopard-​print arms (rowr) plus got a pair of serious rock star shades half price. In fact there was so much choice I gave in and accepted the help of one of the staff, who did this thing where they take a shot of you wearing the different glasses, just using a simple webcam, and then put them up on screen all next to each other so you can compare. Sounds embarrassing? Yes it was. Sounds idiotic? Actually it isn’t, because it turns out I was wearing glasses way to big for my head because I had some weird idea that I had a balloon head (distorted female self-​image? Discuss.) and so ended up getting the aforementioned cute glasses which I wouldn’t have thought I could get away with before.
After care service was impeccable and always ever-​so-​friendly, and I get my contact lenses from them as well.
One word of warning, don’t ever try and visit their website, it takes forever to change pages, just give them a call.