Mario Arellano, OD

If this is the optometrist in the Santee Costco I had the worst experience here a couple months back. I had my prescription here but then started noticing my contact lenses started to really hurt my eyes and cause my vision to go blurry, I went in hoping he would prescribe me a different brand of lenses, it was no big deal I would have payed the difference. Instead he suggests different products I could use, and I could go purchase at a Walmart nearby. The whole time I was thinking that I was wasting my time. He was very short with me and made me feel like I was wasting his time. As I was leaving he turned to me and told me that I would have to pay him $ 20 for the visit. I was stunned… He made me pay $ 20 for nothing, and as soon as he said that he went back into his office. I was so upset I will never be back here again.

Dr. Arellano is a great optometrist. His prescriptions are always accurate and he recommends only what you need. I’ve gone to him twice — however, I made a mistake of going to a department store eye doctor in between those two occasions. Needless to say this other doctor messed up my eye grades resulting in two pairs of uncomfortably unusable glasses that can no longer be returned or refunded. This other doctor said it’ll take some time for me to adjust to the new lenses, but I never did.
I told Dr. Arellano about this experience and he said some eye doctors (especially those at LensCrafters) amp up your eye grades or pile up a lot of lens features you don’t really need to add up to the total cost of the glasses. I haven’t been aware of that, so thanks for telling me, Dr. Arellano!
I just picked up my new glasses from Costco today and they’re awesome. I can see clearly, there are no depth perception issues and I got them at a great price. Just clear plastic lenses with anti-​glare built in. And apparently, that’s all I needed.