[Lammarite]

Being the nice guy that I am, I bought my wife a lovely pair of Dolce & Gabanna sunglasses fro her a few months ago. I didn't buy them because they were D&G, but because the style would suit her and I trusted teh quality of the lenses would be better than the $200 equivalents.

A couple of weeks ago the coating on the lenses started lifting off so i took them back to the opticians where i bought them. I was met with typical HK shop-assistant mentality at first but when they discovered I wasn't a tourist they started being a bit more helpful. 'We'll send it to the dealer', says one, 'only they can tell us what to do', says another. More than a week later i get a call back from the optician telling me to collect the glasses, 'your glasses have been replaced', says I to a squinting wife. 'Hooray' says she.

On getting to the opticians I am given the old glasses back with a note from the Manager of Goldpro Developments Ltd, a certain Robert Yeaung, saying that, and I quote, '....sunglass lenses is not under guarantee after being sold to consumer.' They did, however, offer to replace the lenses for $400. Miffed, but not protesting to the shop staff, i went and asked at another opticians whether it was normal practice, and they said that only Ray-Ban and Oakley will guarantee glasses after purchase, even if the fault is evidently the producers.

So, my advice would be to stick to the lower priced glasses that have a 100% UV protection guranteed and be very careful when you buy anything from a designer expecting it to be better than a product of 1/4 the price.

[dropdedfwed]

been there too.. another thing to note is with oakley lenses (and all "real" good quality lenses) the tint seems to be IN the lens (would not be the same for those iridium or mirror finish lenses, i' daresay). i found this out after stacking my bike... even though my oakleys didn't survive as well as i did, the lenses that were totally scratched from being sat on at 30km/hr still held the tint (even though i could not see through them cos of the scratches). my newer sunnies, with mirror finish, are useless, as once they are scratched they lose their tint in those areas, as the tint is only on the surface...

maybe u should surreptitiously scratch the showroom sunnies to see if they hold the tint, then ask for a fresh set out of the box when u've found ur treasure "oh, i dont want the show model, they're scratched" ...

BTW, does anyone know if HK enforces the UV400 standard that most countries do? in Oz, even if u buy a cheap set of sunnies, they have to have UV400 standard, else cannot be sold as sunnies...

[Lammarite]

It's funny, every other forum I've posted this on has had the reply, 'they're designer products, of course the quality is crap!'. I suppose that as sunglasses are not a core product they are outsourced to a sub-vendor (which I already knew) but don't really monitor the quality as most people buy them as a designer product as opposed to a product which will last. Many of the other forums also point out that Oakley are very good with after sales service. Goldpro Developments are also the agents for Cebe sportsglasses so if you buy a pair of them make sure they are covered as they are purpose based glasses as opposed to fashion statements.