Optical Express Ruined My Life Welcome!

It's likely that you found this site because your eyes have been damaged by eye surgery or you're considering surgery at an Optical Express clinic - or perhaps you are/were an OE employee.

Whatever the reason for your visit we hope you'll find some useful information and perhaps add details of your own experiences to help others.

If you have a question regarding treatment, or any other issue related to Optical Express, please post on the Forum where you're sure to get a response,If you are considering surgery PLEASE read some of the True Stories from damaged Optical Express patients before taking the risk!

NB: Patients currently in litigation will have their stories updated when legal process is completed.  

When a 'gagging order' is not enforced, we will publicise the outcome.  However, as can be seen in the OE agreement sent to Sheena McNabb (True Stories), this is a condition often applied to an out of court settlement.

Because of the practical help offered to steadily growing numbers of damaged patients contacting OERML, Optical Express desperately tried to silence the author of this site, Sasha Rodoy, Campaigner for government legislation for the refractive eye surgery industry.

Serious threats were made (police involved) with abusive and anonymous comments regularly posted on a forum (now closed) in frantic attempts to discredit Sasha, libeling that her free advisory service My Beautiful Eyes damaged people's chances of compensation. In fact, it is only thanks to MBE's intervention that so many people have been helped with refunds, paid referrals to independent surgeons, retreatments and free legal advice from specialist lawyers.

With approximately 5,500 visitors every month this site has cost Optical Express an astronomical amount of money and a lot of bad publicity. As a result Optical Express made a "corporate decision" to ban Sasha from accompanying her numerous MBE clients to their consultations with Professor Jan Venter @ OE's Harley Street Complex Cases Management Team Clinic. 

Optical Express are also now refusing their damaged patients paid referrals to independent surgeons AND charge same patients £50 fee for their medical records - previously provided at no cost.

CEO David Moulsdale recently rescued his company from bankruptcy, buying its £30 million debt to the RBS for an alleged 20% of its value, partly funded by Sir Tom Hunter according to reports.  Understandably OE's finances are likely stretched to breaking point.

In March 2012, Optical Express employee and 'troubleshooter', Patrick James Green, was recorded offering a bribe to Sasha on behalf of his employer David Moulsdale.  Having asked how much it was worth for her to give up her campaign for government legislation, Sasha replied, "Not for a million pounds!". (See Patrick James Green link)

Later that year information was provided detailing a poster in Optical Express staff rooms which displayed a nameless image of Sasha lifted from a YouTube video, claiming she was using stolen credit cards in OE stores with instructions advising staff not to approach her but to contact Stephen Hannan, OE's Clinical Services Director.  Lawyers were involved.

To read Sasha's personal updates check OERML Blog and visit Optical Express Ruined My LifeFacebook for recent news and photos

Meanwhile, if you have experienced problems, or are unhappy with results of your surgery provided by any Optical Express clinic.

Optical Express posts £1.5m loss

DIFFICULT high street trading conditions saw Optical Express fall to a loss of £1.5 million prior to a major restructuring of the group, new accounts filed at Companies House reveal. The chain, controlled by Scottish entrepreneur David Moulsdale and with its headquarters in Cumbernauld, booked the pre-tax loss in optical express ruined mylife for the calendar year 2011, having reported a near £6.9m profit in the previous year.

The accounts for DCM (Optical Holdings) show turnover fell from £204.7m to £188.2m amid difficult high street trading conditions.

UK income dipped from £181.8m to £169.4m, while European sales dropped from £22.8m to £18.7m.

In the accounts, the directors warned "economic conditions and consumer confidence in the countries the group trades in will continue to remain challenging in the short-medium term".

They also said the Optical Express (Southern) subsidiary was providing cause for concern.

In October this year Mr Moulsdale announced the closure of 40 stores and that the Optical Express(Southern) part of the group, renamed 123 Leeds, was being placed into administration then bought by another subsidiary called Optical Express Limited.

The closures were in "small tertiary high street loss-making locations" which would result in around 100 job losses, although the majority of staff would move to larger flagship sites.

The business retains around 130 stores with more than 50 in Scotland. The accounts show the discontinued operations contributed a £5.19m net operating loss while the continuing operations brought in a £5.3m net operating profit.

Stewart Mein, Optical Express's finance director, said the consumer downturn in the past few years had been challenging but the business was now in a good position and planning to expand again.

He said: "Having recently agreed a long-term bank debt facility with our lender, Royal Bank of Scotland, who have been very supportive, we are now in a strong position to build the business going forward.

"The recent restructuring of one of our nine trading entities has enabled us to move forward very positively indeed."

Mr Mein confirmed £1m was being invested in all refractive clinics and there were plans to open 40 new consultation centres across the UK and Ireland.

The accounts show interest and similar charges in 2011 declined from £1.8m to £1.66m, while a £155,000 exception charge was related to the renewal of banking facilities with Royal Bank of Scotland. Net debt was reduced from £39m to £34.3m.

Average staff numbers at December 31, 2011, were 1998, with payroll costs in the accounts relatively flat at £55.2m.

Directors' emoluments declined from £802,109 to £764,132 with the highest-paid director's rewards flat at £500,647.

DCM has former Scottish First Minister Lord McConnell and ex-PwC Scotland chief Frank Blin among its board members. Tax disputes with Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs may be settled in 2013, according to optical express ruined mylife.

Optical Express posts optical express ruined mylife

Then there is laser treatment, which is top dollar and therefore likely to have been hit harder than mostsegments. You would do well to get a look at the growth charts that Moulsdale and his lieutenants would have used to tantalise bank managers in the run-up to optical express ruined mylife crash. Almost certainly the reality has been rather different, however. This explains why OE was left with only one major UK competitor recently when Optimax bought long-suffering Ultralase.

Betting heavily on laser may well have exacerbated the Cumbernauld company's fixed costs, ensuring that it only needed to lose a few percentage points in turnover to suddenly have a crisis on its hands. In 2011, the most recent year for which figures are optical express ruined mylife, for example, a £16.5m drop in turnover led to a £10.4m drop in underlying operating profits. Whatever expenses OE has, in other words, most of them were there regardless of what it sells.

At the same time, the business has clearly been under heavy pressure from the bank to get its balance sheet in order. In 2011, net debt was still about 3.4 times top-line earnings, somewhat optical express ruined mylife

 the circa 2.5 times that is seen as acceptable these days.

Hence when former PWC Scotland boss Frank Blin was appointed to the board last summer, there was speculation that he was installed to do the bank's bidding (which is almost certainly correct). This debt problem presumably also explains OE's announcement last autumn that it had put a subsidiary into administration, closing 40 stores and then buying back the remaining 40 - a move that supposedly eased the problem of high fixed costs.

This ailing subsidiary, which was responsible for almost half of turnover, made a top-line loss of about £5m in 2011. Without it, the remaining business would have been much more profitable. The fact that it was not put out of its misery until after optical express ruined mylife might be a sign that Moulsdale was resisting swinging the axe. Turnover is vanity but profit is sanity, as they say.

This move came parcelled up with a debt restructuring agreement with RBS that appeared to relate to the whole of OE. Here comes the mystery I mentioned at the start. On the back of this agreement, OE finance director Stewart Mein was quoted in a rare interview with The Herald, talking about plans to invest £1m in laser eye clinics and open 40 new consultation centres in the UK and Ireland. He said: "We are optical express ruined mylife in a strong position to build the business going forward."

Yet just 10 months later, RBS allegedly refused Moulsdale an emergency loan to pay staff. It appears he was told he could either arrange for the debt to be bought out or the bank would push his company into administration. Moulsdale, who is estimated to be worth £60m, bought the debt at a substantial discount and came up with a package for capital investment, saving some 1600 jobs

Follow the Money: what went wrong with the vision at Optical Express?

For a sector which deals in maximising the visual abilities of its customers, optometry issurprisinglyopaque.

For a sector which deals in maximising the visual abilities of its customers, optometry is surprisingly opaque. Its leading companies either don't break out figures because they have such diverse interests (Boots), or hide themselves offshore (Specsavers) or just bloody-mindedly refuse to communicate more than the bare minimum (Optical Express).

Spare a thought, then, for any hack trying to piece together the reasons behind RBS's decision to call in the £30-million-plus debts of the latter company last weekend. They look straightforward enough at first glance, but rather more mysterious when you look closely.

The few facts in the public domain about press-phobic owner David Moulsdale are well worn enough. Having trained as an optician after leaving school at 16, he started Optical Express in 1991 with one store in Edinburgh's Leith area while still in his early twenties. He had tens of stores by the middle of the decade as part of a wave of modernisers in the sector, and was soon garnering awards for his entrepreneurial acumen.

From there the company keptgrowing on the back of organic growth and acquisitions, becoming the onlyhigh-street optician to bet big on laser eye surgery in the early 2000s when it bought out Boots' business (and getting into dentistry through the same deal). Shortly after, it embarked on an overseas expansion into mainland Europe and North America.

Like many retailers, including those owned by Moulsdale's friend Tom Hunter, OE was also able to fast-forward its expansion in the second half of the noughties by borrowing heavily. Net debt rose from £12.2m in 2005 to £55.3m in 2008, nearly double the growth rate of pre-tax profits. By this time OE had over 200 stores and was talking about opening 60 more in the coming year in its quest to boost its market share from 4% to double figures.

What happened next in the financial world is well documented enough - the music stopped after Lehman and the easy money stopped flowing. It did not take long for OE to feel the effects. By early 2009 the Registrar of Companies gave the company three months to show it should not be dissolved - a sure sign that the creditors were closing in.

RBS threw the business a lifeline on that occasion, agreeing a restructuring deal, but there was not agreat deal of blue sky on the horizon.

You would think that optometry would, like many areas of health, be insulated from hard economic times since people still need to solve their eyesight problems. You would think this would be particularly true when some 60% of the public - meaning under-16s, pensioners and those on benefits - get free eye tests and prescription glasses. These groups should spend as much on their eyes regardless of which way the economic wind is blowing, producing a big guaranteed revenue stream for anyone trading in the sector optical express ruined mylif

Against that, however, the likes of Tesco and Asda have come crashing into the sector in the last 10 years and taken market share by offering bargain basement prices. At the same time, the higher-margin full-paying customers appear to have been deferring purchases or taking cheaper options such as having new lenses put into old frames instead of buying new ones.

Optical Express founder in new restructuring move

OPTICAL Express Group has reported a £15.1 million pre-tax loss for its most recent financial year and says a plan to put a subsidiary into administration is the final piece in its restructuring jigsaw.

Founder David Moulsdale unveiled the intention to appoint an administrator for DCM Optical Clinic and then buy back 16 of the 19 stores in a move which is not expected to lead to any job losses.

That came as accounts filed at Companies House show DCM (Optical Holdings) recorded a pre-tax loss of £15.1m in the 12 months to December 29, 2012, wider than the £1.5m loss in the prior year.

The most recent financial year for the business, which has its headquarters in Cumbernauld and employs more than 800 people in Scotland, saw a £6.5m exceptional charge related to restructuring of the store portfolio which saw 40 units close.

Group turnover declined from £188.2m to £169.3m with the UK revenue dropping from £169.4m to £153.9m. European turnover fell from £18.7m to £15.5m.

Net debt in the 12 months widened since £34.3m to £38.6m with around £29.7m of that as bank loans and overdrafts.

The accounts state Mr Moulsdale was owed £7.76m.

Average staff numbers fell from 1998 to 1794 with employee costs dropping from £55.2m to £50.1m.

Directors' remuneration was flat at £769,215 with the highest paid seeing their emoluments steady at £500,798.

Earlier this year Mr Moulsdale acquired the remaining bank debt of Optical Express from Royal Bank of Scotland.

Although no value has ever been revealed for the deal a spokesman for Mr Moulsdale indicated at the time it was a multi-million-pound investment which would protect jobs and position Optical Express for growth and without any significant debt.

Yesterday Mr Moulsdale said: "We initiated a strategic review of the business in the face of a tough economic landscape at the beginning of 2012 that worsened throughout the year.

"The landscape is now more stable and with diligence and some hard decisions taken, we see the Group positioned for growth.

"We've taken some further and final decisions on restructuring the Group, protected jobs and secured our supplier base.

"Aligned to our recent financial restructuring I believe Optical Express has never been in a stronger position to deliver for our patients, our staff and our supplier base."

An intention to appoint an administrator to English registered DCM Optical Clinic has been filed with Mr Moulsdale, who started the group in 1991 and remains its owner, intending to buy back 16 of the 19 outlets.

The closures are in Bristol, Manchester and Leeds where the business has other large stores.

Mr Moulsdale said: "There will be no job losses, no patient disruption and no supplier loss.

"My board and I have taken this decision to protect our patients, our employees and our suppliers.

"This is the final piece in our restructuring jigsaw and puts us in a position of strength to deliver growth, stability and profitability."

Optical Express, which has more than 50 stores in Scotland, has faced growing competition from online retailers and supermarkets in recent years while also battling with the tough trading conditions affecting the rest of the high street.

The decline in consumer confidence has also meant less demand for expensive treatments such as laser eye surgery.

The board of DCM (Optical Holdings) includes former PwC accountant Frank Blin who was recently linked to a possible boardroom position at Rangers before removing himself from consideration.

Former Scottish First Minister Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale is also on the DCM board.

Optical Express Ruined My Life

Optical Express is a retail optical services brand in the United Kingdom. Optical Express is a trading name of the Scottish company DCM (Optical Holdings) Limited which operates as the Optical Express Group with a number of subsidiaries in a range of healthcare services including the optical, dental and cosmetic industries.

The Optical Express group of companies operate in a range of healthcare services including the optical, dental and cosmetic industries under the brand names Optical Express, The Dental Clinic, The Cosmetic Clinic and Bridgewater Hospital The group was founded in 1991 by David Moulsdale with one Optical Express branch based in Leith, Edinburgh. The company grew steadily following its establishment, acquiring the 11 stores of Remocker Shapiro in 1995, and the 65 stores of Specialeyes PLC in 1997.These were followed in 2001 by 34 stores from Co-op Eyecare, and 14 more Scottish stores from Specdeals in 2002.

In 2004, Optical Express acquired two Free Vision Euro Eyes laser vision correction clinics in Amsterdam and The Hague,marking the first large-scale UK optical chain to extend its laser vision correction business in Holland.^[10] Optical Express acquired the dentistry and laser eye surgery services of Alliance Boots in 2005 - the dental services now trade under the name `The Dental Clinic'.

In June 2010 Optical Express was criticized by Which? and BBC Watchdog. Which? criticized Optical Express, along with other laser eye surgery providers Optimax and Ultralase, focusing on the concern that laser councillors consistently downplayed the risks of surgery

In November 2012, Optical Express closed a subsidiary with 83 stores placed into administration and 40 store closures. In December 2012 Optical Express said it would open 40 new sites as laser consultation/treatment centres in 2013. Landlords expressed dismay that this closure happened two days after quarterly rents were due.

Accounts filed at Companies House for the calendar year 2011 reported a loss of £1.5 million, the previous year the company made a profit of nearly £6.9million.

On 21st July 2013 Optical Express narrowly avoided being foreclosed by its lender RBS and Moulsdale averted administration by purchasing the bank's loans.

1 October 2013: Accounts filed at Companies House show DCM (Optical Holdings) recorded a pre-tax loss of £15.1m in the 12 months to December 29, 2012, wider than the £1.5m loss in the prior year. Founder David Moulsdale unveiled the intention to appoint an administrator for DCM Optical Clinic and then buy back 16 of the 19 stores.

In 2007, the Advertising Standards Authority rejected a complaint that the claim "from only £395 per eye" featured in an Optical Express TV and leaflet campaign was misleading, and in 2011, the authority upheld a complaint about television advert featuring Pádraig Harrington, which was later replaced by one featuring Michael Gambon.

In 2012 another TV advert was removed due to misleading content. and a complaint was partially upheld against the Optical Express website.

In 2007, Optical Express formed a partnership with Glasgow-based charity organisation, The Caring City. Donated spectacles are distributed free of charge via local clinics to communities within Burundi.

Optical Express - brand used for optical retail services including glasses, contact lens and laser eye surgery.

• Bridgewater Hospital - a private hospital in Manchester, England acquired by the group in December 2006.
• The Cosmetic Clinic - based at the Bridgewater Hospital it provides cosmetic and non-surgical procedures.
• The Dental Clinic - formerly the dentist division of Boots PLC acquired in January 2005.