I know perfectly well that there is an Eye Exam 2000 in the mall in Palmdale, and that’s where I want to go to get my eyes checked out this weekend because I have had this sore on my eye for about four weeks now. So I figure I’ll call them up, make an appointment, and go.
Now, Eye Exam 2000 couldn’t possibly have a frickin’ website to tell me what their frickin’ phone number is so I can make a frickin’ appointment to go see them and give them my frickin’ money. Oh, no. A Google search points me to an Eye Exam 2000 franchise in frickin’ Sun Valley, Idaho. They must be using the “Maneuver X” method of web presence advertising — make your customer go on a frickin’ internet-wide scavenger hunt armed only with clues left in rhyming riddles written in archaic languages in order to find the remotest shred of information that you even frickin’ exist, and that way once your customer does find you, you’ll have the most loyal frickin’ customer in the whole frickin’ world.
You may only get one customer this way as opposed to many customers, but hey, every sales approach has its downside.
So I go to yellowpages.com and look for optometrists in Palmdale, California. Bear in mind that while the Antelope Valley certainly isn’t as big a metropole as Los Angeles, I nevertheless do live in a community of more than 400,000 people within a ten-mile radius, with its own minor-league baseball team, and more to the point, not one but two branches of the particular business I’m looking for. This is suburbia, exurbia at worst. It’s not the Australian outback.
The results of my search for optometrists in Palmdale, presented in the order given are as follows:
A generic link to the website for Pearle Vision Express. No address.
A generic to the website for Sears Optical. No address. (I happen to know that the Sears in the mall in Palmdale has no branch of Sears Optical.)
Optometrist #1, 28089 Smyth Dr Valencia, CA 91355.
Optometrist #2, 1032 N Hollywood Way Burbank, CA 91505.
Optometrist #3, 622 W DUARTE RD Arcadia, CA 91007.
Optometrist #4, 924 N Citrus Ave Covina, CA 91722.
Optometrist #5, 14147 Pipeline Ave Chino, CA 91710.
Optometrist #6, 1301 7th St Wasco, CA 93280.
(end page 1 of 1).
No hits at all in Palmdale. The nearest hit is more than forty miles away.
This is effin’ useless. CostCo has an optometrist whose number I found in under two seconds, and I’ll bet they’re cheaper than the place in the mall anyway, as are the contact lenses they will sell me.
Eye Exam 2000, the difficulty I encountered in getting your phone number on the web has now cost you my business, which is going elsewhere.
