Annandale EyeCare

I have been very pleased with my experience with Annandale Eyecare. The professionalism, friendliness and courtesy of the Doctors and staff was exceptional. I highly recommend this practice.

Good experience here. Nice, professional, friendly staff. I actually saved money here compared to My Eye Doctor which I had been going to in previous years.

My experience at Annandale EyeCare was excellent in all respects. Dr. Courtney Thelen was very good and happily answered all of my questions and concerns. The staff that I encountered was professional. I also got three pairs of glasses. They seamlessly worked with my insurance. I have been to other eye care providers and Annandale EyeCare is far and away my best experience.

Fantastic practice all around. Every member of the staff is friendly and helpful, both Dr. Michelle and Dr. Court have seen all members of our family — they are great with our 3 elementary aged kids. Would highly recommend this office.

Dr Court and Dr Michelle are truly as good as it gets in the field of vision care. Always professional and caring, these two are our favorite neighborhood doctors! Our entire family goes there and we’ve been with them for years. Every single one of their staff is awesome as well — always helpful and courteous. Simply an outstanding practice!

Both Court and Michelle Thelan are terrific.
As a retina specialist, I have the honor of treating many of their patients. I often will refer to them my own patients — those in need of great eye care and don’t have their own eye doctor.
Their patients love them and my patients love them. Professionally, they are excellent eye doctors.
The staff at Annandale EyeCare is first rate, engaging, caring and professional. Please say hello to Cylene and Tiffany!
BTW — the Thelan’s have taken care of my whole family for years!
Randall Wong, M.D.
Retina Specialist
Fairfax, Virginia

Dr. Michelle Thelen is fantastic! I have been seeing her since 2013 and she is very knowledgeable, professional, and approachable. Her staff are also very friendly. When you first come in, expect to have them test you with an array of machines. These machines will test if you have any irregularities with your eye and is done by a technician. After that you get to see the doctor. I have been experiencing extremely dry eyes due to contact wearing and she gave me some eye lubricant. I also got to try on new contacts that are suited for dry eye users. The great thing that I like about this place is that they let you try on the contacts and wear them for a few weeks to see if you like it. If not, they allow you to try out a different one. Overall, I have a great experience here and will continue to come back.
Also a word of advice, some insurance companies do not cover fitting of contact lenses. I think if my insurance didn’t cover some of it, I would have to pay $ 130 for trying on contacts.

This has been my primary eye doctor since 2011. The entire staff is always pleasant, personable, detailed and very prompt about the appointments. I also love the fact that the doctor talks to you about his findings regardless if it stays the same. You walk in and it feels comfortable! You should definitely give this office a try!

I came here upon the suggestion of my husband who told me that they are a great practice and he has never had a bad experience here. I came in for an annual eye exam last week and had a wonderful experience with this practice. The women at the front desk are so very polite and friendly and also helpful. I had an appointment
with dr. Michelle Thelan. She was very helpful in explaining what was going on and just very friendly. I would agree with my husband that this is a great practice!

Friendly staff and a patient doctor helped make my eye exam with my child’s eye exam a pleasant experience.

This practice is excellent. Dr. C Thelan was professional and very patient when fitting my daughter and me with contacts. I am very happy with my monovision. Amazingly, after Dr. Thelan fitted my daughter with contacts, she was able to see ²⁰⁄₂₀. This is a big deal because she has severe astigmatism in both eyes, and has never before seen ²⁰⁄₂₀. I highly recommend this practice.

Another year and another good experience that was almost a disaster, but the fine folks at Annandale EyeCare made everything right.
The comprehensive exam and then further exam with Court was excellent — professional, personable, and fast.
This year I needed reading glasses. There is a really nice eyeglass section to the practice. Kevin was great getting me fitted and set with what I needed.
An hour later I changed my mind on the reading glass purchase. I wanted to explore other options and make a decision on my reading glasses in the coming week. I called and spoke with the receptionist who passed on my request to the glass group.
The message I got the next day was unexpected and disappointing. The glasses order had already been sent. To cancel I was going to be charged a 25% restocking fee.
The fee was a huge surprise. I think I did a really good job of informing the practice just an hour after I’d left and I’d understand if I’d waited a day or two. I don’t want to cause anyone any extra expenses.
Fortunately Dr. Thelen and Kevin were able to make everything right. The fee wasn’t on the patient information or the receipt (that’s why I was surprised). Kevin apologized and they’re making sure the restocking fee is explained to customers and on the paperwork.
There are so many was that this could have gone wrong, but it went really right.
In business school they call this the lifetime value of the customer. I’ll be back year after year with my family because Annandale Eyecare are good people doing quality work.

Love these folks. Court Thelen and his staff took great care of me. I came to him for a second opinion on my prescription and he was much more thorough than the last OD I went to. I really appreciate the extra mile he went for me. Plus, he is a fellow Husker. I highly recommend him.

I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve told about this place. I. LOVE. IT. HERE. The staff is always warm and welcoming… and since I’ve been a patient for years, they always ask about my family. They are quick to help me, even when I’m reordering contacts for my daughter who’s away at college. Both doctors are professional and thorough, but more importantly, caring. They care about their patients. I wouldn’t go anywhere else and am looking forward to adding my 2 year old son to their client list!

Had to take my 5 year old daughter to get a baseline test for her Elementary school and I cannot believe what an amazing place all around this is. Dr. C. Thelen had great bedside manners and very professional and warm towards my kids and me. My daughter adored him and he even managed to get my son who is 3 to get tested. I think this place is diamond in the rough. The office is nice, clean and classy. The staff, all three ladies were super sweet and very helpful. Loved the refrigerator with drinks and Keurig coffee machine.
I am looking forward to return and get my eyes tested.

This the most recently experience that I’ve been to a private optometrist office. I’ve always went to the commercial ones like Hour Eyes. And boy did I noticed a difference in quality service and diagnosis!
I recently had an inflammation in my right eye and it was giving me trouble seeing and a lot of people thought it was Pink eye. I made an appointment with Dr. Michelle on 10.11.11 and I was very impressed. She knew exactly what she was talking bout, she told me about past experiences with other patients that had similar results for me to know that she knew about this problem before me. She also explained to me every single procedure she is doing to my eye. I thought that was really good service. I always want to learn what is going on and what the Doctors are doing. And Dr. Michelle did just that.
Dr. Michelle gave me another eye exam after my inflammation went away and noticed a difference in my sight right away. Let’s note that I got an eye exam at at Hour Eyes during the summer. Dr. Michelle gave many options to why I’m having these problems and cases as to what we should do. None-​the-​less I got everything I expected out of a proper visit with results to my problems. I will continue to go back for follow-​ups to make sure everything is perfect.
For my follow-​ups i gained more information about why my eye-​sight is fluctuation so rapidly and random. Apparently my cornea is swollen and it’s causing my focus to come short while hitting the retina in the back of my head. That’s causing my random fluctuations so they agreed for me to try to not use my contacts and get glasses. They said that my eye sight will still fluctuate and it shouldn’t be a problem for me to change my lens prescriptions withing 90 days if my prescription for eye glasses changes again after my eyes have heeled.
While choosing my eye glasses, I didn’t have to search around and look for styles. The eye glass rep, Kevin did all the work. He explained my insurance policy on glasses and lenses, he explained to me why i kept getting migraines with my old pair, explained the technologies of the new frames compared to the old ones, and told me how to choose eye glass frames in the future. Now do you get this kind of service at other corporate eye glass place? Just to make a note I placed the order on Monday and Kevin called me Friday at noon to pick up my glasses. He fitted the glasses to my face and made minor adjustments on the frame to fit perfectly. I’m happy. My glasses may not be brand named, nor super fashion forward but it didn’t make my migraine come back, it didn’t cause me to see through a fish bowl, and it didn’t make me look uglier.
By far this is the best optometrist office I went to. I’m definitely recommending this to other people. I love both Doctors, Mitchelle and Court (husband and wives!) and the assistant tech, and Mr. Kevin the eye glass rep/​lab tech. My only less than perfect service was the front desk. I didn’t get a good vibe from the front desk. They could be a little bit more friendly and it wouldn’t hurt for them to smile.
I hope this helps!

Our family has been coming here for a few years now. Both DRs and the staff are very personable and professionable. I love their early morning appointments, too. I wouldn’t go anywhere else, they are great.

Extremely professional. Knows his stuff better than my old doctors. He was able to squeeze me in on extremely short notice to get some new contacts, and he pinpointed a few new tweaks to my script that are already making my eyes more comfortable. Extremely nice guy, very little wait time, and he goes in depth on his explanation. I would give him 6 stars if I could.

I honestly wanted a good pair of new glasses. And I decided to come here 1^st since the reviews on Unilocal are very good. There was 3 ladies at the desk and not one could help me for some reason. I said I’d like to get some new glasses/​frames. And they just pointed me to the frames and continued chatting. I stood there looking at frames for 10 minutes and not one of them came to assist me. Since I’ve never got the service, I decided they just would rather continue chatting and went somewhere else to get my glasses.

I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I’ve been to the optometrist. We’re talking at least two years. Probably longer.
I know, I know, I should go more often. But my eyes have been fine and it just wasn’t topping the list of priorities until somewhat recently, when I started to notice that my prescription was looking a little bit weak.
I’d been toying around with the idea of getting contact lenses for a while, but had always been a little freaked out about them. It’s not that I have a problem with touching my eye [because I don’t — in fact, I used to freak out my brother by touching it when we were younger]. I guess that when you grow up in a household with a mother who was always complaining about how much she despises her contact lenses it’s slightly off-​putting. Now that I’m older and know that not everyone goes through the daily putting in and taking out of contacts without yelling «I HATE THESE DAMN THINGS,» I decided it was time to give them a try.
My dad and brother go to Annandale Eye Care [and in the interest of full disclosure my neighbor works there], so I made an appointment and found myself sitting in their front office a week later. [Word to the wise: go to their website, print off the patient medical information forms, and just fill them out at home. It speeds up the process.] I was impressed right off the bat with the friendliness of the staff.
Kristy [Christie? Christy?] took me back to do my preliminary eye exam, and it was so much smoother and faster than my previous experiences with these things. I imagine part of it has to do with new technology and more efficient machines, but it was quick, painless, and I found myself back out in the waiting room until the doctor had an opening.
A few minutes later [and partway into a Real Simple magazine I wish I had read *before* the holidays] Dr. Court Thelan was leading me to a back room. Then he shot me in the leg and left me for dead.
I’m kidding.
The man is a good conversationalist, and clearly knows what he’s doing. He’s one of those people who make you feel really good about things that you don’t necessarily have control over [like your ability to read off the teeny tiny line on the Snellen chart]. I don’t get freaked out at eye exams anyway, but I get the feeling that he’s talked a few people off of ledges. He explained exactly what he was doing, and did it deftly, answering any questions I had along the way. I mentioned that I have a tendency to get itchy eyes during allergy season [not uncommon, but a nuisance] and he did a quick test to verify it wasn’t stemming from something more serious [something I’ve never had another optometrist do].
He popped some contact lenses in, and then I watched a little video about taking care of them. Kristy helped walk me through Contact Lenses 101, Kevin fit me for some new frames, I paid, and then I was outta there! All in about 90 minutes. [They have this sweet deal, by the way, where if you’re getting contacts they’ll give you half off frames and/​or sunglasses.]
I honestly don’t think I could have been more impressed with Annandale Eye Care. Going to the doctor, any doctor, has always been such a tedious annoyance. Here, you get the feeling that all of these people are working with each other, not for each other, and the place is buzzing with good atmosphere.
It’s right off the beltway, maybe a mile off exit 52. And it’s a hop away from Yechon, so y’all can get your K-​food fix after your appointment.