The great spectacles Rip-Off.                    An Observation by GM1SXX    28 May, 2008
For many years, I've wondered why glasses are so expensive.  I've always suspected that glasses are actually very cheap items to manufacture.  I have fairly lousy eyesight.  For all you opticians out there, here is my current prescription. 

Right                                                 Left

-3.75 sphere, +2.00 Cyl, 4 Axis        -1.75Sphere,    +1.25 Cyl    164 Axis   

This has changed only very slightly since my last eye test two years ago.

Not happy with paying what for me at least is quite a lot of money for glasses, I've been looking for a cheaper alternative for some time.  The High Street Opticians are not going to like this, but there is now an attractive alternative to paying artificially inflated prices for prescription glasses.  That alternative is online opticians.  I decided to give the online route a try. After all, at the prices they charge, there was/is not a lot to lose.  As it turned out, my experience so far has been all positive so I'd like to share it with our readers.

I arranged an eye-test at a local High Street Optician and used the prescription to order a new pair of glasses online.  I was quite surprised both at the quality of the goods and the efficiency of the service.

My glasses arrived this morning by post and I've been trying them out. I bought them from Glasses Direct just one of several  online opticians based in the UK.

First Impressions.
I have to say that the quality seems to be very good and the fit and finish ditto.
As you can see from my prescription, I am short-sighted in both eyes but VERY short-sighted in my right.
My left needs -1.75 dioptres while my right needs -3.75 dioptres (ouch!) of correction. I also have astigmatism in both eyes.

I decided to play safe and go for the cheap option... a pair of single vision glasses for £15 from their basic range.  My thinking was that if they turned out to be rubbish, I would not have lost much money.  Glasses Direct took about 4 days to turn around my order... very fast indeed.

These glasses are superb. They are a perfect fit and very lightweight considering my prescription. They work far better than my current varifocals . I can see finer detail at distance. As you might imagine, I WON'T be going to Specsavers, or any other High Street Optician again, except for an eye-test, something the Paisley branch of Specsavers at least seem to be very good at.    To be fair to Specsavers, they did point out that my prescription had changed very little since last time and they were thorough, patient and helpful during my eye test. This is commendable. www.specsavers.co.uk I have to give Specsavers 10/10 for their eyesight testing service.

When you consider that it costs £5-£7 to make the average pair of glasses (including labour), you have to wonder why opticians are so greedy? Where did I get these numbers from?  Well a quick perusal of the online opticians turned up those numbers.  Some are honest enough to tell you that they make a 100% mark-up on their fifteen quid glasses.  This rather surprised me because although I already knew how much single-vision coated plastic lenses cost, I expected the frames to cost more than they actually do!

With 60% of the population wearing glasses, it's not as if work for opticians of any sort is a bit thin on the ground! That old 'second pair free' con also needs looking into by the industry. Usually that means you get a pair of frames but still have to buy a very overpriced set of lenses for them. Remember also that the £5 - £7 price quote I mentioned above *includes* labour to assemble and test a normal pair of single-vision glasses and you can see what I'm complaining about.
 

One argument I've seen for the high cost of prescription glasses is the cost of training, equipment and premises etc, not to mention taxation.  Lets not forget that although the equipment used may be expensive, the cost is amortised over the value of the eye tests of  the many thousands of customers who make use of it.  So, that's a sham!

Sure training is expensive. It tends to be expensive no matter what field of activity you are in. My training has been expensive.  I don't expect to pass the cost of that training onto my customers.  We take the hit and get on with it. Some of that expensive training I've had is reflected in my wages (as if!).  I'm joking of course.

 Some High Street opticians have enough staff to staff  a decent sized office .  That indicates to me that there's plenty of money to be made if they can afford all those wages, which they most clearly can, thanks to their inflated prices.

Of course, online purchasing of glasses is not for everyone. To have a successful outcome you must provide input in the form of some measurements. These can most easily be taken using a metric ruler and your current pair of glasses as a reference. You can read more at the URL given above.  This is one reason why online ordering will not suite everyone.
Online ordering of bifocals seems to be realistic but for Varifocals, you need extra information such as the ideal position of the 'comfort zone', a parameter that seems to evade most opticians let alone customers! This I know to my cost.
 

Varifocal trials and tribulations.
I've had four pairs of varifocals to date and only once was I supplied with a pair of glasses that worked properly. 

One particular set  is worthy of note in that I bought two sets of varifocals at the same time... (same lenses & frames), but the two pairs of glasses supplied were completely different optically. One worked beautifully while the other pair caused eyestrain. More on this later.

How Varifocals work.

 AllAboutVision

  Progressive_lenses (Wikipedia)

Once you have a history of wearing varifocals, there is no comeback... you have to take what you are given, even if they don't work for you.    So much for all those highly skilled High Street Opticians.  Yes, the optician can apply some tweaks in that they can rotate the lenses a little in the frame or bend the frames themselves to reposition the comfort zone, but it's hardly a satisfactory fix.

My first pair of varifocals cost around £300 and had glass lenses. They didn't work for me. Wearing them made me feel sick.  To make them work for me, the optician twisted the frames so much that the legs closed as an X shape rather than sitting level, to reposition the optical zones correctly. Of course, this ruins the astigmatism correction because it rotates the lenses relative to the eyes. That's what £300 bought me.  Can anyone reasonably be expected to be happy with that sort of value for money?

My second pair (from a different optician was no better). My third and fourth pair (the ones mentioned above, purchased together, identical frames & lenses) were a mixed bag. My advice is that if you can find an optician who will LISTEN to you and not make their own assumptions about where the zones should be placed, you might have a fighting chance of  getting a pair that works for you. I'd have thought that were someone to order a pair of identical varifocal glasses that the optician concerned might compare the position of the  zones they mark out in each pair, but it seems not. Its the easiest of things to do, you just need to plonk the frames on a flat surface and sight through them to see if the marks they made on the blank lenses line up, but they didn't bother!    Makes you wonder why they can justify charging so much.  Given my negative experiences with varifocals, I'm going back to single-vision lenses. For me at least, varifocals are just not worth the hassle and expense.

From now on I'll be avoiding the High Street shops. At £15 a pair, if these glasses hadn't worked for me I could have just binned them and started again elsewhere without feeling bad about the experience.  As is happens, I'm actually delighted with my purchase.

I would stress to readers that regular eyesight tests (every two years) are highly recommended. Not only can they reveal eye defects, but they can also uncover other medical conditions that may have gone undetected.  Take it from me.  I KNOW.  I've been there.

 Today, I'm a happy bunny.

Glassesdirect in the News. Read for yourself.

For those who like a choice, and who doesn't, I did a a quick search of Google for 'online glasses' and 'online specs' and unearthed the following small list.
www.glassesdirect.co.uk www.specs2go.co.uk www.perfectspecs.co.uk www.spex4less.com www.spexfactory.co.uk www.specs-by-post.com www.spextacular.co.uk www.economeyes.co.uk www.highstreetspecs.co.uk www.buyglasses.co.uk www.glassesuk.com www.glasses2you.co.uk www.myoptics.co.uk www.spexmaniac.co.uk www.selectspecs.com www.thespecsplace.com

There seems to be plenty of choice out there.