Glasses Buying Cost Cutting Plan Article Discussion Area

buglawton

100% agree about the high cost of high index lenses in the UK. Us punters in Blighty are obviously considered to be ripe for the picking.

The net effect with me is that I put very large intervals between buying new frames and don't have any nice spares.

It would not surprise me if there a quiet price cartel in operation.

esseesee

buglawton wrote: »

100% agree about the high cost of high index lenses in the UK.
I ... don't have any nice spares.

Spares? What are they? I haven't had spares for the past many years. The best I have is my old specs with the old, previous prescription, lenses in them.

Those of us with poor eyesight who need high-index lenses for their specific qualities, not merely for vanity's sake, are held hostage by high street opticians here in the UK. Opticians cannot/will not supply 'standard' price lenses in my prescription so there is no way that I can 'get a cheap pair to keep as a spare' as people so blithely recommend.

Steve_xx

esseesee wrote: »

Spares? What are they? I haven't had spares for the past many years. The best I have is my old specs with the old, previous prescription, lenses in them.

Those of us with poor eyesight who need high-index lenses for their specific qualities, not merely for vanity's sake, are held hostage by high street opticians here in the UK. Opticians cannot/will not supply 'standard' price lenses in my prescription so there is no way that I can 'get a cheap pair to keep as a spare' as people so blithely recommend.

Generally speaking, one can obtain a pair of glasses at somewhere like Specsavers for as little as £25. Though I accept this is not the case for everyone. When you consider the time that it takes an optician to perform a test, on average around 25 minutes and then to be able to produce spectacles for £25 inclusive of the eye test; it's nothing if it's not cheap.

Sometimes those low charges have to be recovered elsewhere and I'm afraid that your complex prescription is more costly to produce, though it may be that the markup is greater on your pair. However, if every customer to an optician had their eye test and was subsequently dispensed spectacles for the inclusive sum of £25 then there would be no high street opticians in business because on average an optometrist will perform about 19 tests in a day. At £25 a time inclusive of the dispensing that would gross just £475 per day takings and out of that comes rent, rates, staff salaries, fuel, equipment costs and the costs of the sales etc.

buglawton

Lets get this straight: If your eyes focus point is 6 inches instead of infinity, you can get cheap plastic lenses.

HOWEVER if you want thin lenses that look OK in thin frames then you have to go high index.

It is the high index bit that costs all the money, not the 'complexity' of the prescription. At first glance this seems to be down to what Pentax etc want their materials retailed at... then we hear, much much cheaper in some other countries for the same high index plastic.

Hence the suspicion of yet another case of Rip Off Britain.

Steve_xx

buglawton wrote: »

Lets get this straight: If your eyes focus point is 6 inches instead of infinity, you can get cheap plastic lenses.

HOWEVER if you want thin lenses that look OK in thin frames then you have to go high index.

It is the high index bit that costs all the money, not the 'complexity' of the prescription. At first glance this seems to be down to what Pentax etc want their materials retailed at... then we hear, much much cheaper in some other countries for the same high index plastic.

Hence the suspicion of yet another case of Rip Off Britain.

If Pentax maintain high prices for their product, then are you suggesting that the optician should subsidise that cost, rather than the NHS?

buglawton

I don't actually recall mentioning what the optician is charging

esseesee

Steve_xx wrote: »

Generally speaking, one can obtain a pair of glasses at somewhere like Specsavers for as little as £25.

... though it may be that the markup is greater on your pair.

Steve, please inform me precisely WHERE I can get a pair of glasses for £25 with a prescription of -13.5 dioptres. If you can inform me of an optician who will consider supplying standard lenses at standard cost for this prescription, I would be very grateful indeed, as then I could have a spare pair at my current prescription.

Surely, given your apparent knowledge of the optical trade, you are only too well aware, opticians will not dispense standard lenses at this sort of prescription and so the 'mark-up' as you call it is at least £90 for optically-mediocre, 'own brand' plastic 1.67 or 1.74 lenses. As I am sure you are also aware, optically-mediocre plastic, while doubtless satisfactory for the great mass of people who only need their specs for small print or watching the telly, is just not going to cut it for Sph -13.5, Cyl +1.75, Axis 10.00.

Your facility at arithmetic is indeed admirable; however my optician in a fancy part of Sydney must be even better at arithmetic than you are as his markup seems sufficient for him to both lead a comfortable lifestyle and to have supplied me with 1.9 branded glass in my frames at a total price of $300AUD, and to offer me almost the same price for my new prescription if I fax it to him this weekend. We are not talking about outsourcing the work to China or Pakistan in this instance.

How is it, then, that a cheap chain optician in England can justify charging almost £300 extra, over and above the 'standard' cost, for their 'own brand' 1.8 glass? or £90+ extra for their unspecified (1.67 or 1.74 Aspheric I imagine) ultrathin plastic?

I have deliberately not compared UK highstreet prices with online prices for a couple of reasons - the main one being that the cheapest online retailers will not deal with a prescription like mine and also because it is somewhat inequitable to compare prices on the UK high street with prices in China or Pakistan via an intermediary in a home office in Europe or the US.

It is, however, perfectly fair to compare the price I paid(£125 when the exchange rate was in sterling's favour) and will pay(£208 quoted this weekend) for a complete pair of glasses at a private optical practice in an expensive area of Sydney, with the price I was asked for at a cheap high street optician in Manchester last week - £400 before taking into account my complex lens and pension credit guarantee vouchers which is still over £300 after the vouchers.

Sadly, I wouldn't call UK prices 'markup', I would call it profiteering on the backs of those of us who have such poor sight that without the medical devices for which we are grossly overcharged, we would be unable to function safely on a daily basis.

esseesee

Steve_xx wrote: »

If Pentax maintain high prices for their product, then are you suggesting that the optician should subsidise that cost, rather than the NHS?

I believe you are the only person who has made any noises about opticians subsidising anything.

Perhaps, if the cause of high prices is that Pentax maintains these for their products in the UK, as compared to not doing so in eg Cyprus, India and Australia, the government could help itself, the NHS, opticians and the glasses-wearing public, by negotiating with the optical materials suppliers as it does with certain large pharmcos in the case of some drugs.

Steve_xx

buglawton wrote: »

I don't actually recall mentioning what the optician is charging

No, you didn't mention that. I asked you if you thought that the optician ought to subsidise the cost.

Steve_xx

esseesee wrote: »

Steve, please inform me precisely WHERE I can get a pair of glasses for £25 with a prescription of -13.5 dioptres. If you can inform me of an optician who will consider supplying standard lenses at standard cost for this prescription, I would be very grateful indeed, as then I could have a spare pair at my current prescription.

I did say that this low cost would not be the case for everyone. And, clearly it is not so for you. If it were the case for everyone, then opticians would not be able to survive.

Surely, given your apparent knowledge of the optical trade, you are only too well aware, opticians will not dispense standard lenses at this sort of prescription and so the 'mark-up' as you call it is at least £90 for optically-mediocre, 'own brand' plastic 1.67 or 1.74 lenses. As I am sure you are also aware, optically-mediocre plastic, while doubtless satisfactory for the great mass of people who only need their specs for small print or watching the telly, is just not going to cut it for Sph -13.5, Cyl +1.75, Axis 10.00.

Opticians will sometimes dispense lenses of that prescription but of course they would be very heavy, so they tend not to. Sometimes in life we have little or no choice. For example, once I was unemployed and because I had a few bob in the bank I was not entitled to unemployment benefit. Fair enough you might say. But, the few bob I had in the bank had to keep me. So not only did it have to keep me, but the interest that it accrued was taxed. My taxes on this small income went to pay families who were on upto 60k per annum in the form of Family Tax Credit. Unfair, but there it is!

Your facility at arithmetic is indeed admirable; however my optician in a fancy part of Sydney must be even better at arithmetic than you are as his markup seems sufficient for him to both lead a comfortable lifestyle and to have supplied me with 1.9 branded glass in my frames at a total price of $300AUD, and to offer me almost the same price for my new prescription if I fax it to him this weekend. We are not talking about outsourcing the work to China or Pakistan in this instance.

I can't easily comment on what things are like in Australia, but the same analysis will generally apply. If you are selling a pair of spectacles for circa £25 then they are being cross-subsidised and the business will need to recover that elsewhere. If you go to you optician and you have an eye test and obtain spectacles too for say £200, would you think you had received poor value if during your eye test you optician found evidence of a tumour at the early stages?

How is it, then, that a cheap chain optician in England can justify charging almost £300 extra, over and above the 'standard' cost, for their 'own brand' 1.8 glass? or £90+ extra for their unspecified (1.67 or 1.74 Aspheric I imagine) ultrathin plastic?

Would you consider that £300 is an excessive amount to pay for a new suit of your choice?

I have deliberately not compared UK highstreet prices with online prices for a couple of reasons - the main one being that the cheapest online retailers will not deal with a prescription like mine and also because it is somewhat inequitable to compare prices on the UK high street with prices in China or Pakistan via an intermediary in a home office in Europe or the US.

It is, however, perfectly fair to compare the price I paid(£125 when the exchange rate was in sterling's favour) and will pay(£208 quoted this weekend) for a complete pair of glasses at a private optical practice in an expensive area of Sydney, with the price I was asked for at a cheap high street optician in Manchester last week - £400 before taking into account my complex lens and pension credit guarantee vouchers which is still over £300 after the vouchers.

Sadly, I wouldn't call UK prices 'markup', I would call it profiteering on the backs of those of us who have such poor sight that without the medical devices for which we are grossly overcharged, we would be unable to function safely on a daily basis.

At the end of the day it is not expensive for spectacles here in the UK. Though I appreciate that in some instances such as yours, then it seems so.