Rip Off Britain - Spectacles

mttylad

AFAIK the cheap lenses actually cost £7.50, better ones cost more.

How much do you pay for the bits of metal that make your cars work?
How much did you pay for your TV?

They all sell for a profit yet did not cost anywhere near the selling price.

If you do not like the price in an opticians then try elsewhere.

And before you diss a supermarket - they have qualified opticians and optical dispensers and cannot sell you glasses without them.

I get mine from goggles4u.co.uk

**dancingbutterfly**

I worked in a private opticians for 2 years and the mark-ups are quite substantial but as other posters have said there's the overheads,staffing etc.

I can shed a little light on costings, (sorry nedmundo)

The cheap as chips 'budget' single vision CR39 lenses cost us 50 pence each. I cant remember the companies name now

Bifocals start from £2 per lense

Varifocals start from around £15 per lense, this is from the same cheap company, lenses were great never had any problems.

The single vision lenses we used to sell at £59 per pair

Bifs at £89 per pair

and varis start from £99 per pair. but we always had to 'persuade' patients to upgrade lense and pay £120-£150 at least.

Then polycarbonate lenses are a few pounds more and so are the thin lenses, 1.67, 1.74 index etc. quite a bit more.

If you wanted a pair of top of the range high index (1.74) varifocals to go into a top of the range rimless titanium frame it would cost roughly £120+ to us, then we would sell for £375+

Some of our patients used to have very complex prescriptions wanted the very best so then we'd source our lenses from carl zeiss et al.

But thats the name of the game, i would always tailor dispensing to the patients budget i was definately not in that job to sell it was to learn and i hated the 'hard sell' which my boss always pushed on me.

I used to make my boss so much money while he'd pay me a measly £6 per hour. I could dispense, i managed contact lense stock i asked for more pay else i leave and he wouldnt pay me any more so i left and he replaced me with someone with no experience and train them up and pay them the same. its no wonder the staff turnover was so high!

hth!

RealPolitik

Funny all this talk of rip-off opticians. Only a year ago Boots Opticians had to swallow all of the Dollond & Aitchison practices as they were going to go under?

Doesn't look like there's huge amounts of money - so called ripoffs

The optician himself must have to get paid out of the cost of glasses. How much would I pay someone to pick up a brain-tumour?

I wonder...

redcard

nedmundo wrote: »

And there'll be many more. You don't wonder into any shop and ask what the cost price of a product is. If anyone did tell you, you'd jump straight to the conclusion that it was a rip-off, because you wouldn't factor in the overheads and other costs.

There's a big difference between gross profit margins, which this program & this forum concentrate on and net profit margins, which I can assure you are not that big at all, unless you're Dean Butler - ex owner of Vision Express that is!

Wrong. I'm perfectly aware if the big chains are making the massive mark-ups, there's an arbitrage opportunity to make a successful business on less-massive markups.

What overheads? You mean like rent, salaries, council tax, electricity, storage? Not that hard to work out the cost of running a shop really.

RealPolitik

redcard wrote: »

Wrong. I'm perfectly aware if the big chains are making the massive mark-ups, there's an arbitrage opportunity to make a successful business on less-massive markups.

What overheads? You mean like rent, salaries, council tax, electricity, storage? Not that hard to work out the cost of running a shop really.

Oh dear..
I like how you list storage as a key point but not the cost of any of the optical equipment.

Ditto salaries - Maybe take a moment to think about the cost of an eye examination, the training that goes into a health-professional and the ability to screen a normal population who all suffer from headaches - for that one person whose life is saved.

I know this first-hand, so I would be happy to pay any amount for an eye examination

nedmundo

redcard wrote: »

Wrong. I'm perfectly aware if the big chains are making the massive mark-ups, there's an arbitrage opportunity to make a successful business on less-massive markups.

What overheads? You mean like rent, salaries, council tax, electricity, storage? Not that hard to work out the cost of running a shop really.

Wrong again! Equipment, training, registration with professional bodies..... Also, a typical practice dispenses a few items a day whereas a typical shop sells a whole lot more.

If there was such an opportunity to make a successful business on less massive markups, don't you think it would have been done by now? And before anyone cites Asda and Tesco as shining examples, I have one response to that - buying power and cross-subsidy.

Think about this, what would you pay a plumber, or a car mechanic, or a dentist, or solicitor, or electrician, or builder, or a homeopath or a ........ for an hour of their time? Most of these (dentist excepted) don't have anywhere near the regulation or overheads that Opticians have to operate with.

nedmundo

**dancingbutterfly** wrote: »

I worked in a private opticians for 2 years and the mark-ups are quite substantial but as other posters have said there's the overheads,staffing etc.

I can shed a little light on costings, (sorry nedmundo)

The cheap as chips single vision CR39 lenses cost us 50 pence each. I cant remember the companies name now

Bifocals start from £2 per lense

Varifocals start from around £15 per lense, this is from the same cheap company, lenses were great never had any problems.

The single vision lenses we used to sell at £59 per pair

Bifs at £89 per pair

and varis start from £99 per pair. but we always had to 'persuade' patients to upgrade lense and pay £120-£150 at least.

Then polycarbonate lenses are a few pounds more and so are the thin lenses, 1.67, 1.74 index etc. quite a bit more.

If you wanted a pair of top of the range high index (1.74) polycarbonate varifocals to go into a top of the range rimless titanium frame it would cost roughly £120+ to us, then we would sell for £375+

Some of our patients used to have very complex prescriptions wanted the very best so then we'd source our lenses from carl zeiss et al.

But thats the name of the game, i would always tailor dispensing to the patients budget i was definately not in that job to sell it was to learn and i hated the 'hard sell' which my boss always pushed on me.

I used to make my boss so much money while he'd pay me a measly £6 per hour. I could dispense, i managed contact lense stock i asked for more pay else i leave and he wouldnt pay me any more so i left and he replaced me with someone with no experience and train them up and pay them the same. its no wonder the staff turnover was so high!

hth!

Worth pointing out that the costs you quote are for 'budget' quality lenses. Better lenses with better optics and coatings, which the majority of good opticians would use, cost substatially more.

BTW - there's no such thing as 1.74 polycarbonate.

eyeinthesky

I worked for 3 optical manufacturers in the 60s and 70s, and the opticians mark up then was 400% and upwards. The opticians who used these companies didn't need lots of equipment, just the stuff needed for eye exams, and the normal shop overheads. The companies I worked for would make the lenses from scratch,(no pun intended, lol), and supply the frames in the required size. Sometimes, they would even make frames to order, but the dispensing optician would still mark up 400%. Oh, the optician would always drive a very expensive car, lol.

nedmundo

There was a monopoly in those days, before deregulation of dispensing.

redcard

nedmundo wrote: »

Wrong again! Equipment, training, registration with professional bodies..... Also, a typical practice dispenses a few items a day whereas a typical shop sells a whole lot more.

If there was such an opportunity to make a successful business on less massive markups, don't you think it would have been done by now? And before anyone cites Asda and Tesco as shining examples, I have one response to that - buying power and cross-subsidy.

Think about this, what would you pay a plumber, or a car mechanic, or a dentist, or solicitor, or electrician, or builder, or a homeopath or a ........ for an hour of their time? Most of these (dentist excepted) don't have anywhere near the regulation or overheads that Opticians have to operate with.

Unfortunately more people are buying their glasses online. Sure, you guys can still do the eye testing, but you'll probably have to revisit your business model if you want to survive.