Glasses Direct

southcoastsounds

Having seen Jamie, the founder of Glasses Direct on tv a few months ago I thought that when my glasses came up for renewal I'd give his company a go. I have used Specsavers for many years and have been perfectly happy with them, but the savings Jamie seemed to offer seemed to make a change worthwhile.

So, I entered my new prescription (from Specsavers) into the GD website, chose four sample frames and paid my £5 fee.

When they arrived, they all seemed OK and it was easy to choose one of them. I decided to phone them up to order as it seemed quite a palaver to go through the website when I needed varifocals, a different frame for my free pair and tinting on one of them.

I was astonished to find the final price was over £350 so I told the call agent that I wanted to check the equivalent price with Specsavers. I then went back to my local branch and found that with all current offers (including free varifocals) Specsavers were cheaper. My prescription varifocal sunglasses alone ended up costing me £93 with current offers.

Also, the service at Specsavers seems much more thorough. They measured my temple width, my pupillary distance and marked up the new glasses with a cross showing where the centre was. They will fit them for me when they arrive and if I get any problems with them such as screws falling out of the hinges I just need to take them in and they will fix it while I wait. Glasses Direct offer me a YouTube video of how to adjust the frames myself using hair dryer! Oh yes, I'm going to be really thrilled about messing about with a brand new pair of specs with a hair dryer in the hope that I can get them to fit over my ears. And what about the temple width that Specsavers measured - they don't even mention that one as far as I can see.

Frankly, its no contest for me - I thought the whole point of Glasses Direct was that it was cheap enough to outweigh the inconvenience of using a remote service like theirs. The call agent said that they couldn't match specsavers free varifocal offer and I'm wondering why GD rely on offers anyway - why aren't they just cheaper all round - Specsavers have the cost of a High Street premises to support, which must be a huge overhead and yet they still were cheaper in my case than GD which is Internet only.

I don't get it.

One more tip to anyone who's thinking of using GD - I returned the frames using recorded delivery. As far as I understand it, their T&Cs for home trial state that if they're lost in the post on return you get charged for the missing frames. - the T&C say

"if you do not return the frames sent to you in the Home Trial, within 7 calendar days following receipt by you (which for these purposes will mean 8 days following despatch to you) then you will have placed a Frame Order to buy the frames . . .If you place a Frame Order as described above we may accept it and if so you will be charged the full price of the frames (less any Home Trial Fee already paid which will be given as a discount). The price of the frames will be the advertised price of the frames at the time you placed your Home Trial Order."

Very scary - as I understand it, if they don't receive them back within 8 days of them despatching them to you you get charged the cost of FOUR frames at full advertised price( even though their value is probably about a tenth of that). Am I reading this right???

As it is I only lost the £5 non-returnable home trial fee (if you order glasses its taken off the final cost but you don't get it back if you don't order).

Tom