Possible Specsavers Scam??

Extroversion

I have been speaking to a couple of friends who have recently bought glasses from Specsavers and who both have short sightedness / stigmatism in their eyes. They have been told that they had to buy "ultra thin" lenses due to their eyesight problem at a higher price than normal lenses.

I also have 'stigmatism' (how do you pluralise that? stigmatisms sounds like a child's word) in my eyes but my prescription isn't as strong as theirs. I have never bought glasses from Specsavers and have been offered "ultra thin" lenses as an upgrade but non-essential element of my glasses.

Is Specsavers massively upselling here and basically preying on people who need glasses but don't have extensive opthalmic knowledge? Surely short sightedness / stigmatism has been around longer and correctable for longer than the technology to produce "ultra thin" lenses has. Both my friends said that they had glasses in the past that weren't "ultra thin" but corrected their sight - although they did say they had very thick lenses. Not sure if that is particularly relevant though. Yet they believe - because of what Specsavers told them - that they now need! "ultra thin" lenses.

Am I getting on my soap box unfairly or not? What are other MSE's views?

m178591

I used to work for a company which actually made the lenses for the likes of specsavers. My understanding was the ultra thin "high index" lenses were really a cosmetic thing rather than something which certain eye problems required. This was about 10 years ago so things might have changed but we were always led to believe that basically if you needed powerful lenses for whatever problem you were trying to correct then these were likely to be thick lenses. By using a high index lens you could have a thinner lens. Having a thinner lens was considered to be cosmetically more attractive because it was lighter and thinner and therefore you have a greater variety of frames. They are however much more expensive to produce which is why they cost much more. I was never aware of any condition which actually required thin lenses but then I was a manufacturing guy not an optometrist.