Glasses Buying Cost Cutting Plan Article Discussion Area

Funny how we seem to have a load of opticians on this thread warning people about the evils of buying glasses online. I went into Specsavers a couple of years back the cheapest pair of glasses frames that suited me were £100. This is just for the frames. I then had to get the lenses. This cost me another hundred and something. I then needed another pair of glasses for the spare pair as I wear my glasses all the time. I was able to find another pair, I had to pay for the lenses again. My bill at the end of this was £347 including the eye test. It took three weeks for my glasses to be returned to the opticians and fitted.

Less than a year later the most expensive pair started falling apart. So I was on the spare pair as I couldn't get to the opticians. These hadn't been fitted properly so they were wonky. I needed to get another pair of glasses but didn't fancy forking out another £300+. When I looked on this site and saw a thread recommending goggles4u with specs at £15. I didn't see what I had to loose. I got get twenty pairs from there for what I had paid for two pairs in Specsavers.

So I got a free eye test with a voucher from D&A, asked the girl who was taking my details what my pupil distance was - they measure it for their records incase you buy a pair of glasses with them. Then I went online and bought a pair of glasses from goggles4u. This took eight days to get to me from Pakistan. Instead of the twenty one days it took in this country, the glasses also included high index lenses and coatings at no extra cost.

I have not experienced any headaches, unlike sometimes when I have bought glasses from these so called "Professionals". Professional rip off merchants is more like it. Opticians have had it all their own way for too long. Now with the internet they are finally getting serious competition.

I've seen a frame that I like, its a Hugo Boss frame from Specsavers which is £125 - where can I get the same frame cheaper?

I've tried a few other sites but the model numbers all seem to be different - is this one of the tricks used to ensure that we don't buy online?

http://www.specsavers.co.uk/cgi-bin/strudwick.sh/s?langid=1&pfmt=1&siteid=39&pname=frames/designer_detail.html&material=hugo&range=designer&price=&page=1&prodid=1001772

Well the last time my wife bought some glasses from Specsavers BOGOF, at about £150, for very plain rimmed specs that were quite frankly !!!!e. Neither have been comfortable, optically she says they are poor, they don't look very nice and the coatings are rubbish.

I went and got a quote for rimless glasses last year, from another high street opticians. It started at about £100 - the listed price, but soon went up - "oh you need special thinner lenses because of your prescription" blah blah "you need something else special" blah blah and in the end it was going to be over £300. Oh well I said forget it I'll stick with contacts and my old back ups.

Now last month I got two pairs of titanium, hingeless, rimless, thin lens glasses from optical4less.com (HK based) for £92 delivered, and they are fantastic. I am really really pleased, they look great and are really comfortable. Though of course they might make my head explode, and because I am obviously too dim to tell whether they allow me to see properly I may end up crashing my car but I'm willing to take my chances :-)

I have never disrespected the quality of the workmanship of glasses from the Far East. They are made to very high standards.

My point is that we are talking about your health. Do you really want to cut corners when it comes to you eyesight????

The sales assistant that took you your pd would have had extensive training to do this and would have been supervised by a Dispensing Optician. A D.O. is not the same as an optician. They deal with the glasses themselves and not finding the prescription.

As I have said. Glasses are a Medical Device. You have had your PD taken professionally.

If you read my posts I have talked about the problems you might have with you glasses if you take your PD your self, or if you enter it into the order incorrectly.

To see for your self that can happen to your vision when your PD is out you only need to look as far as a magnifying glass. When you look through on you can only see through the very center of the magnifier. If you try to look through the sides of the lens you will see that the page or what ever you are looking at will slope away and become very blurred.

This is the Prism working and is exactly the same in glasses. As I have said before the higher your prescription the worse this becomes.

You may not even notice this with glasses when you first put them on. It may take a few hours or even days for you to have any problems due to an incorrect PD. As I have said before, you may not even have any problems.