Isn’t that ‘special equipment’ called a drill? Yes, drilling into a lens would require the proper bit, but I don’t see where the ‘bitch to put together’ comes in. It still appears to be relatively simple.
Coincidentally, two weekends ago I just had an eye exam, then last Saturday pucked up and paid for new glasses and contact lenses. I don’t go to Lenscrafters; I go to my friendly semi-local optician who knows me and all.
My new glasses cost 370. New contact lenses for six months, 110. Examination fee, $ 84. It was an expensive couple of weekends. Fortunately, I have company insurance that will pick up the examination fee and $200 of the other costs.
(In a brilliant example of ‘penny-wise, pound-foolish’, a couple of years ago, the provincial public health insurance, OHIP, delisted eye exams for adults under 65.)
My prescription says: “OD -9.75 Cylinder -0.50, Axis 130, OS -5.75”. My right eye needs more lens than my left. Is that too strong a prescription for Lenscrafters to do in about an hour?
My lenses are a bitch to clean, and have been since I got 'em a little over a year ago. It seems like they’re always smeared. If I go lens-shopping, what material should I look for that’ll actually, y’know, clean fairly well?
Probably, yes. Our store doesn’t carry anything higher than -7 in our lenses. We could probably special-order it, though. In the lab, there are big drawers lining one wall filled with uncut lenses. They look like glass hockey pucks before they’re cut down. We only carry so many of each kind of lens.
The LensCrafters lab is a world to itself, filled with weird whirling machines and bubbling vats of colorful chemicals. There’s enough chemicals back there to melt down your local mall, and then some.
Featherwates Completes with Scotchguard are specially-made to be smudge-resistant. They do really well. I hear a lot of complaints from customers regarding the Featherwates Plus; I have them in my glasses, and yes, they do smudge easily. We sell all sorts of nifty towlettes and cleaner that does a good job of keeping your glasses clear.
TIP! If you spend a lot of time at the beach, be careful when cleaning your glasses. Salt spray gets on the lenses, and then when you rub them off, you’re just grinding the salt and sand particles into the lens material. I see a lot of customers with scratches on their lenses from this. The solution is to dip your glasses into fresh water before rubbing them dry, to wash off the salt and sand particles.
Should I have gone to SpecSavers?
Is it possible to combine any of the color-changing lenses (Transitions or Reactint) with the scratch- or smudge-resistant coatings? I tried to get this done the last time I went to Lenscrafters to get my glasses done, but the consultant I spoke with wasn’t able to get the computer to place the order. Specifically, I wanted lenses that changed to grey rather than one of the brightly colored Transitions (she was able to do it if I wanted a colored one, but not the grey ones). Is there a magic invocation I can use to do this?
I hadn’t ordered the Transitions before, and I like the color-changing features, but I’m seeing a lot more scratching, smearing, and haloing around things, so next time I get lenses I’m definitely going for the coated ones again.
Thanks!
Just before I got my pilot’s certificate I had prescription lenses put in my Ray Ban frames. (They automatically darken in sunlight, BTW.) I can probably still be legal wearing them, but they’re over 20 years old so I went to CostCo to see about getting my eyes checked and having the lenses put in my frames. They said they wouldn’t do it and I’d have to buy their frames. I’ll try Lenscrafters, I guess. (I also have a pair of HGU-4/Ps that I can use for frames too.) Once I get new glasses I can renew my Medical and get current.
You can get Transitions with anti-glare for $80 more. The lenses are essentially the same as a Featherwates Plus, with all the same shatter and scratch resistance.
Not familiar with them.
While your questions are being answered quite well, please keep in mind that the brand names (other than Transitions) are brands exclusive to LensCrafters. If you walk into a small-town optical place and ask for FeatherWeights or something to that effect, you’ll probably hear “Do you want Polycarbonate or Hi-Index?”
Transitions brand lenses are manufactured with a scratch-resistant coating already on them. As are most brands of Progressive multifocals.
And, not to disagree with the OP, I personally hate polycarbonate. It’s AWESOME for impact resistance, but I’ve seen too many stress fractures. I don’t wear it. My lenses are plastic, with Crizal Alize or UltraGlareFree coatings. I’ve got 2 pairs with Transitions, but my other 5 pairs don’t have it. I’m a real snob about my glasses. A prissy snob.
Good to see another optical-type person here on the board 
I wear a very mild prescription +1.0 mostly for eyestrain from staring at the computer all day at work and then staring at the computer (or a book) all evening at home. My prescription has been the same for the past 20 years, so it’s probably unlikely to have changed. Is there a good reason for me to come to LensCrafters rather than just picking up my next pair of glasses at the drugstore for around $15? (Besides the fact that the drugstore ones are mostly dorky looking, I mean )
Actually, if you check out some “off beat” boutiques, you can find REALLY adorable ones. I work at an ophthalmology practice, and the doctors sometimes tell the patients “all you need are simple readers, get 'em at the dollar store!”. (We are also located in a very economically depressed region, and our hyper-wealthy doctors try very hard to be sensitive to the fact that many of our patients can’t afford Rx glasses) This does not apply, of course, if there is an imbalance in prescription, ie. one eye is a +1.00 and the other needs a +2.50. Then, you gotta shell out for Rx glasses. When I worked retail (Pearle Vision Center, a long time ago), we actually had a “script” to talk people out of OTC readers. Now, I plan on getting them myself if I ever need them.
Not surprising since they are a UK chain. jjimm is just joshing I think
Is the fashion trend in eyeglass frames that’s prevailed over the past, oh, six years or so over yet? I hate those narrow horizontal slits that pass for true lenses and refuse to buy them, even though I need a new pair of glasses. How much longer before the fickle fates of fashion unveil a new look for the 21rst century?
And if there is a new look, what is it?
I hate those, too. I also hate plastic frames and huge lenses- I first got glasses in 1988, when that seemed to be all there was to choose from. Fortunately, medium-sized lenses and wire frames seem to be classic, so I can usually find something unless I’m in a really trend-oriented shop.
I have to say, I had a great experience with LensCrafters here in the Bay Area a few months ago. The nosepiece of my glasses had snapped. The place where I got the glasses said they could get them repaired in about a week. I couldn’t go without my glasses for that long (I’m blind without them), so I went looking for someplace to get new glasses fast. Turns out there’s a LensCrafters in the mall between my work and home, so I went there after work.
I like them much better than the place where I got my original glasses. There, all the frames are behind the counter, and you have to ask for them. That’s difficult to do when you don’t have a working pair of glasses, so you can’t see the frames unless your nose is just about touching them. I’m not nearly as blind as Sunspace (about -3), but it’s still hard to see frames several feet away. That, and the consultant there kept trying to push those awful narrow horizontal slits on me. :mad: I’ve worn round or roundish glasses ever since I got glasses at age 13- I don’t look like me in those narrow slits (and, all of a sudden, I understood why my parents always wanted to get plastic frames with big lenses, even when those were out and I, as a teenager, thought they were hideous). At LensCrafters, they have the glasses in racks on the wall, and I could get right up next to them and look at them, and nobody was trying to push me toward one kind of frame or another.
I really like the Scotchgarded lenses, too. I have oily skin, and the oil tends to collect on the top of my lenses. My Scotchgarded lenses are much better at not picking up so much oil, so they stay cleaner longer.
Why does coating the lenses cost so much? I just got back from the eye doctor, and the most costly part of the whole eyeglass package was $110 for coating the lenses. What is the markup on the coating?
Wow, yesterday I only spent $100 less than you and I didn’t get new glasses. 
My vision plan covers the exam fee and 15% of the fitting, plus $120/year for either contacts or glasses. After insurance I paid $103 for the exam/fitting, and will pay $80 for six months of lenses when they come in (yep, it’s $200 for a 6-mo supply). So even with insurance, I pay $380/year for contacts and an exam … and if I ever need a new glasses prescription, I’ll have to pay for that on my own. Vision insurance sucks.
(But when I do need glasses, I get them from LensCrafters – my family has used them for years!)
Why did the glasses I last bought at LensCrafters which were “estimated” by the sales associate at "about $250.00 cost over $400.00 when they were actually rung up and the work order placed? Why did the “about an hour” assembly time actually consume 31200% longer than that? Yeah, that right - one hour service took 13 friggin’ days. Finally, why does LensCrafters have phones from which one is apparently unable to make an outgoing call?
I guess instead of answering all those questions, you could maybe just answer this one: When am I gonna buy another pair of glasses from LensCrafters?
Okay, I have a question, but it might seem kind of silly. I wore glasses from the time I was four to twenty. And one of the things that I really hated about wearing glasses at that age (once I started caring about my appearance in my pre-teen and teen years) was that my prescription was so strong that the thickness of the lenses made my eyes look huge!
Now, I forget what they call it as I’m close to entering my 30’s, but apparently they were the type of glasses that make your eyes stronger by not doing all the work for you, so I haven’t needed glasses for ten years. But alas, I can tell I’ll probably need them again soon (I’m a professional pianist… music is small!).
So my question is: Am I going to run into the same problem, or has eye care made leaps and bounds and come up with a way to prevent this? Part of me thinks there’s no way to prevent it, because if it’s magnifying through one side of the lens it has to magnify the other side, but then the other part of me thinks “what the hell do I know?”
I’m not a big fan of contacts, and I’m sorry to say that this is one of the things that’s important to me, but there you have it…