How can glasses from Internet vendors be so cheap? How about quality?

[Dewey_Finn]

Warby Parker has bricks & mortar stores in some of the major cities, where you can see and try on various frames and have your glasses fitted by a licensed pro. Their standard glasses start at $95 (or they did; I have no idea if that’s still current). So somewhat more than the lowest cost glasses from Zenni, but less than many of the traditional retailers.

What I didn’t like about Warby Parker frames at the time (a couple of years ago) was how they were all basically the same design, which didn’t appeal to me.

[md-2000]

I have to go to an eye doctor who not only measures my eyes but gives me a prescription. Then I take that the the glasses store of choice. Walmart counter is not that much different from regular walk-in stores. Of course, I take a photo of the prescription before I hand it over. Now that I have 2 pairs of $400 glasses, I’m thinking I could try online next. I’m due pretty soon. (Benefits cover new glasses every 2 years, but only to $225. I’m assuming the fine print won’t allow online stores, but I guess I’ll find out. )

[eschrodinger]

I have gotten very high quality frames* with high quality progressive lenses at my eye doctor’s store. I have very good vision insurance, so I don’t pay very much of it, but they’re $600 or more, I think. I also always get the doctor to send me a copy of that prescription, plus one for single vision reading glasses. I use the reading glasses to read in bed.

I’ve gotten a backup pair of progressives from zenni, and many many pairs of single vision reading glasses. None of the frames has come close to the quality of my Masunaga or Moscot frames, but they have all been serviceable, which was all I needed.

I don’t like disposable culture, but my prescription has been changing rapidly, so I keep having to get new ones anyway. I’ve never thought that zenni got the prescription wrong. I’ve also not been able to reorder the same frames when I wanted to, because some of them seem to not last long. It also took some trial and error to figure out what width frames I should get.

Lastly, for the one pair of progressives I got from zenni, there is a difference in the quality of the lenses compared to my expensive ones. The expensive lenses have a bigger usable area, with less of the blurry edges you get with progressives. The zennis I have to turn my head more to get to the right part of the lens.

*I specifically picked frames that are well-engineered and well-made. You can get flimsy frames that are more about fashion and brand name at brick and mortar stores too. But nothing I’ve gotten from zenni even comes close to my “good” frames.

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

@md-2000

Think, too, that basically the store is probably doing the same as if you buy from Zenni - they collect the number for you - prescription, pupil distance - and then send the order to a factory. So you are basically paying a premium for a brick-and-mortar establishment to exist - rent and utilities, decor, a boat-load of sample frames, and several salaries. Basically to allow you to physically try the frames, answer questions, send in your order, and then fine-tune the fit of the product.

Let’s try a back-of-the-envelope calculation. If you assume there 4 people to keep the store manned, making $36,000 a year each (mathematically convenient number) then the store has to do $12,000 a month just to pay their salaries, or $400 a day. If we use the standard rule of thumb for business that salaries are 50%, the store has to do $800 a day. (Although I have no idea how expensive commercial rents are nowadays)

So the question is - of that $400 you pay for glasses, how much is the store’s share? Unless they also order from Zenni or Warbey Parker they are probably only making say, $100 to $150 off that sale. They need to have 8 customers each day every day just to break even. If they have more than 4 total staff (to cover 9A-9P 6 days a week) then the requirements go up.

Or you buy from the internet at 1/16 the price and skip the personal service.

I wonder why bricks and mortar businesses are having such a tough time?

Because you can be equally satisfied with your online glasses that you purchased at a fraction of the B&M cost?

Not all that mysterious.

mmm

[Dewey_Finn]

@eschrodinger

Lastly, for the one pair of progressives I got from zenni, there is a difference in the quality of the lenses compared to my expensive ones. The expensive lenses have a bigger usable area, with less of the blurry edges you get with progressives. The zennis I have to turn my head more to get to the right part of the lens.

When I got the progressive lenses I’m wearing now, the fitter had to carefully measure my eyes and mark up the blank plastic lenses with marks indicating, I suppose, where the transition should start. So I wonder how well that would work when there’s no one there to make these measurements.

[CookingWithGas]

@Dewey_Finn

When I got the progressive lenses I’m wearing now, the fitter had to carefully measure my eyes and mark up the blank plastic lenses with marks indicating, I suppose, where the transition should start. So I wonder how well that would work when there’s no one there to make these measurements.

I had progressives and I would worry about that too. With progressives, they have to measure not just the distance between pupils, but also the vertical point on the lens where your pupils align. I don’t know how they would do that for online orders. It seems that you would need a measurement specific to the particular frames. Although I have to say that they didn’t get it quite right with my in-store progressives. When I was driving I had to experiment with head tilt to get the right focus for mid-range to distance (like street sign distance).

[eschrodinger]

@Dewey_Finn

When I got the progressive lenses I’m wearing now, the fitter had to carefully measure my eyes and mark up the blank plastic lenses with marks indicating, I suppose, where the transition should start. So I wonder how well that would work when there’s no one there to make these measurements.

Luckily, I think they got that part right. I don’t really notice a difference in terms of looking through the right part for the distance. It is just that the sweet spot is much smaller. I wonder if that measurement is one that is going to be the same or close for most people, with some percentage being outliers. If so, zenni might just go with a value that will be in the ballpark for most people, and it will be good enough. That’s basically what zenni’s motto should be: “Good Enough.” If it’s for a backup pair, or it’s all you can afford, it’s good enough.

[Schnitte]

That was common at a time when everybody would get their glasses from a brick-and-mortar optician simply because there were no other options. Doing it also for glasses bought from other opticians wouldn’t make much of a difference in such an economy - you would do that sort of minor service for other opticians’ customers, some other optician would do it for a customer of yours, and in the end it all evened out.

But now, with online shopping being what it is, if opticians now offer this kind of free maintenance to non-customers, they’re basically footing the bill for the online competition that would never return the courtesy. So it’s not a good business practice at all, it’s simply allowing yourself to be ripped off by providing a service for free that the competition doesn’t provide and therefore doesn’t have to factor into its pricing.

[CookingWithGas]

@Schnitte

if opticians now offer this kind of free maintenance to non-customers, they’re basically footing the bill for the online competition that would never return the courtesy. So it’s not a good business practice at all, it’s simply allowing yourself to be ripped off by providing a service for free that the competition doesn’t provide and therefore doesn’t have to factor into its pricing.

I have not studied the economics of this but I have three thoughts on the practice:

1. The marginal cost of adjusting glasses is zero. You are not increasing staff to be able to offer that service, the person performing the service is using otherwise-idle time. The only downside could be if you have paying customers waiting while staff is doing this for a non-customer, but you can certainly prioritize your paying customers.

2. It builds goodwill and gets people into the store. You can’t get a new customer if they never set foot into the store. Maybe once in a while, one of these people will come back to get their eye exam there, or maybe even buy a pair of glasses if they are unhappy with their Internet cheapies.

3. I’m sure that most people that walk in to get this done have no intention of spending a dime in the place, but #1 and #2 might make it worth doing.

[thorny_locust]

@Horatius

the loss leader frames are so cheap, they’re basically disposable. If you can use the basic lenses, you can probably get 20 pairs for the same price as one pair of traditional glasses. So if they break? So what! Toss it and use another pair from your stash. If they last more than a month each, that’s easily two years worth of glasses, which is usually about the time the doctors expect you to come in for a new prescription anyways.

I get a good bit more than two years out of decent quality frames. It’s usually possible just to buy new lenses when the prescription changes; no need to replace the frames.

[Joey_P]

Something else to keep in mind, at least in the few minutes I’ve spent browsing Zenni (haven’t ordered from them yet) is that they don’t offer name brands. Granted, all the frames could very well be coming from the same factory, but if you go to a place like Lens Crafters, there’s a good chance you’re going to end up with frames that say Gucci or Ray-Ban or Burberry on them and you’re going to pay extra for that.

@swampspruce

Find an optician willing to do so for a fee, I suppose.

There’s a store near me (haven’t been there, but a friend has) that has an ‘internet package’. For $30 they’ll measure your PD so you can order online from wherever you want and when they arrive they’ll take care of adjusting them for you. Seems like a good way to give people the ability to order cheap glasses and still maintain some income.

@Sam_Stone

Yep. And it was common practice for a long time for optometrists to only release your prescription to their own affiliated opticians. The first time I requested a copy of my prescription I was met with all kinds of hostility.

When I first got glasses, way back in the 80’s (FTR, I was only in 5th grade, my mom was handling all this), I still remember the doctor did the eye exam and then told us to ‘go across the hall’ and they’ll take care of the glasses. As if that’s just how things worked. I’m sure that doctor made quite a bit of money in kick backs from that glasses store.

Now (and I assume most of us are aware of this) not only is that illegal, but they’re actually legally required to hand you a copy of your prescription, whether you ask for it or not, as part of the exam.

The first time I did an online eye exam with 1800Contacts, I was looking around on the internet for reviews and found an optometry message board filled with a lot of doctors that said their practices were really suffering now that people can simply renew their script online.

If you haven’t done this before, you need a copy of your most recent script and (off the top of my head) if it’s less than 2 years old, 1800contacts can renew it for another 2 years, or something along those lines. Many of these doctors said that when they get a fax from 1800contacts to verify a script, they just ignore it or they contact the patient with some BS about why they can’t (won’t) release your script to 1800contacts. They’ll attempt to charge them a fee for doing so or they’ll tell you that they can give you your script…just as soon as you come in for an eye exam. And again, this was a bunch of eye doctors discussing these excuses and lies. Many of them, especially the older ones, mentioned that this is hurting their business enough that lying to deny releasing the scripts was worth the risk of going out of business if it meant getting some patients back in the door.

Luckily, for the patient, you can ignore all the doctor’s BS. Once a request for verification happens, a lack of response is considered a a verification.

Having said that, some of the doctors did appear to be genuinely concerned about their patient’s eye health, saying that they’re not comfortable with patients being able to get their script renewed with out a doctor actually being able to do an actual eye exam and check for things like glaucoma and cataracts etc. But, at least to me, that argument doesn’t hold water considering that the majority of people (notably, those with good vision) don’t get eye exams unless there’s a problem. Unless there’s a correlation between poor vision and eye problems, wanting to check for cataracts (or whatever else they check for) to renew a script seems like a weak excuse.

Also, last time I checked (and it was a while ago), they wouldn’t renew your script if you are having any kind of eye problems or you haven’t had an actual, in person, eye exam in the last 5(?) years.

[Schnitte]

@CookingWithGas

The marginal cost of adjusting glasses is zero. You are not increasing staff to be able to offer that service, the person performing the service is using otherwise-idle time. The only downside could be if you have paying customers waiting while staff is doing this for a non-customer, but you can certainly prioritize your paying customers.

No, the main downside is that you’re actually incentivising customers to buy online rather than brick-and-mortar. If opticians do this kind of courtesy also for online customers, then those customers get the best of all possible worlds - they get the lower online prices plus the convenience of free walk-in maintenance in a B&M store if they need/want it. Why would they then pay the premium for B&M?

[DCnDC]

I disagree. Retail is entirely a traffic and customer acquisition game. Anything you can do to get people in the door is an opportunity to gain a customer. And if they didn’t offer Zenni customers a good reason to come into their store, they’d never have any opportunity to steal any of those customers away.

Granted, a vast majority of people are going to walk in, get their glasses adjusted free, then walk out. However, a certain percentage of those people will end up buying something; it probably won’t be the full monty of an exam, a complete set or two of glasses, and some accessories, but most people are going to a least look around for a minute or two, and maybe they pick up a lanyard or a nicer case than the crappy one that comes with Zennis. And while they have that customer literally stuck in front of them for 5 minutes, they can talk to them and see where Zenni is letting them down, if they are, and potentially offer a better product or service.

It can be as simple as just asking “How are these working for you?” or “When was your last eye exam?” I’ve been buying glasses from Zenni for years, with the same prescription. My vision deterioration appears to have more or less stabilized, but if I had a friendly, attractive person right in front of me, offering a quick eye exam, possibly for a discount, if I had the time I’d probably take them up on it.

[Schnitte]

In every optician’s shop I’ve ever been at, the eye exam itself was free; it was just a way to get the customer to order glasses, which is where the sale is made. So getting a customer to have their eyes examined is not going to generate any revenue if that customer does not subsequently order glasses in that shop. And again, why should the customer do that, knowing that this will cost more than online but not offer any advantages over buying online, because the nice courtesy repair or adjustment can also be had at that store for glasses bought online?

It’s the same with the nice case that the walk-in customer sees while waiting for the frame to be adjusted. I can see that very occasionally there might be a spontaneous purchase there; but I think it’s equally likely that the customer seeing that case thinks “Hey, that’s a nice case; I’ll memorise the brand and see if I can find it online for less than what it costs here.”

Brick-and-mortar retail has two main disadvantages compared to online: Prices, and product range to choose from. It has one main advantage over online, and that is the convenience for the customer to walk into a place and get the desired product or service on the spot, without the need to wait for a package to be delivered. A brick-and-mortar optician offering free courtesy repairs and adjustment also for glasses bought elsewehere is essentially giving that last advantage away.

[Dallas_Jones]

The eye glass industry is indeed a cartel/monopoly like the diamond industry. It is controlled by Luxottica, almost all of it.

If you have a prescription you can order glasses on line, even with an expired prescription. Nobody cares. The prescription settings are not very complicated. I have even played around with the settings to improve my lenses. Right is +1.25 or something like that, try 1.30 or go lower. The glasses are so cheap that you are risking little. The important measurement is the distance between your pupils.

And I will finish my little rant by saying that, other than looking into your eyes to detect signs of medical issues like high blood pressure or diabetes, the entire need to see an optometrist is also a scam. You should probably have your eyes looked at every 5 or 10 years to check for problems, otherwise these visits are not needed. There is no reason that the elaborate lens machine they use for you to say, “is this better or worse” can not be replaced by a machine that you can look into, adjust your view like a pair of binoculars, and get your own setting to order glasses. And I believe this industry is one of the most likely to be replaced by technology. Other than checking the health of your eyes, there is no reason at all that this medical profession exist.

[eschrodinger]

@Joey_P

Now (and I assume most of us are aware of this) not only is that illegal, but they’re actually legally required to hand you a copy of your prescription, whether you ask for it or not, as part of the exam

@Schnitte

In every optician’s shop I’ve ever been at, the eye exam itself was free; it was just a way to get the customer to order glasses, which is where the sale is made.

This varies by jurisdiction. Some states don’t allow opthamologists to own an optical shop – they have to be “independent.” In some states it’s OK. In some, they can be affiliated, like the Dr. rents space inside the optical shop, but is still a separate entity. In my state, the Rx has to be provided if requested, but it’s not a legal requirement for them to hand it to you. And my eye doctor owns her optical shop.

[Q.Q.Switcheroo]

@Dallas_Jones

There is no reason that the elaborate lens machine they use for you to say, “is this better or worse” can not be replaced by a machine that you can look into, adjust your view like a pair of binoculars, and get your own setting to order glasses.

Why is optometry stupid?

Suppose I’m given a pair of binoculars. I look through them at something, and it’s fuzzy. So I rotate the little knob on top of the binoculars. I turn it one way, the image gets fuzzier, so I turn it the other way. It gets sharper. By making minute analog adjustments, correcting for small errors, I can get the image as sharply focused as I’d like. And after I’m done, somebody could probably use the position of the focus wheel to determine how far away the object I was looking at is. Then I go t…

[CookingWithGas]

@Dallas_Jones

The prescription settings are not very complicated. […]There is no reason that the elaborate lens machine […]can not be replaced by a machine that you can look into, adjust your view like a pair of binoculars,

I’m not so sure. I use reading glasses and that’s easy, but astigmatism is more complicated to correct than nearsightedness or farsightedness.

I wonder when it will be possible for a machine to scan the inside of your eye and determine analytically by the lens and retina shape what prescription you need with no human or expertise required.

[Dewey_Finn]

It’s possible to do an eye exam, more or less automatically, using something called an autorefractor.

[BippityBoppityBoo]

Not if the whole article is read. The autorefractor is used to get to a basic starting point for the medically trained optometrist, MD or OD to step in and do the very precise subjective fine tuning and clinical confirmation.