Anyone have any experience in buying prescription eyeglasses on line? The places seem to have a good selection and ok prices, but how good are they?
I’ve bought five or six pairs of prescription reading glasses, including bifocals, from Zenni Optical, and I’ve been pretty happy with them. I’ve paid between $25 and $50 for glasses that my eye doctor and local storefronts wanted $150-300 for. The quality has been fine. I’ve never bought the $300 kind, so I can’t compare directly, but since I could buy 6-10 of these for one of them, I think they’re a damn good deal.
Progressive no-line bifocals and anti-reflective coatings add only $5 to $20 to the price.
The only problems I’ve had were 1) a faulty prescription (not their fault) and 2) a titanium frame that inexplicably snapped after several months of daily use. In both cases they replaced them for half price. In the latter, they replaced the frame only, and I reinstalled the old lenses into the new frames myself.
I have no idea why people think that $200-400 is reasonable for glasses.
I got two pairs of specs from Frames Direct.com. The cool thing about that site is that you can upload a photo of your face and “try on the frames.” It’s pretty cool. You click on checkpoints on your face and it lines up the frames so you can get an idea of how they’ll look on you.
Fill in your prescription, bada-bing, bada-boom, and your glasses and a lens cloth arrive in the mail.
I had a great experience and would use them again, but I don’t need to…because their glasses worked out so well for me the first time!
Another happy Zenni Optical customer here. Due to my enormous brain, there pretty much aren’t any regular frams that are large enough to fit around my head, so I go with the hinge-less flexible type, which are also a bit easier to buy online (only need to measure the distance between the eyes).
I got 1 pair of polycarbonate and one pair tinted. Less than $30 all in IIRC. Still wearing them now, no issues.
Another thumbs up for Frames Direct. Great prices and selection.