Buying Eyeglasses Online: Tell Lenscrafters to Stop Robbing You Blind!

We’ve all heard about “sticker shock” at the car dealership and the Apple store.  What about “sticker shock” at the optical shop?  Anyone who wears glasses with corrective lenses is familiar with the concept.  For most of the visually challenged among us, buying prescription eyeglasses is a necessary but cumbersome and even humiliating ritual performed on an annual or biennial basis.  You leave your eye doctor’s office, prescription in hand, with vague hopes that, this time, you will end up with a stylish set of eyeglasses frames, frames that do not make you look like an accountant who belongs to a knitting circle. 

Still hoping against hope, you venture down to Lenscrafters or Pearle Vision or any one of a number of optical chains or independent optician’s shops.  The “sell job” begins as soon as you walk in the door.  The walls are lined with row after dizzying row of frames, so many that the hapless consumer instantly abandons all pretense of being able to pick the “right one” without the help of that forceful salesperson—er, optician—who magically appears at your side ready to offer suggestions.  You submit yourself totally to his power.  After all, one is usually at a disadvantage when choosing glasses frames.  Often, the patient comes directly from the doctor’s office with recently dilated pupils and is trying on frames without benefit of her current pair of glasses.  Yes, you say, meekly, I could use some advice.

The optician then brings out a series of progressively more expensive frames, pointing out the indisputable merits of each.  We’re all familiar with the sell job: These cat’s eye frames soften the lines of your oblong face.  This pink color contrasts nicely with the cool undertones of your skin.  Finally, it’s time to choose.  A strong-willed customer will pass over the $400 Dior frames and go for the plain metal-rimmed style that is on sale for $99.  Whew! You may actually get out of here without spending a month’s salary.  You sigh in relief.

But the hard sell has not yet begun.  Now you must choose lenses for your frames.  You are told that you absolutely must choose the thinnest, highest indexed plastic available in order to avoid glare, distortion, and the stereotypical “coke bottle lens” look.  Then the optician tuts and tsks over the scratches in the lenses your old pair of glasses which are folded in a shabby heap next to your paperwork.  You must, absolutely must get an anti-scratch coating.  Do you work much at the computer?  Do you drive?  Yes?  Then you absolutely must get the anti-glare coating.  And there is no question about the anti-UV coating.  You wouldn’t want that radiation destroying your eyes, would you?