In The Now

For Your Eyes Only

Buying glasses is quite frequently an experience that leaves a person feeling like they’ve been put through the wringer. I know that my own experience last year felt like someone turned me upside down and shook my lunch money out of my pockets.

When I was a kid, the drill was simple: You go to the optometrist, have your eye test, you pick your glasses, and you go home. In a couple of weeks, you pick them up, and you are bespectacled.

Now, they have all kinds of designer fames, super lightweight, scratch-proof, shatter-proof, water resistant to 50m, transition, fog-repellent lenses with windshield wipers and a laser guidance system.

In the shop I decided on, they never mentioned anything so prosaic as price, so, caught up in the experience and the atmosphere, I didn’t consider the price either, which I’m coming to realise is all part of the trap these businesses set for customers.

When I got the bill, my jaw literally dropped. I sat there with my mouth open, unable to believe that the bill for a single pair of glasses could possibly come to $1000.00. Still, they didn’t make a big fuss about it. It was just another part of their day. ‘Sure, what’s the big deal?’ they seemed to say. ‘People drop a G on glasses every day. And what the Hell, right? You’re worth it.’ I went along with it with a horrible feeling. Had the market gotten so completely out of whack in the short time since my last pair of glasses?

Getting back to the office, I was assured that, no, the market had not gotten so expensive. In fact, with the internet, glasses were cheaper than ever. I sucked up my pride and walked back to that fancy eyeglasses store and canceled my purchase – much to the chagrin and attempted pressure of the saleswoman – and finally got my glasses at another physical store for a much lower price.

I have never had the experience of, nor heard of an optometrist that didn’t also sell glasses. I like to believe the guys I’ve seen wouldn’t prescribe a pair of glasses to someone who didn’t need them, but their fancy machines for accurately measuring the distance between your eyes is only for use for those who wish to purchase glasses in the same building. This makes buying glasses on the internet a pretty unsure prospect, no matter what quality the glasses they sell. I sat in the bathroom with a ruler pressed up against my nose, and came up with a number for my PD. I’ve had the fortune of peeking at my official PD. I was only out by half a millimetre, but the distances for either side are not equal.

Now that I know this magic number, I suspect that I’ve bought my last pair of glasses in a store. The markup is just unbearable.

It would also be interesting to know what the measuring equipment plus training would cost, and what the ROI would be for charging potential internet glasses customers $5-10 a pop for their magic numbers.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Liam