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How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

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Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#111

Post by cheeko1234 »

glitchc wrote: post #46

I respectfully must disagree with all of the claims here regarding zenni and costco, unpopular as it may be. They are only comparable at the low end but have no matching product at the high end. I bought a pair of glasses at costco for $200 as a backup to my daily rimless wearers. First, costco and zenni don’t have any rimless options. Second, the lenses I did buy ( partial frame) were their lightest but still signif…

As a person wearing ~$55 Zenni rimless atm, I'll disagree.

Have had these glasses for more than a few years, have sat on them, dropped them on concrete, etc. Still going strong.

Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#113

Post by sampo »

driverdan wrote: post #98
sampo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much of our middle class burden comes from hidden rent seeking parasites like this. If you include the unwillingness to respond to demand by building enough new homes in the popular urban areas, probably a lot. A 1000 sq.ft. home (house or condo) should not cost more than $200,000 to build. Anything above that, someone is making profit.

A 1000 sq ft home costs nowhere near $200,000 to build. The land, on the other hand, costs more than that alone in major cities.

> The land, on the other hand, costs more than that alone in major cities.

You can build apartment buildings 5, 10, 20 or even 80 floors high. The cost of land per apartment can be made quite small by building higher.

Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#114

Post by 52-6F-62 »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #74
sampo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much of our middle class burden comes from hidden rent seeking parasites like this. If you include the unwillingness to respond to demand by building enough new homes in the popular urban areas, probably a lot. A 1000 sq.ft. home (house or condo) should not cost more than $200,000 to build. Anything above that, someone is making profit.

It doesn't even seem like anyone has interest in building $200,000 houses anymore, but they will sell you a poorly made condo for $400,000 and $600/mo HOA fees. I am a single person trying to find a house that is not four or five bedrooms (I only need one or two) and doesn't cost 1/2 mil minimum and it's difficult. This used to be called "the starter house" but it doesn't seem to exist anymore with new construction.

I've been wondering as well! The suburbs are filled with 4-5 bedroom McMansions— smaller 2-3 bedroom homes are hardly being built at all (except in the form of a townhouse, maybe).

So one can't even just "move to the 'burbs" to save money instead of living right in town. It's all the same price.

Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#116

Post by Technetium_Hat »

newnewpdro wrote: post #81
ourmandave wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same discussion on HN a couple months ago convinced me to try Zenni. I replaced my $300 walmart progressives with better for $80 and that includes shipping. That's less than my monthly cell phone bill. It's like my glasses went from sacred to disposable.

I had no idea you could spend $300 on glasses at walmart.

progressive lenses are expensive.

Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#117

Post by smush »

commandlinefan wrote: post #101
jerf wrote: post #27

It's articles like this that make me wonder how much of our middle class burden comes from hidden rent seeking parasites like this. I honestly don't know. I'm not trying to imply any particular thing. I honestly wonder. These sorts of things can stack up through the layers of companies that make things. And where does this money go? What does it end up doing?

Well, my first thought was - if eyewear can be produced for less, why doesn't somebody take advantage of the opportunity and do so? Capitalism at its finest and all that. But the answer immediately struck me: if somebody was offering a product at half the cost everybody else was, I wouldn't trust it - and I suspect most other people wouldn't, either. Considering the size of the initial investment, this upstart wouldn…

ZenniOptical - I've only used their glasses aside from my very first pair. They've been fine, and if someone were to step on my glasses, I'd angrily retrieve spare # 3 from my desk and/or spare # 2 from my car since each pair is ~30-70 USD.

Not an ad

Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#118

Post by ssully »

beering wrote: post #18
jasode wrote: post #8

I was able to slash my eyeglasses expenditures in both the exams and the frames: eye exams: I used to pay the optometrist $153 ($117 refraction + $36 dilation). I later found out that Costco often has an optometrist on site in a tiny office and will charge just $59 (and add +$20 for dilation). That's less than half the cost of most other optometrists. frames: switched to Zenni online to avoid the LensCrafters/Pearle/…

I ended up with Warby Parker after decent experiences with Zenni. Warby Parker offers a home try-on service for free, where they ship you a pack of frames for you to try on (without prescription lenses). They also have a few retail stores. They still came out to be cheaper than Luxottica, and for something that I use for years, it ended up being worth it.

I've heard people dump on Warby Parker for being cheaply made, but honestly their stuff doesn't seem any worse then what my insurance covered at my optometrist.

Also as a side note, my first pair from Warby Parker had the lenses go bad (they looked like they had dried water blotches on them, but it would never wash out. I assume some coating went bad) and they sent me a new pair for free. That was maybe 2 years ago and I still use the pair.

Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#119

Post by Retric »

ericmcer wrote: post #78

Can anyone speak to why you need an up to date prescription to buy glasses or contacts? It has never made an ounce of sense to me, yet I have been blocked from doing it in the past, gone through the rigamarole to find out my prescription is unchanged, and then bought them.

In a word corruption.

Building a machine to automate an eye exam seems obvious. But, the industry pushes back vs anything that would lower costs.

Re: How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

#120

Post by webwanderings »

We were in one of the South Asian country not too long ago (family of four). Bought 2 pairs of glasses each, everything you name it, is included. Cost? <$50 for all. It would have cost us at least $1000 in US. And you cannot tell we wear cheap glasses. They are perfectly fine. Of course they are not original Ray Ban but who cares as long as prescription is right. The eyewear industry in US is totally out of control.
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