Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

onedollarglasses.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 119 posts

Re: One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

#11

Post by Arcsech »

Glasses are a total racket. Purchasing your glasses online is many, many times cheaper than going to Lenscrafters or basically any other brick & mortar store in the US. I've been buying online for years and they're every bit as good as usual ones. You do need your pupillary distance, but you either measure this yourself with the help of a friend, or ask your optometrist. If they refuse or tell you how evil buying glasses online is, get a new optometrist.

The best sites I'm aware of are:

http://www.zennioptical.com/ (what I use)

https://www.goggles4u.com/

https://www.39dollarglasses.com/

Re: One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

#13

Post by JustSomeNobody »

randyrand wrote: post #4

I got 4 pairs of glasses on amazon (needed the opposite of reading glasses which are hard to find in stores) for $8. I was pretty darn impressed by how cheap the free market is vs doctors offices.

Having worked in the optical business to put myself through engineering school, I know that glasses can be very expensive; there's a poop tonne of overhead at those places.

That being said, be very careful of cheap glasses. If you have a strong Rx, you need the OC to be aligned properly with your P.D. otherwise you're inducing prism. This can cause severe headaches and eye fatigue. You should also make sure you go see a Dr regularly; those exams test more than just your vision. You could be going blind in a preventable way and not know until too late.

Oh, cheap frames just aren't as comfortable at the end of the day as not as cheap frames. Buyer beware.

* Not a Dr myself. I worked in the labs. Don't take anything I say to be any sort of medical advice. I'm merely saying be very careful with your precious eye sight.

Re: One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

#14

Post by cookiecaper »

Johnny555 wrote: post #8

My glasses cost $39 from one of the many online cheap glasses makers. So now I have more money to donate to the $1 glasses campaign :) Last time I got glasses, I tried a test, I bought the $300 glasses from my eye doctor ("only" $200 after insurance), and I bought a pair of $39 glasses online. I found no difference between the two other than price (and the ones I bought online arrived by mail the day before the expen…

Online glasses still come out to about $80 for me based on the requirements of my prescription, but yes, the markup that optical places charge is through the roof. Outlets like Zenni Optical are seriously giving local optometrists a run for their money, to the point where the industry is panicked over it.

Re: One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

#15

Post by dsr_ »

Arcsech wrote: post #11

Glasses are a total racket. Purchasing your glasses online is many, many times cheaper than going to Lenscrafters or basically any other brick & mortar store in the US. I've been buying online for years and they're every bit as good as usual ones. You do need your pupillary distance, but you either measure this yourself with the help of a friend, or ask your optometrist. If they refuse or tell you how evil buying gla…

I've had satisfactory results from all three of these. One of our salespeople was rather upset that my titanium memory-wire glasses looked about the same as his but cost an order of magnitude less.

Re: One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

#17

Post by HiroshiSan »

dsr_ wrote: post #15
Arcsech wrote: post #11

Glasses are a total racket. Purchasing your glasses online is many, many times cheaper than going to Lenscrafters or basically any other brick & mortar store in the US. I've been buying online for years and they're every bit as good as usual ones. You do need your pupillary distance, but you either measure this yourself with the help of a friend, or ask your optometrist. If they refuse or tell you how evil buying gla…

I've had satisfactory results from all three of these. One of our salespeople was rather upset that my titanium memory-wire glasses looked about the same as his but cost an order of magnitude less.

Try eyebuydirect.ca, I've tried zenni, loved them until I found eyebuydirect. (Wow that really sounded like a commercial LOL) in all seriousness, great style, cheap prices, lots of sales.

Re: One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

#18

Post by mundo »

cookiecaper wrote: post #14
Johnny555 wrote: post #8

My glasses cost $39 from one of the many online cheap glasses makers. So now I have more money to donate to the $1 glasses campaign :) Last time I got glasses, I tried a test, I bought the $300 glasses from my eye doctor ("only" $200 after insurance), and I bought a pair of $39 glasses online. I found no difference between the two other than price (and the ones I bought online arrived by mail the day before the expen…

Online glasses still come out to about $80 for me based on the requirements of my prescription, but yes, the markup that optical places charge is through the roof. Outlets like Zenni Optical are seriously giving local optometrists a run for their money, to the point where the industry is panicked over it.

"The industry" is mainly Luxottica[1], a company that controls the majority of the world glasses market - prescription and non, production and retail, and even (through a vision insurer) purchasing. There's a ton of "look at this horrible monopoly and how many damage they do!" type articles about.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica

Re: One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

#19

Post by criddell »

Johnny555 wrote: post #8

My glasses cost $39 from one of the many online cheap glasses makers. So now I have more money to donate to the $1 glasses campaign :) Last time I got glasses, I tried a test, I bought the $300 glasses from my eye doctor ("only" $200 after insurance), and I bought a pair of $39 glasses online. I found no difference between the two other than price (and the ones I bought online arrived by mail the day before the expen…

Last time I got a new prescription I asked them to include the PD number and they refused. They would only give that to me if I bought glasses through them. I couldn't even pay them for just the measurement (I suggested $10-$20).

It's easy enough to measure myself, so that's what I did.

My glasses were $45 and he said his costs were more than twice that. Where's all that money going?

Post reply on HN