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Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

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Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#391

Post by Jemaclus »

pakitan wrote: post #204
Jemaclus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is true. I'm actually fortunate in that I'm completely deaf in one ear and "only" profoundly deaf in the other. That means I only have to spend $3000 instead of 2x that. It's ridiculous. My hearing aid is 6 years old and I'm sure it's about to fail, but I can't afford a new one right now. It's absolute insanity.

Do the $3000 hearing aids differ significantly than, say, this: https://www.amazon.de/Audiben-PSA-H%C3%B6rverst%C3%A4rker-Pr...

I'm not sure. My hearing loss is bad enough ("profoundly deaf" --- basically, the next level down is "totally deaf") that I wouldn't try an off the shelf aid without an audiologist's support.

Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#392

Post by cryptonector »

vkou wrote: post #377
cryptonector wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the law requires that you get a "certificate of need" in order to build a hospital, that is very much a protectionist measure. Requiring that medical student careers be approximately a decade long is another protectionist requirement. The FDA often functions to protect large players. There is a ton of protectionism in the U.S. healthcare "market".

> Requiring that medical student careers be approximately a decade long is another protectionist requirement. No, that's just reflective of how damn difficult it is to distill the body of knowledge required to be a doctor into a brain. Just because you can learn enough Javascript in 24 hours to build an insecure one-page CRUD app with an animated duck, doesn't mean that you can do the same with the human body. It tak…

Medical training in the U.S. requires first a non-medical degree.

Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#393

Post by pepr »

kough wrote: post #369
Notorious_BLT wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I need a new pair of glasses with the same prescription I have now (Say, for example, I fall and break my glasses), I shouldn't be required to go get examined to get a new pair simply because it has been more than a year. I want the same thing I've been wearing, and the worst possible outcome from me getting them is that (if my prescription has worsened, which it hasn't in 4+ years) I can't see quite as clearly at…

That would be weird, good thing you are not required to get examined in order to buy glasses. I don't know why you think you are required.

You are required to get a new prescription because your original prescription expired.

Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#394

Post by fencepost »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #208
jawns wrote: post #15

Reminder, if you're in the US, the FTC says your eye doctor must give you your prescription after your exam. If a doctor refuses to do so, they can face legal action and penalties. https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2016/05/buying-prescriptio... That said, I don't think the FTC stipulates what information must appear on the prescription. Many docs leave off your PD (pupillary distance), which is a necessary measuremen…

I don't think the doctors normally measure the PD, they leave that to the ones who cut the glasses. That really does cause problems for doing it online, though.

PD is actually an automatic part of having that big mass of lenses up against your face and properly positioned for testing. If they don't have that adjusted properly you're not going to see much.

Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#396

Post by sitharus »

fwip wrote: post #332
dwaltrip wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relative to other things like travel, commuting, home energy usage, electronics, etc, I'm guessing the environmental cost of a pair of glasses is very, very low. It is important to focus on effective actions. For example, a lot of people think that somehow recycling affects climate change, which (AFAIK) is not true in any meaningful sense. That isn't to say one shouldn't recycle -- there are plenty of reasons to do s…

I believe that recycling aluminum takes significantly less energy than smelting it in the first place. I don't have any idea about plastics/papers.

Post-consumer paper can be recycled in to some forms of low-density card that doesn't require high quality pulp. Egg cartons come to mind, and as a percentage in some packaging, newsprint and sanitary papers. Post-consumer paper cannot easily be recycled in to anything resembling printer paper due to the contaminants. Pre-consumer paper is recycled heavily as it's of known quality.

I'm not aware of any plastics that are recycled in to the same form. I know that PET (1) and HDPE (2) are recycled in to fibres.

It's a similar story to glass, certainly where I live a large amount of glass is recycled in to crushed aggregate rather than new bottles. The energy costs of cleaning don't make it worthwhile.

Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#397

Post by mrob »

glaberficken wrote: post #378
mrob wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they try to sell you add on treatments (Anti-reflex, UV coatings, etc) In my experience some of these coatings end up shortening the lifespan of the lens as they create a surface that is easier to scratch. In my opinion, the best material for lenses is the cheapest: plain uncoated CR-39. It has the best Abbe number of any common material (lowest chromatic aberration), and good scratch resistance. I clean mine using…

Wow, cannot upvote this comment enough. Super helpfull, thanks! Definetely going to go with uncoated lenses. Will the opticians even know what I'm talking about when I ask for CR39? I have one concern though I'm - 6 Dioptre on each eye. so lens weight has always been an issue for me. even a few grams extra make a big difference. I always go for rectangular low profile lenses with the greatest thickness reduction they…

All glasses are a compromise in some way, so you have to decide which flaws are most tolerable to you. -6 is strong enough correction that I'd seriously consider contact lenses if I needed it. Contact lenses avoid the image distortion and shrinkage you get with glasses, and because they move with your eyes, the image is sharp in all parts of your field of vision.

Polycarbonate is IMO a terrible material for corrective lenses. It has very bad Abbe number, so you get a lot of chromatic aberration (rainbow artifacts) and it's very soft, so coating is pretty much required. Its only real virtue is impact resistance, which is important in safety glasses, but you can get flat safety glasses that fit over your corrective glasses. The weight is marginally better than CR-39, but not enough to make up for the poor optical performance. I haven't seen it person, but going by the numbers, Trivex seems superior.

Wikipedia has some information on common materials:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrective_lens#Lens_materials

My preference for uncoated applies only to CR-39. Other materials have properties that make coatings more important. It's also possible that some coatings have much better resistance to cleaning than others. Unfortunately, details about coatings are generally secret, so there's no way to evaluate them.

Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#398

Post by itchyouch »

About 20 years ago, while I was in highschool, my foreign student Korean friend would get care packages and in them would be 3-4 pairs of glasses to change it up depending on the occasion. Apparently, glasses run around $30, even with an eye exam.

When I visited a couple years later, I could get glasses, even with thei highest index for $30. Some places would charge 50-70 for frames + high index lenses, but the big volume shops, you could get a bunch of pairs for cheap.

Re: Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

#400

Post by mikekchar »

briffle wrote: post #316
arielweisberg wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another satisfied Zenni customer. The lenses are not always perfect and the frames are not always the best. Sizing is hit or miss. What I do is buy the frame with cheap lenses to check fit, then I buy it with nice lenses if I like it. They are so cheap there is no reason not to do it this way. Even ordering multiples it ends up being inexpensive.

I want to like Zenni, and I have ordered from them, but I am frustrated every time. I have a very, very large head. I need glasses at least 155mm wide, if not 165mm wide to fit around my temples. Yet finding data on the width of their frames is next to impossible. Even their sales people I reach via chat do not have the data. Sometimes I will see frames with some measurements, but not all, and its just inconsistent.…

I just wanted to chime in here because while I don't have a wide head, I have a long distance between my ears and my nose (i.e., narrow but long from front to back). It literally took me 40 years to figure out that if the arms of the glasses are not long enough, the glasses will tilt down, because the curve of the arm will sit on your ears. This results in really poor vision (as you can imagine). It sounds stupid that I never realised it, but hopefully I can spare someone else in a similar situation -- make sure the arms of the glasses are long enough!
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