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

latimes.com

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

#451

Post by vkou »

FireBeyond wrote: post #447
vkou wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. I guess Australian doctors must suck, given that they do it in five years.

If Australian doctors don't do residency, then yes, they probably do.

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

#452

Post by DenisM »

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.…

Hinge-less frames can take any shape, so long as they are long enough they will fit you just fine.

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

#453

Post by mancerayder »

Contacts are even worse. Did anyone notice that online vendors in the US like the 1-800 one were well cheaper, and now somehow they all have the same pricing? And that a special contact lens check is required, at a separate price, to get a prescription for contact lenses renewed, even if the script is the same for glasses and contacts, and you just did the glasses? And that while you can buy 100 years of contacts, the script is only valid for 12 months on the dot? Oh, and you can't resell your unopened box of contacts on eBay or anywhere.

Regulations are good but these laws in the US are very cartel-y. I remember in the UK in 2012 or so I could order as many contacts as I wanted with no script, no questions asked, online.

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

#454

Post by Solar19 »

Whenever we see an apparent monopoly or a confusingly high profit margin, we should immediately look for barriers to entry. Situations like this are usually explained by the existence of a racket with government-enforced barriers to entry.

Optometry is a licensure racket with strong legal barriers to entry. The sale of glasses is ostensibly a separate business without the same barriers, but I suspect it rides on the coattails of optometry's racket. I think there's an inertia tie between the eye exam and the purchase of glasses.

The cleanest way to end this nonsense is to break the optometry licensure racket. Think about what optometrists actually do. Think about all your eye exams and the whole "1 or 2" procedure as they flip through lenses. Honestly, most adults could probably do that job and produce a correct prescription after maybe a week's training. I'm not saying they're inherently bad people or anything, and I like my optometrist, but it's a racket just like realtors, lawyers, and other guilds that use the law to prop up their prices and reduce competition.

There's at least one startup out there that wanted to do eye exams through a specially designed web app. Expect the optometry racket to lobby hard against this, just like taxi rackets tried to stop Uber. And there ought to be companies offering cheap glasses online any second now...

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

#455

Post by rhinoceraptor »

chris1993 wrote: post #351
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like this could easily be solved by selling the hearing aids with a smartphone app to test your hearing and tune the aids, and a pair of flat frequency response headphones for testing.

This is essentially the system sold by Blamey Saunders in Australia. My pair work reasonably well.

Wow, it's crazy that those are still $3000 for essentially a microphone, DSP chip, maybe a small microcontroller and a BLE chip, and a driver. Something like the Airpods are probably on the same level of technical complexity, but an order of magnitude cheaper.

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

#456

Post by greedo »

kstrauser wrote: post #413
patentatt wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d take issue with “not complicated.” They are very tiny, have to be very low power, and they run a surprising amount of real-time DSP. Then the whole electronics package has to be integrated with an acoustics package including multiple microphones and transducers. And the higher quality all of those acoustical components are, the more transparent the end product. And it all has to be durable enough for continuous w…

I ask seriously: could this be replicated with AirPods and an iPhone, in software?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/20/how-to-turn-airpods-into-hea...

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

#457

Post by BEEdwards »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #437
nomel wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why aren't people using them? I've converted several people, but not being able to touch them and try them on first appears to be a significant problem.

Actually, you need to be able to try them on to ensure that you get your OC (optical center) correct. This isn't a problem for people with relatively low prescriptions, but the stronger your prescription, the more important it is to get this right. Some online stores will try to get it from a photo, but your OC actually changes by how/where you wear your glasses along the bridge of your nose, and that in turn changes…

You get it measured by your eye doctor, then Zenni has a box for it.

They also give you a ruler with your first order, but it's crap, just have your doctor do it.

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

#458

Post by cogman10 »

Solar19 wrote: post #454

Whenever we see an apparent monopoly or a confusingly high profit margin, we should immediately look for barriers to entry. Situations like this are usually explained by the existence of a racket with government-enforced barriers to entry. Optometry is a licensure racket with strong legal barriers to entry. The sale of glasses is ostensibly a separate business without the same barriers, but I suspect it rides on the…

I agree to an extent.

Most people could do what your average pediatrician does at a normal checkup. The reason you want a licenced pediatrician is for the abnormal.

While an optometrist isn't generally needed, they are sometimes. For example, they are generally the first ones to catch diabetes.

I'm not an optometrist, just someone that has worn glasses their whole life.

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

#459

Post by metalliqaz »

interlocutor wrote: post #107

The reason glasses cost so much is because one company owns: (1) nearly all brand name frames including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Prada eyewear, Armani eyewear and so on, (2) nearly all retail stores such as LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical and Target Optical and (3) EyeMed, one of the largest vision insurance companies. See this eye-opening 60 Minutes story on Luxottica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM…

eyebuydirect zenioptical

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

#460

Post by csjr »

MentallyRetired wrote: post #326
interlocutor wrote: post #107

The reason glasses cost so much is because one company owns: (1) nearly all brand name frames including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Prada eyewear, Armani eyewear and so on, (2) nearly all retail stores such as LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical and Target Optical and (3) EyeMed, one of the largest vision insurance companies. See this eye-opening 60 Minutes story on Luxottica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM…

I worked at Oakley when it was acquired by Lux. Oakley puts an INSANE amount of R&D into their products, particularly their eyewear. They have laser stations to make sure the optics of the lens doesnt change the perspective of things (the difference between catching a baseball in the glove and in the mouth), "shotgun" tests, weighted spikes, and even have a machine that opens/closes the sunglasses several million tim…

That’s really sad! Oakley was one of the companies that I respected. They had (have?) great products.

I probably watched all those videos, you could see the amount of work dedicated to each item.

I don’t believe any sunglasses company will ever put the same effort in R&D like them.

Seems to me that since the acquisition they started to use cheaper materials. Maybe I’am right?

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