Much of the hoopla surrounding buying glasses online ignores two important facts: First, the really cheap glasses (think $100 or less including lenses) you find online are exclusively house-brand, generic-type frames. This isn’t a bad [...]
Feb 022012
CBS News Reports: Pros and cons of buying eyeglasses online Pros: Low prices: as much as 70 percent less than in traditional optical stores. Convenience: Shop from home and have your glasses delivered to your [...]
I was in the internet way-back machine and found this ’01 article about choosing the perfect pair of glasses. Another retailer, Eyewear Online, recommends parasitic shopping: Spend a little shoe-leather looking at shops; when you [...]
Jan 192012
Taken somewhere in Turkey, I presume, based upon the image having a Turkish caption (Yaratıcı Sokak Sanatı: Gozluk). I don’t know any other details.
For prescription wearers, the Ray-ban 5121 wayfarer (above) is identical to Ray-ban’s signature wayfarer sunglasses. At BestBuyEyeglasses, this pair runs about $200 with a single-vision lens. Not a bad price, as these typically sell for [...]
Mar 072011
It almost goes without saying: sunglasses are cool. With sunglasses, you’re aloof, mysterious, hip, whatever. Of course, most of us with regular eyeglasses have lived with the one type of sunglasses that are decidedly uncool: [...]
Feb 282011
From Marissa Walsh’s, "Girl with Glasses: My Optic History" As a teenage, I didn’t have Tina Fey, Lisa Loeb, and Janeane Garofalo to emulate. No Frances McDormand wearing glasses to the oscars. No Lane on [...]
Multifocal glasses – no longer the Yeti of online eyewear
If you’ve ever priced out glasses with multifocal lenses (trifocals, bifocals, and progressives), you know a thing or two about sticker shock. At a normal brick & mortar retailer, a simple pair of single-vision lenses can run upward of $400. Adding multifocal lenses adds anywhere from $100 to $300 on top of that. This puts a complete pair of multifocal glasses easily north of $500. And until recently, the consumer had few options to save him/herself from what felt more than a bit like price gouging.
In 2008, a reader wrote and asked about purchasing trifocal glasses online. I remember doing a bit of research and to my dismay, none of the online discounters offered much in the way of multifocal lenses.
Today, the market has changed. Trifocal lenses are available from one online shop for less than a $100 surcharge. Progressives and bifocals are available at several shops for even less, most surcharges in the $50 range.