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
If you’ve decided to go for a new pair of glasses and haven’t yet chosen a style, start by determining your face shape. Most people have a round, square, or oval face, although some have [...]
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 [...]
Does your workplace offer a flexible spending account? Why not use that money to buy some inexpensive prescription glasses? Some time ago, I blogged about using your health savings account to purchase prescription eyewear online. [...]
Apr 052010
Here is a shocker: children will break their glasses. It is mostly a matter of time. What happens when your little one comes home with his expensive eyeglasses in two or three pieces? If you [...]
Let’s assume an average pair of prescription glasses and frames is $400. Spending $400 on regular eyeglasses? We can do better than that. Save $380: How: Head over to Goggles4u Eyeglasses and pick out a [...]
Having spent a little too much time browsing the available frames at Goggles4U, EyeBuyDirect.com, and 39DollarGlasses.com, it has become apparent that there are only a few basic shapes of glasses: From upper left to lower [...]
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.