My employer has a rather generous vision plan that covers $155 towards new eyeglass frames and 100% of the lenses through insurance provider VSP. With the new insurance, I was thinking I might actually be able to get away with simply paying the co-pay of $25. I was so excited! I may actually get to try on some glasses, in person, and see what they’d look like on my face. Wow, what a privilege!I have this exact same setup with my employer: a decent vision plan, but the outrageous prices at the optometrist quickly wiped away every dollar the insurance would cover and required several hundred out of my own pocket. Six, seven, even ten times more compared to the nice frames you can get online? Sorry, I don't think so.My excitement quickly faded before my appointment as I started trying on glasses and looking at the little price tags on each of them. $300, $350, $400… things were not looking good. Sure, there were a few cheap, outdated frames that I could get for around $200, but the quality of these frames were not even close to being as good as the quality of the frameless memory titanium, anti-reflective coated glasses that I had purchased online about 3 years earlier for under $40. Equivalent glasses were actually 10 times more at the local optometrist!
So let your optometrist measure your vision, but don't let them sell you a pair of glasses.
