Grumping at the optician's

[bend_gules]

Last week I went to the opticians - I'd noticed I was stuggling to focus at the MoL and NPG when we've been to exhibits recently, bouncing back and forth between looking through my glasses and peering under them

Comments

[aryanhwy]

If you do end up switching to varifocals, you'll probably never go back. I love mine (have had them since I was 14).

I don't know what goes into the pricing schemes you mention, though, since I've never been in a position to have been offered them. A complete set of glasses -- frames, lenses, and optometrist's visit -- generally costs me about $1000, which is why I only get new frames when I absolutely have to. Because of my prescription, there are certain types of frames (usually the cheaper ones) that I can't use because they aren't sturdy enough for my lenses, which means that w/o getting a new frame, a new prescription (including optometrist's visit, which is usually a minor fraction) generally only costs me about $750.

[kirieldp]

I had laser surgery and it at least fixed my short-sightedness. Ok at some stage I will need reading glasses, but at least then it will only be one pair, and they can be bought from the chemist.

If you add up the price of a few future pairs of glasses, laser surgery actually is not that expensive, and the only regret I have is that I didn't do it years earlier.

[wareham_v]

Maybe check the availability of some of the online glasses suppliers. I've bought glasses twice from ClearlyContacts out of Vancouver. It's never as cheap for progressives, which may be what we Canucks call your 'varifocals', and my first pair wasn't as good as my second, which I think had to do with a different shape of lense. But they weren't bad, and at a savings of several hundred dollars! I'm currently musing over offerings at Zenni Optical, another online supplier. I figure if I can find a good enough price, then it's worth the risk...
v/m

[milites]

I recently got reading glasses, but the bulk pricing deal seems to be because if you have astigmatism, setting up the machine to do two lenses is no more trouble than doing one, so there are significant fixed costs and lower marginal costs. I expect that if you bought them 4 at a time there'd be even more opportunity for lowering the unit cost.

It does make some sense.