Glasses direct blog

Although I work for glasses direct, I still buy glasses elsewhere. Sometimes for mystery shopping, sometimes just for pleasure.

Of all the glasses shops I’ve been in, the selection that made me drool the most was Bromptons in Brighton. A beautiful boutique shop with lovely friendly staff, and a selection of the most wonderfully beautiful modern glasses, and a range of vintage weird specs.

If you love really beautiful glasses, and are in the south, give this place look.

I actually drove down there this weekend to buy a new pair from their shop (after I dropped my main pair in a river a couple of weeks ago). I said I was from Glasses Direct and they didn’t throw me out, which was nice.

Image from zach_manchester

In my last post I discussed some of the basic reasons that glasses are so expensive – cross subsidisation of the services offered by the glasses themselves (ie, they don’t charge the true cost for eye tests, but much more for the glasses). Also rents, expensive equipment, etc.

To try and stop people from going online to buy glasses many opticians will resist giving you your Pupillary Distance (This is, as it sounds, the distance between your pupils. I’ll write another blog post on this topic soon, and will be having a discussion with our Senior Optician about PDs which I’ll put up as a podcast).

To give you an idea of what many opticians feel about you, their customers, and the services that we and they provide, it can be worth eavesdropping on some of their conversations.

Optiboard is a forum for americans in the optical trade. There have been many threads on there about the online trade, and PD measurements.

Here is one about PD measurements: which many opticians are reluctant to give out.

“Online eyeglasses appeal to the cheapest and most moronic people out there. If I lose a few drooling idiots with no money to the online crowd, I’m not sure I even care.”

“Tell them to take their own. If they feel they do not need us, they they can do it themselves (note, I am no longer in the industry, so I can make statements like that).”

“My policy would (I haven’t been asked yet) No PD, period!”

“My policy is no PD, period.”

One member of the board tried to point out that by providing a service of measuring PDs etc, it could actually be a useful way of keeping customers returning to him, but he was in a very small minority being shouted down by the others who think that everyone who orders online is a moron, and any glasses bought online will be awful and won’t work.

We’ve had over 100,000 happy customers, and made over 200,000 pairs of glasses. If they didn’t work, we’d have been out of business a long time ago.

The industry is changing, and we’re part of that change. I wish the industry would realise that we’re not out to destroy anything, we’re just about giving a better deal. People, including myself, will still buy from the highstreet, and online. I buy books from amazon, my local book shop, and waterstones. I’ll buy glasses online, from the big chains, and from independant opticians (more of which in another post).

The difference is that I have 10 pairs of glasses, Two are from high street opticians, and are nearly double the cost of all the other 8 bought on-line put together!

Photo from endlessstudio

Have you ever wondered why glasses are so expensive? For a couple of bits of plastic or metal?

Part of the reason is the design & manufacture, although they’re small, they’re quite complicated things to make, plus the lenses have to be made in highly sophisticated laboratories that measure distances in thousandths of millimetres.

However, one of the biggest reasons is that opticians currently subsidise the low cost of eye tests and examinations by inflating the price of the glasses you actually end up buying with a massive markup.

It means they can get you into the shop, and then, once you’ve been through the test, you’ll often be passed to a salesman who isn’t a qualified optician, whose job is to sell you the most expensive pair of glasses they can.

This is the way it’s been done for years and years, which is why the industry has been so aggressive towards us when we’ve challenged this pricing model by offering more realistic prices for the glasses themselves. We can offer you a much better deal on glasses, and a lot of people in the industry don’t like that.

You should always get your eyes tested by a properly qualified optician – at least every two years – but before you buy something from the same store, make sure you check our prices online to see how much you could be saving.

Our aim is to give you the widest choice of glasses, and all the information and advice you need to make a decision, with none of the pressure you often feel whilst in a high street opticians.