High street opticians are a rip off

Hi,just read your article about buying glasses .We are qualified opticians in Belfast who charge prices the same and often lower than the internet,unlike the big high street chains we do not have large rents and staff /advertising overheads.
We sell complete spectacles with prescription lenses from £20.00(about 30 different models)
Our web address is www.smart-spex.com
Not all opticians are rip off merchants.

Hello, I have been buying my glasses online for a few years now. Tried a few sites, but the one that really stands out from the crowd is www.thinlenses.co.uk. Really trendy frames with super thin and light lenses, at great prices. Bought 2 pairs from them so far and rec'd them within a week. Also have great customer service, immediate reply to emails & phone calls. Worth a try.

I get my glasses from the internet site, SelectSpecs. Very pleased with them. Previously to this I had a bad experience buying from Glasses Crafter.
Don't try this internet glasses provider. They make offers they do not keep. They are slow to answer emails. There is no proper customer support. Deliveries are from Shanghai.
I ordered three pairs of glasses on 26 October 2007.
By 17 December when the glasses had not arrived (they got lost and were returned to Shanghai) I was told they were being resent and I would be given a £20 refund.
The glasses eventually arrived 30 December and I never received the refund. During these nine weeks I had to email them 26 times.
Two pairs of glasses were ok except in one pair the screws continually come loose. The third pair were unwearable as they had the wrong prescription in the right lens. I returned these glasses to Shanghai.
At this point there seemed to be total confusion in their answers to my emails. It appears that nobody ever follows up and you start anew with each email.
Finally after sending another 15 emails I was offered a refund.
The amount they owed me was £97 which included their offer of a £20 refund but the amount they have refunded is £60 and they say this is 'according to their return policy to refund the full amount for the frame and half for the lenses'. There is no mention of the promised refund for all the wasted time they have caused me and no mention of the fact that their lens was faulty and they promise a 100% refund if the lenses are faulty. If you want a decent pair of glasses with the least aggravation then you should avoid this company.

Lol! All the comments have fair points and are quite amusing. However at the ripe old age of 50 I found that I needed glasses for close up work and went to Specsavers. I ordered varifocal lens and I'm sure the pair that I collected 2 weeks later were not the ones that I chose.
Being a novice at wearing glasses, I just wore them. I find that my line of vision is obscured by the top of the frame as they won't stay up high enough on my nose. If I push them to the top of my nose (where most other people wear them) I cannot blink as my eye lashes are squashed anainst the lens! And they're wonky!
So a novice going to Specsavers might end up with the same problems as I have.
Geeky wonky ill fitting glasses which I could have saved a fortune on by buying them on line!
: )

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I always go to my local independent optician. He is a reall gentleman and remembers me by name whether I was there a year ago or yesterday. Its one of the few shops I can get a personal service and I would never trust my luck to buying glasses online. As someone said, the optician can diagnose disease better than a website or chemist can. Thats what he/she has trained for. I wont risk my eyesight.

I have been attending the same optician for many years, and I am very happy with her. I know the spectacles/contact lenses I buy from them subsidise the excellent sight test I have every two years and any additional appointments I need. It doesn't take a genius to work that out. That is the unfortunate state of the optics industry in this country.

If all of my opticians' patients bought from the internet after paying her £25 for a test, she would close within weeks, and there would be a lot of comically fitting specs in my town. You get what you pay for.

A self administered test from the chemist?? Have you ever had a real eye examination??? Most eye diseases diagnosed in this country are picked up opportunistically by opticians doing routine eye tests. So the people walking round with bad fitting specs will also be half blind from undiagnosed glaucoma.

If I have a minor eye problem, my GP doesn't know what to do, and doesn't have the equipment. An appointment with an Ophthalmologist can take months to come through for non urgent problems. My optician diagnoses and frequently treats it within days (cheaply!), and she is open 6 days a week and is within 1 mile of my house. I appreciate that, I like my eyes. I am not being ripped off for my specs.

I have never ever met a poor optometrist

I too studied many years, but can never match the pay levels of an optometrist

My advice to anyone wanting dental treatment or eye tests, go to Eastern Europe.

One day there will be self administered eye tests buyable from any chemist for the purchase of glasses via the Internet. If you really need a medical examination and not just optometry demand that your doctor send you to an opthalmologist.

As a qualified, registered Optometrist, (having completed a three year university BSc (Hons) degree in Optometry, and a year of supervised practice with continous assessment and four days of final exams), I would like to see things change. But its not going to anytime soon.

In the UK, sight tests are ridiculously undervalued. As well presented by "Will", almost every sight test carried out in the UK is done at a loss to the business. I reiterate his point of the equipment costs. The room I test in was recently completely refitted, with the final bill costing several times what my car cost! In addition, a diagnostic Volk lens, (neccessary to check the back of the eye for pathology), just one little lens, 15mm diameter, cost £200.

Charging the national average of between 15-20pounds (the NHS pays £19.52 for anyone entitled to a "free" test) will never ever cover the true cost of a sight test. If it was different, and we made some profit from it, Im sure there'd be plenty of practices that would do sight tests only, and wouldn't have to contend with the complexities of providing spectacles and properly carrying out the dispensing process. The last time I saw a dentist it cost £70 for just a check up. All I had to show for it was a reciept! Go for and eyetest in the USA and you'll pay at least $100 for a basic check, any extra tests ("glaucoma" test, internal photos etc) will be charged on top of this. So for £15-£20 in the UK you're getting a bargain in the first place!

Until the value of a sight test is fully appreciated, and priced accordingly, the cost will have to covered somehow, and thats why spectacle prices are the way they are.

And again Will, I have seen many people come back having had discount specs made up elsewhere. Poorly fitted, sliding down their nose, getting headaches etc. Makes you wonder, can clicking on the internet for your glasses really be a substitute for a qualified Dispensing Optician.

An update on my earlier message. I decided to send one more enquiry to Spexmaniac and to my amazement I had a reply from both Mr and Mrs Guest advising me that my glasses were being sent by first class post - no reason for the delay or why they hadn't answered my several previous enquiries or returned a call from the messages I had left on their answer machine. When my glasses had still not arrived I sent a further e-mail and Mrs Guest replied to confirm that glasses were on their way but had been delayed by industrial action taken by the post office.Thankfully I did receive them yesterday but I don't think I will order from Spexsmaniac again following this experience.

I mostly wear contact lenses but have recently bought a pair of prescription glasses from www.goggles4u.com ( saved 5% with code; lookgreat45 ). Got a good pair of prescription glasses with a tint for under £14. I'm not going to wear them all the time and I'm still going to get my main glasses from my optician but for the price they are fantastic as a second or third pair or even a bit of a change.