"But if you're looking for savings, a great selection of frames, and that personal touch that comes with dealing with a professional in person, then consider splitting up the process, perhaps getting your exam at your doctor's office, your frames online, and your lenses from a discount store."
" If your doctor's office sells frames, try some on. Ask the sale staff for advice about what works best for you."
"If you can't find anything you like or that's reasonably priced, try some other walk-in stores, recording the brands, models, and sizes of the frames you'd consider buying. You'll find that information marked on the frame's temples, the pieces that connect the glasses to your ears.
Search the web with the brand and model number of your top picks. There's a good chance you'll find them and at much lower cost. If you plan to buy your lenses online as well as the frames, check the sites' lens prices, too."
Last edited by drk; 01-03-2017 at 10:52 AM.
"Once you have your best price, go back to the walk-in shop where you initially saw the frames and find out whether it can meet or at least come close to your top deal. It's only fair. And keep in mind that buying your glasses at a walk-in store makes it easier to return them if there's a problem. And you'll be able to get that after-purchase care that a website can't provide, such as frame adjustments. So it may be worth paying somewhat more."
"Once you get your new glasses, immediately report any problems with the frames or lenses. Some retailers will let you exchange frames that you don't like for little or no cost, even if you ordered prescription lenses. But if you find a defect in the frame or if the prescription isn't right, you're entitled to a proper pair of glasses at no additional charge. If you bought your glasses online and the frames need adjusting, a local shop may be willing to do it for you, but there may be a charge."
Wow. No problem shifting blame/cost onto ANYone but the consumer. Good luck with that folks.
They are naiive enough to believe that they can "game" the system.
a. Fragment care
b. Showroom
c. Haggle
That's bad advice.
What's more, they have absolutely no concept whatsoever regarding professionalism, ethics, technology, and knowledge. Just dollars and cents and commodities.
That's a very immature perspective.
I say let the race to the bottom continue. Eventually, care and product quality will be so bad, that perhaps a national standard will become expected, and the public will see the error of their ways regarding the "non medical" eyewear they need.
Actually, they probably never will. They'll keep expecting the cost to drop till their "insurance" companies are paying them to wear glasses/cls, and likely will still complain. You gotta love the American consumer mentality!
Post that link, Chris?
I can't read the links because I don't have a subscription and don't want one if this is the kind of posts they do. This is the same dribble I've read all over the web and it's disappointing but I know there is no sense in trying to sway the readers.
Have I told you today how much I hate poly?
...........and here it is again : ===========>
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/e...ying-guide.htm
That will never happen...............the largest owners of the new optical retail trend, the Essilor - Lux corporations were built on manufacturing high quality products, and will never lower their standards.
Finished Eyewear has never been a medical product, it is a purely mechanical product and is the result of a medical prescription if you want to call it that way.
Uh Chris - I don't know what they taught you all those decades ago back in the old country...but glasses and contacts are in fact ophthalmic prosthetics first and foremost. Not strictly fashion elements. Always have been, always will be.
Those decades ago glasses was a must, and only purchased when needed, and then people bought the best quality and optical finish they could afford.
Good education was not only needed, it was a must, to pass a three day test after 3 years of apprenticeship. Followed by optical full time schooling over 2 years before passing the master degree. And each country would hand you a diploma for the level you had passed.
These days you can purchase an ophthalmic prosthetic as you call it, over the internet for a few bucks and it is all legal because professional regulations are being done away with.
Regulations/rules/the interwebs/marketing departments can't and don't alter the type of product. Any SRx in a frame or CL remains an ophthalmic prosthesis above all else. It doesn't mean they can't look better, and perform better than they ever have before, or that they are becoming easier to dispense on a much larger scale, with far lower non-adapt issues than at any other point in history. But they remain a medical device.
Ok Villeann, I stand corrected:
Eyeglasses Chosen As Top Medical Device
Eyeglasses received about a quarter of all votes in a poll asking readers to pick the top medical device of all time.
Eyeglasses are the top medical device of all time, according to a survey of Qmed readers, which to date has received 739 votes. At the time of writing, eyeglasses had received about a quarter of all of the votes.
In any case, corrective glasses are certainly one of the most widely used medical devices. The Vision Council of America estimates that 64% of U.S. adults use glasses regularly.
Glasses are also one of the oldest medical devices. Simple meniscus lenses were described by the Ancient Egyptians in the eighth century BCE. The idea of using a lens to magnify text is thought to date to the first century AD, when Seneca the Younger wrote, “Letters, however small and indistinct, are seen enlarged and more clearly through a globe or glass filled with water.” The Roman Emperor Nero reportedly watched gladiator matches while looking through an emerald lens.
Centuries later, Abbas Ibn Firnas helped pioneer the use of glass to correct vision by devising a way to convert sand into glass. Reading stones were one of the most widely used applications of lenses until the debut of wearable eyeglasses in approximately 1284 by Salvino D'Armate.
Innovations in eyeglasses have occurred at a steady clip every since, culminating in bifocals, trifocals, and, more recently, progressive lenses. The first electronic prescription eyewear was announced in 2011. Known as Empower, the technology from Aspex enables users to toggle between two prescription levels of their lens by swiping a finger along the arm of the glasses’ frame, giving them more flexibility than conventional bifocals.
SOURCE; ========>
http://www.qmed.com/mpmn/medtechpuls...medical-device
Essilor, or ANY of the other ALWAYS overlooked [here] lens behemoths, didn't get large by selling sub standard quality product. The fact that they've also got large, and now well funded marketing departments should surprise no one. Enough with their endless vilification. It serves literally no purpose. Let's all move on to more pressing discussions, such as the one at hand.
The local shop should not be "willing" to do adjustments for maybe a charge.
The local shop should actually sell service for products that have been purchased at a price, not including service at that particular shop.
The product could be from a competitor or purchased on line.
Again, the 'transitional' path I have taken here is to inform outside eyewear of the fee, but then acknowledge that this is their first time in the shop, and it is my pleasure to waive the fee for them.
This is so much better than brickwalling the fee. I also state and waive the fee for part/present clients who bring in outside eyewear, whatever the origin. WHEN. It becomes a pattern, I advise them I am more than happy to provide all services for any eyewear, and I will inform them of my read able fee schedule.
Not it getting a lot of this, though. But am getting clients trying whatever and deciding they prefer my restaurant for the majority of their meals.
B
I find it surprising that you feel this way Chris, I remember you many times comparing Eyewear to a pair of crutches, which are certainly a medical product no?
I do agree that eyewear, especially in its current incarnation, blurs the line between purely a product that solves the symptoms of medical problem and retail things such as clothes and jewelry. I think consumers are spread amongs those that view it in both ways.
-Ian
The lenses are undoubtedly, 100% medical devices.
The frames are not.
However, the frames greatly influence the lenses.
Ergo, even if we killed off all the onliners' ability to make lenses without prescriptions (and we won't), and consumers bought frames online and brought them in to have their Rx lenses, it would still be a pain.
Try buying a muffler at PepBoys and try to have Goodyear put it on. Uh...no.
I do have a European background in the profession, were i learned it. It still lingers on sometimes.
We learned that a medical item is to correct a physical body problem either by a medication, or physically by scalpel and scissors.
A crutch is a mechanical subject that helps to overcome a physical/medical handicap.
Glasses are also a frame holding the mechanically made lenses, to help to bend the light rays, so they will focus on the retina and provide a clear picture sent to the brain.
That is why an optician in Europe is not a medical specialist, which is the profession of university educated doctors.
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