Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry | Hacker News Reader

Why are glasses so expensive? The eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry

latimes.com

1,158 pointslxm588 comments

Reminder, if you're in the US, the FTC says your eye doctor must give you your prescription after your exam. If a doctor refuses to do so, they can face legal action and penalties.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2016/05/buying-prescriptio...

That said, I don't think the FTC stipulates what information must appear on the prescription. Many docs leave off your PD (pupillary distance), which is a necessary measurement if you're buying online. Fortunately, there are a variety of easy ways to take this measurement yourself after the exam, although if you're really concerned about precision, you'll want the doctor's measurement.

And by the way, it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Although the quality of eyewear available online can be comparable to what you'd get in store ... please don't think an online eye exam is an acceptable substitute for visiting an ophthalmologist in person and getting a comprehensive eye exam!

Did my vision exam last week at Costco. The Costco optometrist is independent from the eye glass department, which is owned by Costco and you need a member ID to buy from. The prescription had PD on there.

When I used to do target or lens crafter... I had to ask.

I went to a local business a while back, where the optometrist was about 2-3 years away from retirement. I didn't want to offend them but politely and clearly stated that I would like to get my prescription. Still, they made a big act about parading me through their small collection of frames, and even suggested a few they thought I should try on. Just to humor them for a bit, I put on a pair and they made me look like I was wearing something from the Kim Jong Il lineup. The office assistant, who reminded me of the secretary from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, gave me VERY high compliments on them. I could barely hold in my mirth after looking in the mirror and had to pretend my wife was calling so I could dodge out of there and get the laughs out in my car.

The sad thing is that it appears that (in the US) for optomtrists, the eye exam is just a loss leader for the eye glass purchase in the "store" they also own. I assume my eye dr. went to college, medical school, and then some additional training (2 more years?). He does a very comprehensive eye exam, and my VSP insurance only pays him around $70 for the exam.

Just a clarifying point:

Optometrists are different from Ophthalmologists. Ophthalmologists are medical doctors (i.e. they have an MD), optometrists are not. Optometry also involves post-graduate training, and results in an OD (Doctorate of Optometry).

In the type of store you're talking about, it's much more likely you'll see an optometrist, not an ophthalmologist.

Such a waste of an education for a job that can be done by someone less trained. The only constraint is regulatory.

I get my eye exam checked every year for other more serious and complex diseases so I think there is a role for the more trained medical professionals but these exams need to be disentangled from the expensive professionals. That is the way to bring the costs down to a fraction of what they are...

Is it, though?

My ophtalmologist wouldn't only perform measurements to see if my prescription had changed. She would do a proper eye checkup. Retina, pressure and a host of other things.

It wasn't expensive. Of course, it was also not in the US.

You are only there once a year at most, so it is an opportunity to catch things before they go wrong.

I have had the same experience in the US. An assistant rather than the ophtalmologist is the one that does the vision test (I guess it's called the refraction?). The assistant then dilutes my eyes and after that is when the ophtalmologist comes in to do the checkup for my eyes for issues.

Optometrists and Ophthalmologists both have training to check for disease in the eyes. In fact a dilated eye exam is a non-invasive way to get an actual look into your circulatory system to check for things like diabetes. So even people without glasses should be getting regular checkups.

Ophthalmologists also have specialized training for cutting the eye that they learn in medical school (eg: lasik), but for eye exams, an optometrist has the skill-set necessary to perform these kinds of screenings.

A lot of people just get auto-refracted or a checkup by an optician and assume that's enough to get new glasses, but those people can be among the tens of millions of Americans who don't realize they have pre-diabetes.

Just to clarify, optometrists do not go to Medical School, they go to a different "Doctor of Optometry" professional program. Still, your view about the US system is likely right.

Funny enough, back in my home country, "optometrists" don't exist. Everybody goes to an actual eye doctor (Ophthalmologist) to get eye prescriptions. Of course, you pay the price, as the consultations cost as much as any other doctor visit.

Edit: somebody beat me to it below :) I'll leave it here because of my second anecdata above.

I am not sure where did you get the amount of 70$ per exam. My OD charges approx 258$ which was reimbursed by VSP . I know this since he sent a bill to me after exam that showed what the cost of visit was and what was covered by VSP .

That seems high. My local Costco is $70 and I've walked by Walmart where they advertise exams and I don't believe it's $250...

I also know of instances where you get charged more if you have insurance, just because the provider knows they can get more money.

If you compare VSP and non-VSP houses, you might find that places that don't take VSP tend to be cheaper, and the final prices tend to look a lot like post-discount VSP prices.

I've seen the theory float around that VSP works a lot like Kohls: start from inflated prices, discount to actual market, and claim you're doing the customer a solid with that "what you saved" report you get. Once you add the premium, not even sure you break even.

Disclaimer: my wife is an optometrist (in the US).

My guess is what you're seeing is a bit of a misrepresentation. My wife would be thrilled if VSP (or any other vision insurance) reimbursed even near that amount. You might be seeing a statement that the insurance plan saved you a certain amount (the standard price of the exam), but the optometrist is not making that money.

Instead, what they do is if the doctor wants to accept their insurance (VSP, EyeMed, Superior, etc), they have to agree to a contractual amount of reimbursement for a standard comprehensive vision and eye health exam, which is often on the order of $35-45 on average. The doctor also would get the copay amount (often $10). Similarly, if you add in contact lens evaluation into your exam, they will reimburse a bit more for that portion. However, it is very rarely even close to $258 unless you have a very specific condition/situation (for example medically-necessary contact lenses, etc).

Your optometrist will have had 4 years of post-graduate education (and probably the 6-figure student loans to match), where they would have learned how to diagnose and treat a wide variety of ocular and even systemic conditions that may first present themselves in the eye. So for the $50, you're getting a steal of a deal. While it is not entirely a loss-leader (an Optometrist can make an OK living this way if they have enough patients--though still lower than what most Software Engineers make), this is why you will often see an Optical in private practices, rather than exams only.

My wife's office obviously sells glasses, however it is worth mentioning that the prices that are presented are largely a result of the underlying wholesale costs of the materials, with some margin to account for labor and facilities. I cannot say that some of the materials from the manufacturers are not overpriced, but there are substantial quality differences between different frames and different lenses.

The advantage of getting your frames from the same place as your doctor is that any lens recommendations for your best quality of life can be relayed directly. Ideally the optician will then help you sort through the pros and cons of different lenses and frames, along with what your insurance may cover, to ultimately get you something that you'll love at a price you are comfortable with. This often is more important as you get older and have a need for progressive lenses. The measurements get trickier, and each lens type may have different advantages. Single-vision lenses are much less particular, and you may have more success with the online shops if you are in this life-stage.

This kind of personalization is not required by everyone, but some people really appreciate it.

Basically, some people will probably have success with the online shops. That's OK. However, they don't work well for everyone.

One more thought: very few purchases will have as much impact on your daily life as your glasses, they literally affect the way you perceive the world, as well as potentially how others perceive you (fashion). We all wish things we buy were cheaper, however the cost/value proposition on glasses is not that bad when you think of it this way. The final decision on how to spend your money is up to you, as the consumer, in the end.

> We all wish things we buy were cheaper, however the cost/value proposition on glasses is not that bad when you think of it this way. The final decision on how to spend your money is up to you, as the consumer, in the end.

I find this opinion to be abhorrent when applied to durable medical devices and medical treatment. Eyeglasses are a vision prosthetic, not an optional purchase. Many people must have at least one pair in order to function normally in society. If you're rent-seeking on that necessity, that makes you a parasite. If you're providing it at or below cost, that makes you a living saint.

~~These prosthetic legs will allow you to walk again. We have decided to charge you only slightly more than you can possibly afford for them. The difference will likely be made up by a charity of some sort, funded by people who would rather pay us to help you walk again than spend the exact same amount on independently making prosthetics and giving them away. But walking is so incredibly valuable in one's daily life, that the cost/value proposition is really not that bad for you. You're only paying us everything you have, in order to live like a normal person, and we also get to use your hard-luck story to suck some more money out of a few chumps that feel sorry for you, or maybe the government. We all wish things we buy were cheaper. You, of course, also have to option to scoot yourself around on an old furniture dolly with a junked riding-lawnmower seat strapped onto it with zip-ties. The final decision on how to spend your money is up to you.~~

Optometrists and ophthalmologists should cartelize ASAP, and erect a firewall between their eye exams and the opticians and eyeglasses manufacturers. If every supplier of eyeglasses prescriptions were to refuse to conjoin themselves to an optician business, Luxottica and VSP and their ilk could not extract money from that portion of the industry that supplies the most value. If I would pay $10 for an exam (copay, with VSP) and $120 for just one pair of glasses (from Luxottica, even after VSP allowance), I would almost certainly be willing to pay ~$200 (or $20/month) for a 30-min annual exam (direct to optometrist, without VSP), and 1-4 pairs of glasses at ~$40 apiece (from someone other than Luxottica). Pay the optometrist $50-80 per exam, and the rest on business overhead and support staff. Current US average is about 1800 patients per optometrist. So the cartel can refuse to sanction more than 1 member per 6000 in the local population, which sets a floor of about 1500 patients per optometrist, if they all distribute evenly.

So an average optometrist, in an average town, charging cartel prices, should be able to clear $100k per year personally, seeing an average of 6.5 patients a day, while still taking 4 weeks vacation, working only weekdays, and taking 9 holidays, while providing $250k to support their own business. That can probably support a $70k business manager, and a decent independent office--with no frame showroom taking up most of the usable space. Maybe also a lower-paid assistant. This is very reasonable for a profession which requires post-graduate education. There is no particular reason why an optometrist with two employees should not be able to operate as a small business, without also having to also sell overpriced eyeglasses, other than the manufacturer monopolist putting the squeeze on them, by paying some optometrists to put the rest out of business if they don't agree to join the scheme. Luxottica doesn't need to be the cartel enforcer; optometrists could create their own, and use it to benefit themselves--and maybe also the patients, just a little.

Concerning the loss leader, that is correct. I should say from my Costco experience, I also got my duct glands checked. I don't remember getting that at Target/Lenscrafter the previous years. It was a few years since my last exam, so my memory could be wrong.

I believe the tear duct check is a loss leader. Most people have dry eyes (Meibomian Gland Dysfunctio) if you work in front of a computer all day. I have it and saw an actual ophthalmologist before so I knew all about it. It cost $$ so I was surprised the optometrist did it as part of the checkup. If you want to get your dry eyes fixed you have to 'melt' the clogged ducts and it cost $300 for the cheapest treatment. $900 for the one that works best (Lipiflow). The treatment isn't permanent so you gotta go back every year for the $300 treatment and every 3 for the $900.

Since the Costco optometrist can't make money from lens, I guess they make money from dry eye treatment. Also he gave me an option to dilate my pupils or he has a fancy imaging machine. The imagine machine costs $45...I opted for the imagine machine grin.

One last point - the Costco optometrist has a fancy digital goggles to check your vision. Another commenter posted that it's a waste of an education for an eye vision check. The goggles show the letters to read (it's not projected on a wall) and has lenses embedded within it. With a keystroke on the computer, it changes the lens. He really just asks "which ones looks better" and hits the keyboard. I was done in a minute.

> only pays him around $70 for the exam

Is that low? Ophthalmologists get 28€ per consultation in France for something basic like that (although they can charge more but the patient will only get reimbursed for 28€, so they will try to avoid those who overcharge).

Wal-mart also has optometrists that will give you your complete prescription for (last time I checked) the same cost as an eye-exam at Costco. Been my go-to for the last few years.

Both Wal-Mart and Costco have fully independent optometrists: they lease the space and equipment and are not employees. (sometimes state laws don't allow this in which case they are employees)

I think it's the other way around. Most states don't allow optometrist clinics to be owned/controlled by non-optometrists.

When they do, Walmart/Costco may find it worthwhile to own/operate the clinic themselves.

You could be right. The information I was able to find said otherwise, but that may well have been biased.

I second this, Costco is great for eye exams. No upsells.

As you mention, measuring PD yourself (with a friend) isn't hard. There's articles and videos online about it.

I've seen that left off a couple times, and I just ask one of the people up front to just measure it for me and tell me what it is. I usually buy my main glasses from them anyway, and just say I'll get sunglasses or computer glasses online (which is when I use Zenni), so that helps, but even without mentioning that, I haven't gotten any pushback when I've asked for it.

It is somewhat hard to get right. I did it with a marker and old glasses, and I still got it wrong (and couldn't return the glasses that I ordered).

Ah, but no it isn't!

See kazinator's dead accurate, no-friend-required method here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13092902

Clever. Seems obvious in retrospec though.

It reminds me of collimating a telescope with a laser or your eye. You basically look down the optics of the telescope and you should be staring into your own eye, or if you use a laser the laser should be reflected by the mirrors exactly back into the emitter.

it won't work if the mirror is tilted or bent, so make sure you get a flat mirror on a flat surface (e.g. use a level)

If the mirror is bent, a level will not help. A level is useful if orientation relative to gravity is important (something has to be horizontal or vertical, like a cabinet, counter, or picture). That isn't even remotely relevant here. You could do this measurement while staying at the International Space Station.

Even cheap mirrors from a dollar store are more than good enough for this, as long as they are glass. Most plate glass glass is made by floating melted glass on a bath of molten metal (which is heavier). The molten metal, if undisturbed, provides a perfectly level surface.

Just don't use a plastic mirror, or a cheap polished metal one, not to mention a magnifying mirror.

Even fairly noticeable distortion will not matter at the distances involved in this measurement. Let's say that your mirror is so horribly warped over the tiny ~65 mm pupillary distance that the pupil-to-ruler lines of sight are an entire degree away from being parallel. The measurement will then be off by about 1.7% of the distance from your pupils to the ruler. If you get your eyes within 15 mm of the ruler, the error is only about 0.25 mm; below what you can resolve with that ruler.

If the mirror is fair, but tilted, the effect is negligible because the lines of sight remain parallel. The measurement is diminished according to the cosine of the tilt angle. For a rather significant five degree tilt, it will be only around 0.25 mm short.

Although some assistance may be required, I wonder if the iOS Measure app might be just as accurate in measuring PD?

They also can’t require a membership to get an eye exam, so if you don’t want the pressure to buy glasses there, Costco is a safe bet.

They’ll give you your prescription and literally wouldn’t sell me glasses even if I wanted them, since I wasn’t a store member. I did have to measure my own IPD though, which I did with a ruler and a mirror.

EDIT: another reply notes that they did get their IPD at Costco, so this might vary by location. As they mentioned, the optometrists are independent.

Fun costco fact, in Canada and in many US states you also don't need a membership to use their pharmacy. And also in many US states where they sell alcohol they legally can't require a membership to buy it.

I think that’s the case here in Connecticut for alcohol, though I’ve not gone and checked.

I know for a fact that Indiana is a state that cannot put membership barriers on alcohol.

I first saw a sign declaration in Sams Club stating that. When I went to the front desk, it was much gnashing of teeth to get the manual override for "alcohol exception".

And then they demanded I do the mandatory member search. Members agree to. I'm not a member. I dont consent to searches. Maybe it makes me an asshole ; they're free to make it truly member only by removing alcohol.

And also as another note, any alcohol sales in Indiana must be offered to all legal-to-purchase people. You cannot say "10% off with a kroger card". That's just as illegal as requiring a membership card.

What is a "mandatory member search"?

The receipt check is the mildest version of it. They can search your cart, and potentially also your person, for store items that you haven't paid for.

If you are not a member, you have not consented to it, and the transfer of ownership already occurred at the point of sale. So you can walk past the exit line and right out the doors. Attempting to hold you in the store against your will could be considered kidnapping.

Doesn't Walmart do this without a membership? How do they get away with it?

(Disclaimer: not a lawyer) Walmart might tell you not to leave, but legally speaking they probably don’t have grounds to stop you from leaving, and it may in fact be illegal for them to try.

Some states have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopkeeper's_privilege

But that still requires cause to believe you stole something, and as far as I understand it, declining to be searched on its own doesn’t provide cause for that.

Costco has a membership agreement where you consent to being searched, Walmart does not.

I have a friend who used to load up shopping carts with cases of beer and then slowly roll out of Walmart back when he was underage. They're not legally allowed to stop him and corporate policy is to avoid chasing down thefts. Do with this information what you will.

when they ask - you say "no, thank you".

They get away with it by training the vast majority to consent for no particular reason.

Where I shop (Redwood City and Mountain View) the receipt check lines are long and clog the exit. There's no way to bypass them unless you don't have a cart.

That's always my technique at stores that try that (aside from CostCo). The nice part is that they really aren't used to people saying that (especially if you say it very pleasantly, as if they had offered you something) and will often stare at you with a "deer in the headlights" look.

The worst that's ever happened was that I once had a Best Buy guard yell at me and start trying to chase me out into the parking lot, but I just ignored him and he eventually gave up and went back. Flaunting fake authority like that makes me very happy for some reason.

Costco's pharmacy generally also has excellent prices and makes them available through their website (for self pay or non-insurance meds, insurance co-pays are for you to determine). https://www.costco.com/pharmacy/drug-directory-main

+1 for Costco's pharmacy. In the rare occasion I need a prescription filled, its usually considerably cheaper than CVS or Walgreens. Plus, I'm prone to sinus infections and they have generic sudafed (real pseudoephedrine, not OTC) for just under $2 a box. Every other place in town is 5-10x that for the same thing.

A tip for anyone measuring their own PD, shine a bright light in your eyes so your pupils constrict. That will make finding the center a bit easier.

Your PD is not actually part of your Rx. That's why it's normally not included. Your Rx consists of a OS Rx and OD Rx.

No, but the law has a handwavy bit about "everything needed to get prescription lenses," which ostensibly would include the PD at plain reading since you can't make the lenses without it and it's based on medical information. Your stance vs. that one is the crux of the debate.

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=1&SID=797d7708f...

> (g) A prescription is the written specifications for lenses for eyeglasses which are derived from an eye examination, including all of the information specified by state law, if any, necessary to obtain lenses for eyeglasses.

biggest scam is that glasses/contact prescriptions only last a year in the US

That's maybe Fair given the potential rate of change.

You can go decades without a change, or a significant change (more than half a diopter).

Yeah, and others may go months, or years too.

Significant change isn't just the RX, it is other things that can go wrong in the eye as well. IF caught early it can be corrected, otherwise you may not notice until you are half blind.

That's true of everything, though. Your grocery store doesn't say, "sorry, you haven't been to the dentist in 6 months, we can't sell you food", even though there are many dental issues that can be life-threatening if not treated and eating food makes it worse. It's not their business to care.

That varies by state. My NJ prescription lasts for 6 years IIRC.

Depends on your doctor.

In NJ mine always dates a year, so I got fed up and found a supplier to buy from that doesn't give a shit what my prescription says.

Which brings up another benefit of using an online eyewear vendor: they let you type your own prescription in. If you are personally fine with using a two-year-old prescription, do it.

When I ordered glasses a year ago, I also played around with the idea of eliminating astigmatism from my prescription by adjusting the cylinder value to 0 (it was only .25 in one eye and .50 in the other) and offsetting the sphere value by half of the difference. Because their buy-one get-one free sale, I got one pair with astigmatism and one without, and got to decide which I liked better.

That's awesome. Anything more than about a half diopter and you'll probably not get away with that in glasses. Contacts can go a little higher. I'm personally astigmatism sensitive, so I have to be spot on for degree and diopter.

To be legally above board, an online provide must attempt to confirm the Rx you enter is correct AND still valid. But few if any do because its a race to the bottom on quality and price. At Topology Eyewear, we spare no expense to ensure you get the best custom frames (like a custom suit) AND the best optics money can buy. We take 100% compensated Rx very seriously!

We're already aware you're enthusiastic about your business. Kindly leave the self-endorsement out of every comment.

It depends on the vendor. Warby Parker, for example, requires you to scan/upload the prescription given by your doctor, which obviously has a date on it. I guess it's always possible to just edit out or change the date on it though.

It varies by retailer and also contacts vs glasses.

If I remember correctly, thr Warby Parker storefront near me accepted a glasses prescriptions given out less than either five or ten years prior.

Needing a prescription for glasses is a bit absurd to begin with. The worst case of wearing the wrong prescription is that you'll get a headache. I suppose it could be a bit dangerous if some drivers were slightly disoriented, but I can't imagine glasses being more dangerous than something like Tylenol.

You don't technically need an Rx. You can go to Zenni and just start plugging in numbers if you want. I'm not sure what that gains you, though.

It gains you the ability to replace a broken pair of glasses for just the cost of the glasses, rather than also having to pay for another eye exam.

Tylenol (acetaminophen) is probably a pretty good example. They both seem pretty safe in reasonable situations (a slight difference in prescription value, a couple hundred extra MG dose) but can be hugely problematic at greater levels (lethal/permanent liver damage or completely unable to see anything with a terrible prescription)

Plus wearing glasses with a slightly different power than your own is infinitely safer than not wearing them at all.

> The worst case of wearing the wrong prescription is that you'll get a headache.

Doesn't using the wrong prescription worsen eyesight faster?

At least, it's been my general experience that when a child is curious about people's glasses and is given the glasses so they can experience the effect, they only let them try it for a couple seconds and are explained that using them for too long can cause damage to their eyesight (because it's the wrong prescription for them who have perfect eyesight). Is that a myth?

The real reason is they don't want grubby hands smudging up their glasses :)

No... It's not like I've seen it only once or never talked about it with other people. It's general common sense or a common belief, even if it turns out to be false.

The eyes don't care about what's in front of it. The brain does the image processing, so that's the only thing that's affected by a bad prescription. If your glasses are so wrong that it causes eye strain, it may cause damage, but you'd have to purposefully put yourself into that ordeal.

https://mayoclinichealthsystem.org/locations/la-crosse/servi...

The eye very much does care what's in front of it. Look up "emmetropization".

Try a web search for neuroplasticity.

Yes, it's a myth in the sense that you would need to wear the glasses several orders of magnitude longer and/or consistently for there to be any negative effects. Some people seem to think that even looking through the glasses will unleash demons into the healthy eye.

Modern research does point in the direction of the eye remodelling itself based on what kind of input you give it on a longer scale, though. This includes the amount of light seen during the day and whether it is able to focus rays or not. There are indications these play a role in the development of myopia.

I... can't form a coherent response. How do you even know which prescription to get? Do you have astigmatism? How do you measure that?

It's not a scam. It's just overpriced in the US, because they can't get their stuff together in the health department.

If I need a new pair of glasses with the same prescription I have now (Say, for example, I fall and break my glasses), I shouldn't be required to go get examined to get a new pair simply because it has been more than a year. I want the same thing I've been wearing, and the worst possible outcome from me getting them is that (if my prescription has worsened, which it hasn't in 4+ years) I can't see quite as clearly at long range as I ought to.

That would be weird, good thing you are not required to get examined in order to buy glasses. I don't know why you think you are required.

You are required to get a new prescription because your original prescription expired.

It's by state.

Not for contact lenses (16 CFR 315.5):

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/315.5

That doesn't make much sense because adult vision doesn't change much. It should be perfectly valid to use an old prescription unless you want to re-check your vision. I've never seen this law in Asia or Europe and people are living just fine.

I just had an eye test and both of my eyes had changed enough after two years to make a very noticable difference to my prescription.

My insurance fully covers annual exams, so that doesn't bother me too much. If the period between covered exams was longer than the prescription period, yeah, I'd be peeved.

I wonder if that depends on state and/or who prescribes it?

I got a new prescription in 2017-07-07, and just took a look at it. It says it expires 2019-07-07.

I'm in Washington, and got it at Walmart.

I thought it was a state thing. But it's apparently an FTC rule that started with contacts and was expanded to glasses as some point.

Not that I would advocate anyone taking shortcuts on eye exams, but assuming online US providers insist on appropriate documentation and doctors' names, there's always ordering from Canada.

my glasses prescription doesn't have an expiration date on it. Zenni and Coastal don't care if I order new glasses using my old prescription. I haven't tried with contacts... I think my last prescription had an expiration date.

Note on contacts: because you're physically inserting a medical device into your eye, part of your annual exam is making sure that you are not causing any (potentially permanent) damage do your eye. While hopefully you are not abusing your contacts, even in normal use, sometimes the eyes can be harmed, which can cause major problems down the road for you. In my opinion, the expiration is probably a good thing if you're proponent of trying to protect people's eye health.

Yeah, I'm fine with it for contacts. It's just protectionism on glasses unless the prescribee has some degenerative condition.

2 years in many if not all places. And I assume online places don't worry about that.

In many states it doesn't - you can ask for an extension to 2 years and in some states you can ask for a longer timeframe than that.

The length actually varies by state and it ranges from 1 to 10 years.

You actually need a prescription to buy glasses in the US? 0o

Nit: An optometrist is usually fine if all you need is a refraction.

It's when you're dealing with something that requires medical intervention (glaucoma, pars planitis, etc.) that you need to shell out for an ophthalmologist. An optometrist can still catch that stuff, but will need to refer you for treatment.

This is a good point and also worth pointing out (in the US at least) that most ophthalmologists will be covered under your medical insurance not your eye insurance (if any) because they are medical doctors.

I was getting my contact lens exam/fitting recently and the optometrist wanted me to get something checked later by an ophthalmologist. He said it was probably nothing to worry about but made it clear that it was outside his scope of expertise to diagnose or make medical recommendations.

my wife is an optometrist.

it's amazing the stuff she finds. she's found brain tumors and literally saved people's lives by referring them early to a neuro-ophthalmologist when they came in just to update their prescription. many latent systemic problems are also clearly visible in the eye: hypertension, diabetes, etc.

> This is a good point and also worth pointing out (in the US at least) that most ophthalmologists will be covered under your medical insurance not your eye insurance (if any) because they are medical doctors.

Make sure they code it correctly! I once had a rather large bill because the ophthalmologist's office accidentally billed me under a "routine" code that my medical insurance didn't cover. It took several hours of phone calls with the insurer and the ophthalmologist to get it corrected.

Just echoing this, (Canada) my optometrist caught my glaucoma early using that machine that shoots a burst of air at your eye. He referred me to an opthalmologist who said there isn't any damage yet but gave me a prescription for some eye drops that reduce eye pressure. I'm only 27 and don't have any other medical issues, so it was a but of a surprise

It doesn't hurt to ask! The last time I got my eyes examined was at some cheap lenscrafters-type store which had a promotion for 2 pairs of glasses and an eye exam for ~$60. The PD wasn't on the prescription, but the doctor made the measurement after I asked about it.

There was a very limited selection of glasses that were available for the 2-for-$60 promotion, and they really tried to upsell me to more expensive frames and lenses. Luckily I was able to resist their sales attempts and bought a nice frame and lenses from Zenni Optical. I keep one pair of the cheap glasses at my office and the other in my car.

As an aside, being able to get inexpensive glasses online has been a huge improvement on my life. I remember growing up when I only had a single pair of glasses (and a "backup" which were with my previous prescription). I had to be very protective of my glasses, and getting a scratch on the lens meant that I was stuck with it until my prescription changed. Now I can get my favorite glasses from Zenni for $25, so I have backups if the lenses get scratched or the frame get bent. I also have prescription sunglasses for the first time! No more dorky clip-on shades!

Can confirm, can order like 8 pairs for what 1 used to cost me. The things we can do nowadays!

Around here the store has some cheap frames they use for advertizing. The problem is they look like something a crazy old aunt would wear, with wild coloring. If you want anything like normal glasses you have to pay for the expensive brands. It’s really sad seeing institutionalized and less fortunate people wearing those cheap glasses...

> Around here the store has some cheap frames they use for advertizing. The problem is they look like something a crazy old aunt would wear, with wild coloring.

That would make you all the rage in a hipster circles.

I actually really miss the old basic NHS frames because of this. Perfectly fine to wear every day, even if you're Michael Caine, and simply not bother with anything more expensive. They were also great for ordering a cheap second pair for manual dirty work, decorating, spare for the car, and to tide you over when the expensive pair inevitably breaks (funny that) etc. A HUGE thanks to Thatcher for removing opticians from proper NHS coverage in the mid 80s. After the demise of NHS frames, even cheap glasses were expensive.

Decades later those NHS 524 frames became all the hipster (and Morrisey) rage. For hundreds a pair. Sometimes using original repolished frames as apparently they were well enough made to last forever.

If you want a good, practical, well made modern replacement for the NHS 524, check out the Shuron Freeway. They're very sturdy and have barrel hinges. Ironically, they're much better made than designer frames but they're not as expensive!

LensCrafters is very expensive.

I'm pretty happy with my $8-a-pair glasses at Zenni...due to my tendency to lose glasses, I was happy buying 7 sets from them and have them scattered around most of my common places in my life (e.g. my bedroom, living room, desk at work, etc)...If I lose one, I don't have to feel guilty about it.

Another satisfied Zenni customer. The lenses are not always perfect and the frames are not always the best. Sizing is hit or miss.

What I do is buy the frame with cheap lenses to check fit, then I buy it with nice lenses if I like it. They are so cheap there is no reason not to do it this way.

Even ordering multiples it ends up being inexpensive.

> They are so cheap there is no reason not to do it this way.

Besides the environmental cost, maybe.

I don't throw away my old glasses. I keep them in various places as backups, such as in car gloveboxes, in the home emergency kit, in a bag while traveling and so on.

When I was younger I used to tease my Mom & Dad for essentially treating their reading glasses like pens or pencils, and letting them diffuse around the house as the acquired new pairs.

Now that I'm in my mid-40's, I take it all back. Having a pair, even if it isn't the exact right one, always with reach is a godsend.

When I wear my contacts, I need reading glasses. I buy them essentially in bulk from Amazon and leave them scattered everywhere.

Me too. I have around 10 pairs, so I never find myself in a room/place without them. I like Dr. Dean Edell’s for their combination of style/comfort/build quality/light weight. $9.99/pair

Me too. Even though my eyesight continues to deteriorate, a pair of old prescription glasses is many times better than no glasses at all in an emergency!

Relative to other things like travel, commuting, home energy usage, electronics, etc, I'm guessing the environmental cost of a pair of glasses is very, very low.

It is important to focus on effective actions. For example, a lot of people think that somehow recycling affects climate change, which (AFAIK) is not true in any meaningful sense. That isn't to say one shouldn't recycle -- there are plenty of reasons to do so in many cases.

It helps the amount of garbage put into the environment, which is good regardless.

I believe that recycling aluminum takes significantly less energy than smelting it in the first place.

I don't have any idea about plastics/papers.

Aluminum is the only part of recycle that is really profitable. That's way people picking through trash take the cans and nothing else.

Everyone I've seen do this takes bottles too, and it's because they can redeem the bottles and cans to collect a state-mandated deposit.

Post-consumer paper can be recycled in to some forms of low-density card that doesn't require high quality pulp. Egg cartons come to mind, and as a percentage in some packaging, newsprint and sanitary papers. Post-consumer paper cannot easily be recycled in to anything resembling printer paper due to the contaminants. Pre-consumer paper is recycled heavily as it's of known quality.

I'm not aware of any plastics that are recycled in to the same form. I know that PET (1) and HDPE (2) are recycled in to fibres.

It's a similar story to glass, certainly where I live a large amount of glass is recycled in to crushed aggregate rather than new bottles. The energy costs of cleaning don't make it worthwhile.

Glass bottles used to be reused, which is the responsible thing to do.

Consumers didn’t like it because scratches accumulate on the outside of the bottles.

I always thought it was a shame that we stopped doing that, but plastic has taken over pretty much for all the glass bottles that used to be recycled.

Plus you can probably donate the glasses. There is probably some poor person out there with a prescription close to yours.

I think the broader point was that buying something only because it's cheap is generating unnecessary waste.

I'm not saying this is the case here because the original pair of glasses can still be used, but isn't avoiding this kind of behaviour a good thing?

I want to like Zenni, and I have ordered from them, but I am frustrated every time. I have a very, very large head. I need glasses at least 155mm wide, if not 165mm wide to fit around my temples. Yet finding data on the width of their frames is next to impossible. Even their sales people I reach via chat do not have the data. Sometimes I will see frames with some measurements, but not all, and its just inconsistent. I basically gave up, and buy from 'fatheadz' that specialize in wider frames, but they are much more expensive. For an internet only company, they sure seem to limit how you can search.

I just wanted to chime in here because while I don't have a wide head, I have a long distance between my ears and my nose (i.e., narrow but long from front to back). It literally took me 40 years to figure out that if the arms of the glasses are not long enough, the glasses will tilt down, because the curve of the arm will sit on your ears. This results in really poor vision (as you can imagine). It sounds stupid that I never realised it, but hopefully I can spare someone else in a similar situation -- make sure the arms of the glasses are long enough!

Also might want to check out straight-armed glasses. Typically they'll have some roughness or rubber where they meet your ears to help stay on your head like some fancy sunglasses.

BTW - These acetate frame arms can usually be heated carefully with a torch, and bent to straighten them up. Thus making them much longer. Sometimes you can even rebend them farther back. Though straighter arms are somewhat more prone to fall from your face.

A bowl of hot water will usually work to bend acetate frames, but not plastic frames (which cannot be adjusted). Be sure to keep heat away from the lens/coating to avoid crazing.

Don't your glasses shops make sure to adjust the arms to your size? Mine does, they have a special device that heats up the arms so they can bend it carefully, and pliers to adjust the nose thingies.

You should look at Shuron. They don't have a fancy website but they do have great customer service and offer their frames in various measurements, and if you have a large head they have frames that will fit. You can order according to the eye size, bridge size, and TPL (temple size).

Hinge-less frames can take any shape, so long as they are long enough they will fit you just fine.

There’s nothing wrong with going slightly upscale to Warby Parker with accurate measurements and some QC, especially if you have a more “demanding” Rx.

This data is not difficult to find at all. It's listed in the details section for every frame. You can also use it as a filter when browsing. Their stock at this size is really limited, however.

https://www.zennioptical.com/b/record.type-frame/_/N-1101494...

Good hack - I think I'll try this!

I think the overall experience is just okay. But since getting equvilent glasses (selection, coatings) can cost several hundred dollars it is worth it.

dittos. Another very pleased Zenni Optical customer here.

I bought three complete pairs of eyeglasses for $105 total, delivered. If you can be patient, about once a year, they'll run a buy-two-get-one-free sale. I now have prescription sunglasses, distance-only, and a set of hidden-line ("transition") bifocals. All with low-reflection coating, and high refraction index plastic. All three are holding up well after three years.

Another ditto -- I now have one pair of regular glasses and four pairs of computer/reading glasses, all prescription (one for each computer I sit at!). The last 3 computer glasses cost $27 for all three. At those prices, I can trivially "just get" spares for vacations and hiking.

Fair warning: Zenni optical sent my password to me plaintext in email after creating an account with them (this was a few years ago now).

I would expect none of my data - profile, passwords, or banking info - is safe with them.

Last time I had an eye exam (UK, Boots) they of course gave me the prescription because they are obliged to, but under no circumstances would they give me a PD. I forget their exact reason but it was something about needing to relate it to the choice of glasses. Sounded like horse-shit designed to make me buy their overpriced frames to me. I do not expect to have any better luck this year.

However, you can easily measure your own pupillary distance exactly down to the millimeter with a ruler and a mirror.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13092902

Only problem is, if you look to close in the mirror, your pd changes because your eyes rotate to focus on the shorter distance. If you are closer then 1 meter to the mirror you should compensate. Up to 2,5 mm per eye if ur at 40 cm distance.(20cm from mirror)

There is no such problem. Each eye stares at itself in the mirror. (Not necessarily at the same time, if the procedure is done as described.) Those two lines of sight are parallel if the mirror is true, regardless of distance to the mirror.

There may be a different problem: though parallel, those two lines of sight may not be exactly perpendicular to the ruler/mirror. This is not going to make a huge difference.

Suppose the mirror/ruler is rotated five degrees off relative to the plane of your pupils, which is quite a lot. For an pupillary distance of 65 mm, this introduces only a 0.25 mm error on the low side: basically the measurement shrinks by the cosine of 5 degrees which is 0.996.

Pupillary distances are typically given to the millimeter.

> If you are closer then 1 meter to the mirror you should compensate.

If you're 1 meter away from the mirror, you won't be able to read the ruler, at least if you're doing all this because of near-sightedness. :) This technique is best if your face is right up to the mirror. If you press your forehead to the mirror so your head doesn't move, that's probably best. If you're far sighted and can't read the ruler from that close, then you have to back off. If you can't read the ruler at any distance, you may have to do this with contact lenses on.

>That said, I don't think the FTC stipulates what information must appear on the prescription. Many docs leave off your PD (pupillary distance), which is a necessary measurement if you're buying online. Fortunately, there are a variety of easy ways to take this measurement yourself after the exam, although if you're really concerned about precision, you'll want the doctor's measurement.

at that point just visit a better eye doctor.

I told my doctor up front that I don't plan to ever buy eyewear from them because I don't feel comfortable buying a prescription from the prescriber. They were very accepting about it and they've been quite respectful to my wishes.

My doctor did leave the PD off the prescription, but I just called the office and asked for it. To their credit, they looked it up for me in their records.

This kind of blows my mind. A few years ago when I went to the eye doc, they refused to give me my prescription, I had to buy glasses from their store in their office. Last year when I went, they gave me my prescription at the end, without me asking. It felt really nice and at the time I figured they were doing it to create a better relationship with their customers. Now I wonder if someone knew about this rule and reported them. Kind of curious how long it's been in effect.

I just got my eye exam done this morning, and I agree it really does make a way better experience.

I think it's a state-level law thing. Here in WA State it's illegal for a optician to refuse you a plain eye exam or refuse to give you your prescription information, including pupillary distance: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=18.195&full=tru...

It's not, it's a nationwide thing enforced by the FTC. WA and some other states have stricter laws which include pupillary distance.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/com...

Good to know. But judging by the current messaging on the site that where you're supposed to send those complaints for that... I don't think there's much enforcement going on right now.

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

Considering the US govt has been partially closed for over a month now, it's probably a fair statement that NO enforcement of this is going on right now. :P

Eye exams are important. I have a cordial astigmatism in my left eye, I would not have know about without it.

The eye glass seller in longwood boston will measure your pupil distance, and check that your online glasses match the prescription when you get them. He charges a small fee for this.

Would that be Longwood Optical?

yeah. I like the glasses I got there but the owner was a little overbearing. Although I like it when they help curate the frames.

A few years ago after an exam, I asked for my prescription and they handed it over with no complaints. I asked for my PD measurement and was told that is free with the purchase of glasses. I offered $20 for just that measurement and they wouldn't do it.

I don't think the doctors normally measure the PD, they leave that to the ones who cut the glasses. That really does cause problems for doing it online, though.

PD is actually an automatic part of having that big mass of lenses up against your face and properly positioned for testing. If they don't have that adjusted properly you're not going to see much.

I'm not sure if the professional designation changes country to country, but here in Canada an ophthalmologist would not be the person to give a comprehensive eye exam. That would be an optometrist. (source: optometrist parent)

Your parent had it backwards. An ophthalmologist is an MD.

> your eye doctor must give you your prescription after your exam

In regard to the above quote, I wonder how effective or if anyone is familiar with: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/eyeque-visioncheck-world-...

It essentially promises to not only cut out the doctor's exam visit but actually improve the prescription (since measurements are taken throughout the day).

note: not affiliated but seems like an interesting product (if not now then certainly as the field of self-testing improves, example: https://tricorder.xprize.org/prizes/tricorder)

Not affiliated either, just an amazed customer.

Never needed glasses until I was in my late forties and had to start using reading ones.

I bought the Personal Vision Tracker (the black one) on the Indiegogo campaign. It's not very easy to use but gives fairly consistent data if handled with care. I did not yet compare the device data with the ones from a doctor's visit.

(The data for my right eye are slightly worse than for the left, and I have indeed not ideal results with standard reading glasses.)

I bought prescription glasses on a UK site (I live in Europe) based on the device data. Both the reading glasses (short distance) and the computer glasses (medium distance) are perfect: I have not seen this good in years.

Because of that excellent result I have also ordered the VisionCheck (the new, white one) on the Indiegogo campaign. It is purportedly easier to use, not gotten it yet.

Meanwhile I had also got the Insight model (larger white one). That is for visual acuity and it confirmed that I have 20/20. Interestingly, it also showed I have a light form of tritanopia, which might explain past naming disagreements around colors between green and blue.

Their product page: https://www.eyeque.com/pvt/

About 6-7 months after an exam I went back to get my prescription/PD measurement because I wanted to order something online instead from local shop because of their insane prices and they outright would not give me the measurement. Likely knowing I didn't want to buy frames from them.

They've been closed for years.

In almost every eye exam I’ve gotten the doctor doesn’t even measure my PD, but rather the glasses sales people once I’ve found a pair of frames I like.

Yeah, this. The lack of PD on scripts is mostly about how labor has typically been divided, not a nefarious or bad-faith effort to force you into using the local optometry department.

In years past, those optical departments were a major part of the ophthalmologist's/optometrist's business model. With the rise of big-box store optical, though, that changed. (And has now changed MORE with folks like Zenni and Warby Parker, etc.)

For example, my late stepfather's business (he retired in '99) depended on that optical department, but for most of his career (and his father's before him) there WEREN'T places outside doctors' offices to get glasses, especially where I grew up.

OTOH, the eye doctors I've used in Houston, where I've lived since the mid 90s, have generally not even HAD an optical department.

Oh, and one more bit: ISTR that Warby Parker will do a PD measurement for you gratis if you visit one of their stores. You might even find glasses you like -- not as cheap as Zenni, but definitely cheaper than a traditional provider.

A optometrist I went to did my eye exam for $90, and then I decided I wanted the prescription to get my own contacts.

First, I asked, and they denied it. Then I literally had to pull out this law and they finally granted it. But they did everything they could to obstruct me. Literally they refused to scan it and wanted me to show up in person. Then while writing it, the doctor himself said "sad to see you don't support our business". (For people living in Boston, the place was Custom Eyes in Central Square.)

I was surprised by the divergence between the law and how pissy the doctor got when I tried to exercise my rights.

> the doctor himself said "sad to see you don't support our business".

That I would want to question him about. Does he mean that the medical service is the loss-leader and that he gets a kickback off our purchase of eyewear?

Wow, I used to go there 4 years ago and liked the place. Never had trouble getting my prescription.

So sad to see how that place changed.

The reason glasses cost so much is because one company owns: (1) nearly all brand name frames including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Prada eyewear, Armani eyewear and so on, (2) nearly all retail stores such as LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical and Target Optical and (3) EyeMed, one of the largest vision insurance companies.

See this eye-opening 60 Minutes story on Luxottica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM

Luxottica retail brands: http://www.luxottica.com/en/retail-brands

Luxottica eyewear brands: http://www.luxottica.com/en/eyewear-brands

Luxottica vision insurance: http://www.luxottica.com/en/node/6336

In the US, only Costco and Walmart's optical departments are independent of Luxottica.

And Walmart is still very expensive. I commented elsewhere this but they wanted $180-240 just to replace lenses in already existing frames.

Aren't they now EssilorLuxottica and also control a good chunk of lenses market as well?

Fun fact: Costco and Walmart surface their lenses on equipment made by Essilor (Satisloh subsidiary). Also if you're buying "transitions" branded photochromatic lenses - that's Essilor too.

If EssilorLuxottica was an American company the EU would have fined them a few billion dollars, and split them up a long time ago.

I was wondering why the US hasn’t gone after Luxottica, and I’m guessing that’s the answer: US crackdown on Lux will lead to retaliatory action by EU.

Who cares? EU is already going after American companies.

The US rarely cares about antitrust action anymore. Otherwise a lot of American companies would be sweating bullets right now.

The US however slaps huge fines on foreign companies for breaching sanctions or bribery of foreign officials.

Why? Which American companies did the EU split up? There was an article in the Economist this week criticising the US for fines levied on foreign businesses for misdeeds elsewhere: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/01/19/the-trouble-wit...

It's a recurring theme in HN discussions about fines that all the Americans think the evil EU is unfairly fining fine American companies, and all the Europeans think the evil Americans are unfairly fining their countries' fine companies :)

I'm sure there are very few manufacturers of quality lens-making equipment.

On the other hand my latest glasses where neither lenses nor frame come from E-L cost an arm and a leg, too.

Costco till the day I die.

To make matters more interesting, EssilorLuxottica is going to stop separating everything, and start "bundle pricing" things -- so, whatever clarity you might have had on a receipt or something else is going to go out the window.

EssilorLuxottica is probably about 70% Sunglass Hut, 30% Vision when it comes to retail sales (I'm not factoring in Oakley). They also sell their frames on the wholesale market for independent DO's to purchase; pre-merger Luxottica did have some "house" lenses, but, they were just as expensive as Essilor lenses.

Ironically enough, Luxottica did attempt to be Costco's Vision provider for a few years back in the early 2000's, but, they did back out of it after only two years.

I worked at Oakley when it was acquired by Lux.

Oakley puts an INSANE amount of R&D into their products, particularly their eyewear. They have laser stations to make sure the optics of the lens doesnt change the perspective of things (the difference between catching a baseball in the glove and in the mouth), "shotgun" tests, weighted spikes, and even have a machine that opens/closes the sunglasses several million times. They test each design and material very thoroughly. Or, at least, they did when I worked there.

If the design didn't survive all of the tolerance parameters, back to the drawing board.

We also subjected our competitors glasses to the same tests. You wouldn't believe how many name brands just fell apart, or blew up into shards of plastic into our dummies' eyes, etc.

When Lux bought us, they made us take down the videos of exploding ray-bans we had on our website (And some other brands). Then they ran our entire department into the ground. Real piece of shit company. Those of us who didn't leave between 08-12 got laid off in ~16 or so.

That’s really sad! Oakley was one of the companies that I respected. They had (have?) great products.

I probably watched all those videos, you could see the amount of work dedicated to each item.

I don’t believe any sunglasses company will ever put the same effort in R&D like them.

Seems to me that since the acquisition they started to use cheaper materials. Maybe I’am right?

Seems that way to me, too. I'm not certain, though, since my contacts have long moved on.

Why does that make the glasses so expensive though? The frames from my glasses were about 100 EUR and the glasses were a lot more expensive. If I ask my parents or other people, they are paying 1000 EUR or more for the glasses by themselves (not the frames). I'm about to get new glasses next month because my current glasses are 6 years old now, I'm looking forward to some new glasses.

A lot of it just comes down to lack of competition. They own pretty much every major eyewear brand.

I got a pair of $100 Warby Parker frames w/ lenses last week that are every bit as nice as any good designer pair I've seen in an optical shop.

Even the luxottica brands have some cheap options. They are expensive because there is a market for people to spend $200+ on eyewear.

That's insane.

I've recently bought a pair of regular glasses as well as prescription sunglasses. Regular ones use Mont Blanc frames(considered expensive) + some pretty good lenses(best ones they offered anyway). Total cost: £400 for everything.

Sunglasses: Ray-Ban frames + their own Ray-Ban G15 prescription lens(again, pretty expensive) - total cost £320 for everything.

I just don't understand - how are those people you mention paying 1000 euro for glasses(I assume you mean lenses)????? Are they some incredibly complex custom lenses that they are getting? Mine are for nearsightedness + slight astigmatism in one eye.

These are specific types of lenses that are for both nearsightedness and farsightedness.

"They are paying 1000 EUR or more for the glasses by themselves"

Where is that?

I have strong short-sightness and astigmatism so I need special lenses, and on top of it I usually ask for the thinner model.

Together with frame it cost me about 300EUR just recently, in Madrid, Spain.

Are they also the reason why optometrists insist that it's an inborn effect, despite all the research pointing towards an environmental cause?

There are other non-Luxottica options in the US. Warby Parker, Bailey Nelson, and Ollie Quinn to name a few. Almost everyone sells Essilor frames though but not quite everyone is owned by the eyewear conglomerate. At least with Bailey you can get some quality frames for a decent price.

Does anyone know the non-Luxottica options in Europe, where the market is much more fragmented across countries?

I know about Ace And Tate (NL), GlassesDirect (UK), and Quattrocento (IT) .

Fielmann is a German brand available in several European countries, but I'm not sure if they make their own eyewear.

Still, I can't imagine paying 1000 USD for a pair of glasses. In Poland 100 EUR gives you a decent pair, 200 EUR is already a bit much.

Got myself a pair of titanium ace & tate glasses, great quality and good service. Would recommend if you are looking for a pair in NL.

You don't have to be in NL - they ship them to all EU countries and have stores out of Holland too - in UK, Germany, Belgium, plus you can find them in some 3rd party stores now too.

I recommend them as well. Persol (obviously from Luxottica so no good if you don't went to support them but I just couldn't find as stylish, foldable sunglasses elsewhere) and Ace & Tate are my favorite brands but I don't need prescription lenses so that may vary.

I got Mykita frames, but they're not exactly a cheap alternative.

I can recommend Viu. They are available in some European markets and by focusing on a essential selection of frames, they are able to satisfy most peoples needs. Paid 150€ for mine.

eyebuydirect zenioptical

Yep they own the industry, they've tried buying Warby Parker numerous times because they are hurting their monopoly (so I've heard). WP, won't play ball and be bought up.

> The reason glasses cost so much is because one company owns: (1) nearly all brand name frames including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Prada eyewear, Armani eyewear and so on, (2) nearly all retail stores such as LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical and Target Optical and (3) EyeMed, one of the largest vision insurance companies.

The vast majority of my glasses' cost is the lenses, last time around they cost me >$200 each IIRC. I didn't even change the frames, just got the lenses replaced.

That cost too is highly inflated. My wife has a crazy bad eyes/strong prescription and she was able to get glasses including frames for under $70 from Zenni.

If you're paying $400 for just lenses, you're badly over-paying.

> That cost too is highly inflated. My wife has a crazy bad eyes/strong prescription and she was able to get glasses including frames for under $70 from Zenni.

It's a combination of prescription and comfort: I have a strong prescription, thinned lenses, and because I'm pretty sensitive to light (clear eyes) photochromic and AR. Possibly a few other bits I don't remember.

I'm not saying there's no inflation, but going on zenni with my old prescription (and trying to roughly match the options / add-ons) still yields lenses around $200, and I got my current glasses almost 5 years ago.

I used to do accounting for several retailers. Markups are insane. Brand name frames retailing for €100+ would be purchased from suppliers at €15 or less.

You want to know what's outrageously expensive, yet equally important for basic ability to function in the workplace and other situations? Hearing aids. Hearing aids are glasses for your ears. But compared to them, glasses are unbelievably dirt cheap, and basically fully covered by a lot of decent company insurance plans. Hearing aids? Not the case.

Imagine if glasses cost $2-3000 per lens. PER LENS. And your company insurance offered to cover some of it, but limited you to ONE PAIR IN YOUR LIFETIME. That's the policy of my Fortune 50 employer believe it or not.

My wife was an office manager at an Audiologist's office. She has some crazy stories about that. Unfortunately, lots of people who don't hear well also shout all the time. Just part of doing business. :-) (Edit: She corrected me. SHE had to shout all the time.)

Also, many people purchase hearing aids and then never wear them, because they can't stand the "new" influx of noise and most of it doesn't seem necessary or even desirable. So they effectively spend the money and then feel ripped off, in a sense. Or their spouse, who paid for the hearing aids and basically feels like they burned up thousands of dollars for nothing, is very upset.

I know if I started to lose my hearing--not all, but maybe 30-40% reduction--I'd probably be quite happy with the turning-down of all that noise I deal with daily. I'd especially like it when spending time with my Cantonese in-laws. Shouting is the default conversational mode there.

Story time!

A caucasian friend got a ride home by his Chinese friend and dad to visit them.

Once the dad was out of sight, he asked his friend what he was arguing with his dad about.

Chinese friend was confused about the question and didn't understand why he was asking. Then he said: "Oh, we were just talking about how nice the wedding was that we went to".

As far as turning down noise, I highly recommend Etymotic's ER-20xs[1]: they reduce noise by 20db, and do so more evenly than, say, earplugs. I use them every single day. When walking near roads (cars), on buses, on the subway, at concerts. It's automatic to the point that whenever something gets louder than my comfort level, I pop them in. 99% of people don't notice them, just friends and family.

It's also changed my perception of noise, in that the expected noise level of the roadway is what I hear with them in, for better or for worse. In truly loud environments, such as bars, I find that I actually hear better.

1: https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/hearing-protection/er20xs....

Oh cool, thanks so much for posting this. I've just ordered a pair.

I've always wanted the ability to just "turn down" the sound of everyday life. I've actually wondered if some of my social anxiety has come from hearing sounds a little more intensely than some people, since after a hearing exam I apparently have super good hearing.

At times I've done audio recording without a monitor to hear my own voice. The result is me having in earbuds while speaking, and so I can't hear myself as well.

I noticed that I spoke louder and more confidently. So I've wondered if wearing something like these could be an effective way to help with social anxiety? Guess we'll see. Cheers!

As I understand it, some of the newer (and likely more expensive) hearing aids support bluetooth, and you can change the levels and tuning from your phone. That would give you the best of both worlds, since you could give yourself good hearing for very important things (meetings, etc) or enjoyable things things that benefit from good hearing (some movies, listening to music, etc).

I've only tried one model, but I was disappointed in the sound quality for music. Hearing aid speakers apparently aren't intended to reproduce the full range of frequencies like headphones.

It's probably convenient for voice calls, though.

I think there are likely some that are okay, given my limited knowledge of the subject, which is really just from hearing Adam Savage talk on the Still Untitled podcast about the new ones he got, how his hearing loss it at a different frequency than most people, and how it used to be a big ordeal to get them tuned for specific frequencies (you had to schedule an appointment). His new ones allowed him to re-tune for different types of listening through his phone.

Even if that capability doesn't specifically address the range frequency required for music listening adequately, I imagine there are specialty hearing aids (likely at a hefty price increase) that do, catering to musicians that suffer hearing loss.

For live sound and for people who don't have too much hearing loss, the hearing aid doesn't have to reproduce all the sound. Instead it supplements what's already there. Some of the sound goes through a vent directly to your ear. A hearing aid doesn't have to reproduce deep bass notes, for example.

And for a lot of live music, it's plenty loud enough and protection from (further) hearing loss would be more of an issue.

The main issue I have with my hearing aid when playing music is that the feedback cancelation isn't as good as I'd like for pure, higher pitched notes. (Feedback protection is needed because sound goes out the vent as well as in and that reaches the microphone.)

i believe it.

bose might be poised to get in to that market. their 'hearphones' struck me as a first attempt, although it's not marketed as a medical device (AFAIR).

I'm seeing more and more of these "smart headphones" that happen to maybe increase selective noises and cancel some others out but are not "hearing aids" due to the medical device designation.

i've been using bose qc20 for a few years for the noise cancelling. I'm curious about the 'hearphones' - to know if the effect is similar to the qc20 'pass through' mode - which still muffles some background noise but opens up to allow voice frequencies through. can't get any clarification if the effect is similar or something radically new, and don't want to spend that much $ to find out. :)

I have a pair of Sony MDX-1000X headphones. Very good noise canceling. Passthru is a joke though. Everything passthru is slightly usable. Vvice passthru is horrible.

I learned you can't assume anything when you buy an expensive set of noise-canceling headphones and then spend an international flight with two people behind you prattling. It just made their conversation clearer.

Also nearly jumped out of my seat in a terminal when a gate announcement was made. Guy across from me pulled out his IEM and said "you know airports increased the volumes on their announcements because people wearing headphones were missing their flights?"

IEMs - best invention ever. Can't wait for adblock glasses.

QC20 are 'in-ear' not 'over the ear', with their molded rubbery ear plug things to help block out leakage. they're not perfect, and on their own, yes, noise cancelling can just make voice somewhat clearer. I always pipe a bit of grey noise through the ears to mask that (unless I'm piping music through).

Overall they're pretty good though. Until I got a pair and watched movies in a plane wearing them I never really realized how high I had to pump the volume to overcome the engine noise.I pretty much wear them all the time in a plane now even if just to use the noise cancelling.

AirPods are being used as de facto hearing aids as well.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/06/26/a...

Bose recently got FDA approval for their "self-fitting hearing aid"

https://www.hearingtracker.com/bose-hearing-aid

Hearing aides are also insanely cheap to produce, they are not complicated devices and that market is only surviving due to the medical device status of them causing a high barrier to entry.

There are actually some decent alternatives avaliable on alibaba and other Chinese outlets. I helped my father with getting a pair, they were 125 and have been performing well for 1.5 years now. Sure, I wouldn't trust alibaba for most medical devices, but something like hearing aids should be safe enough. His insurance wouldn't kick in anything, and while he could afford the price he would never spend it. Since he so badly needed them, I suggested he try a pair of the cheaper ones, and the difference in quality of life was staggering.

beware of cheap hearing aids, hearing loss is almost never uniform, so if they aren't adjusted properly they can be far too loud in the parts of the audio spectrum where hearing is less damaged, and can in fact cause further hearing loss.

Not that this is any excuse for them costing $20,000, but its something to keep in mind, cheap abibaba ones likely just make all frequencies louder.

It seems like this could easily be solved by selling the hearing aids with a smartphone app to test your hearing and tune the aids, and a pair of flat frequency response headphones for testing.

Read about the OTC hearing aid law signed 2 years ago. http://www.hearingreview.com/2017/08/president-trump-signs-o...

tl;dr: The gist is that, by near year I think, people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss will be able to buy hearing aids without having to see a doctor or get a prescription. (I'm always amazed when the bureaucracy makes something easier rather than more difficult.)

Retirees have lots of time to vote.

This is essentially the system sold by Blamey Saunders in Australia. My pair work reasonably well.

Wow, it's crazy that those are still $3000 for essentially a microphone, DSP chip, maybe a small microcontroller and a BLE chip, and a driver. Something like the Airpods are probably on the same level of technical complexity, but an order of magnitude cheaper.

Can you post a link to the model you got? Looking for alternatives for my dad as well. Thanks.

I wouldn't say "insanely cheap", from what I understand the production costs are something like $50-$150 per unit (not per pair!) and that's with cheap overseas labor, although cheaper devices exist. They are not complicated devices inasmuch as we don't consider circuits complicated, any more. There's a lot of R&D that has gone into making those things work the way they do.

I do think that the prices are inflated, and will drop, I just also think that they're complicated devices that aren't so easy to make.

Those are similar COGS to like, iphones, a luxury good. If they only cost $600-1000 I think that'd be significantly less egregious than $2000-3000.

I’d take issue with “not complicated.” They are very tiny, have to be very low power, and they run a surprising amount of real-time DSP. Then the whole electronics package has to be integrated with an acoustics package including multiple microphones and transducers. And the higher quality all of those acoustical components are, the more transparent the end product. And it all has to be durable enough for continuous wear by a human for multiple years. I wouldn’t diminish what cutting edge hearing aides do, they can be quite impressive technically.

I doubt the size constraint is pressing (as modern electronics go) unless you're trying to hide them. My decades-old high-power analog aids fit behind the ear.

Power constraints seem pretty tight, though. Modern hearing aids have radios in them for continuously sending audio data between the left and right sides, and they run for a week on a hearing aid battery.

Hearing aids are sold to hunters at a much lower price (as noise protection and low noise enhancement). The same work goes into them, but they are not medical devices so they have to be affordable.

Those hearing aids aren't even remotely close to the $3,000 hearing aids a full-time wearer uses. It's kind of like comparing a free solar-powered swag calculator to a TI-84 graphing calculator.

Although, much like the TI-84, $3,000 hearing aids probably are overpriced.

Comparing these two types of hearing aids is similar to comparing a magnifying glass with normal glasses.

A magnifying glass might do the job good enough, and I know people who decided to not buy glasses but just use a magnifying glass to read.

Or, if your eyes are roughly equivalent in prescription need, you buy a $10 pair of reading glasses at any drug store.

This is true - the modern devices with real-time DSP _are_ amazing. I strongly suspect that the eye-watering prices are still massively overblown, though.

I ask seriously: could this be replicated with AirPods and an iPhone, in software?

I vaguely recall hearing about some work on this front. I suspect however that latency may be an issue.

The latency between the AirPods and the iPhone is too high for the iPhone to do any of the real-time work. I have no idea if the AirPods have a DSP that would be able to do that work.

But cheap, small, low power DSPs can do an amazing amount of work these days. Even if the AirPods don't have such a DSP, they're a good example of a reasonably complex piece of electronics with speakers and a microphone that sits in your ear, but costs an order of magnitude less than hearing aids. I think they're a good datapoint to argue that a truly free market could make much cheaper hearing aids.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/20/how-to-turn-airpods-into-hea...

Everything you described would be impressive if this were 1980.

Decent hearing aides are quite expensive, complex devices with a substantial amount of R&D and non-trivial silicon.

For those who are interested, The Amp Hour has a great episode with Jørgen Jakobsen who talks about his experience in the industry and its quirks.

https://theamphour.com/338-an-interview-with-jorgen-jakobsen...

How are hearing aids priced in other countries compared to the US?

I live in the former USSR, in a very poor country. Hearing aids here are primitive, no fancy schmancy DSP bad really cheap. $10-20 or smth.

Bose just recently got FDA approval for their first non-prescription/self fitting hearing aids.

I think this is why Bose entered the market with “hearphones” to help hear people in crowded bars. So they could try to market them without spending the money to be a medical device.

> help hear people in crowded bars.

It's a tall people problem too. You can hear everyone in the bar except person in front of you, 30cm below.

What a relief to know I’m not the only one!

It’s a short people problem too, for the same reason. At least the tall person can lean over.

This applies to all medical everything.

Yes, this is true. I'm actually fortunate in that I'm completely deaf in one ear and "only" profoundly deaf in the other. That means I only have to spend $3000 instead of 2x that. It's ridiculous. My hearing aid is 6 years old and I'm sure it's about to fail, but I can't afford a new one right now. It's absolute insanity.

Do the $3000 hearing aids differ significantly than, say, this:

https://www.amazon.de/Audiben-PSA-H%C3%B6rverst%C3%A4rker-Pr...

I'm not sure. My hearing loss is bad enough ("profoundly deaf" --- basically, the next level down is "totally deaf") that I wouldn't try an off the shelf aid without an audiologist's support.

My $3,000 hearing aid (which has allowed me to hear better than I ever have before and is worth every dollar) has, for example, 2 microphones, 4 switchable DSP programs to match different sound environments, telecoil (essential in my work), a level of water resistance (sweat and dirt is the primary killer of my hearing aids, worn 18 hours a day), and with an external receiver I can directly receive bluetooth and external microphones.

That’s about $150 worth of parts.

Plus R&D, plus technical and warranty support, plus 6 audiologist fitting appointments, plus all the other standard business expenses and, yes, profit.

Parts are a minor piece of the puzzle.

Yes, mine does the same. It's a really nice hearing aid. It's just a shame it's so expensive and not covered by insurance. I literally cannot function at a job without one, but insurance (or disability) won't cover it. Bizarre.

Go to Costco, if you are willing to pass up oticons.

I had a $6000 pair of hearing aids that were lost. I replaced them with $1600 pair from Costco. Most of the time I can’t tell the difference. When I can, I wouldn’t be able to say which is better, just that I notice they didn’t sound the same.

Yeah. I've demoed the Costco ones, but they weren't great. My hearing loss isn't just a minor loss. I'm classified as "profoundly deaf", which requires serious amplification. Unfortunately, Oticon and its ilk are the ones that allow me to be functional in the real world :/

I'd encourage HNers to try self-programming.

I have Phonak HAs so I can buy the programmer (iCube) and software (Target) off ebay for $450 and a pair of hearing aids two generations old for $500-$1000. And if they break or I lose them, buy a replacement and the total is still less than buying from an audiologist.

It's also more flexible. Hearing feedback? Run the feedback test/modeling program. Can swap hearing aids between ears. Friend lose a hearing aid? Let them borrow yours (suitably programmed) and use foam inserts for earmolds (can buy or take a soldering iron to foam earplugs).

One word: Costco. The hearing aids alone pay for decades of membership fees.

My partner used to spend $10,000AUD on each hearing aid. It was insane. Now that we're going to Costco, she's paying $3000AUD each. It's still really expensive, but it's a darn sight better.

Yeah, hearing aids seem to be a clearly over priced pseudo-monoplistic small set of companies. There are people selling mobile phone connected hearing aid like things for drastically less money, but they run into the hearing aid cabal.

What's crazier is that cochlear implants are covered by insurance.

I think the OTC hearing aid law will go into effect next year. For mild of moderate hearing loss, you will be able to buy the hearing aid directly without dealing with the hearing aid specialist.

It was signed in August 2017 and the FDA has 3 years to allow sale of hearing aids for mild to moderate hearing loss.

There is a new company out there that solves the cost problem by offering advanced hearing aids with a remote care from an audiologist using video conference (vs. a doctor's office visit). A friend of a friend loves their device and said that service was really good too. http://listenlively.com

This. The prices are unbelievable! And $3000 is for the "cheap" ones! I was about to post the same thing and then found your post.

I will add, that getting access to the frequency curve adjustment software for each device is difficult (everybody needs a different adjustment curve and other params tweaked), prohibited and also expensive. They are often set incorrectly in the first instance and require repeat visits to an audiologist and tweaking.

So much so that I've been considering at all sorts of dodgy routes to getting control of this myself, including reverse engineering and ordering device-coupling hardware from shady non-western web sites, so that I can program them myself.

I'm really really hoping that this market will be disrupted soon, but I'm not holding my breath.

My mother has been mostly deaf her whole life. Just the introduction of Bluetooth in the hearing aid (10 years after it was mainstream) was life changing for her (being able to talk on the phone better, watching movies on her iPad, etc.). But god is the hardware freaking expensive.

Fixing this is my dream job.

Wow. USD 3000 is a bit too much. Can you show an example of which kind of device this is (some link)? When I search on Amazon.com for 'hearing aid', the ones that show up are pretty cheap (e.g. USD 54 to 100ish)? Apologies for my ignorance.

Amazon don't sell hearing aids, and cannot legally. They can sell "hearing assistance" devices or other loophole names (or just foreign sellers that don't give a darn). In the US a hearing aid is only available from medical suppliers via a doctor's prescription.

The person above wasn't being hyperbolic when they said it can be $3K e.g.: https://www.healthyhearing.com/help/hearing-aids/prices

Free Market! Free market anyone!?

Hearing aid is medical device. That means lots of regulation, entire floor full of departments existing just to make sure things pass regulatory assessments. Remove those and the cost might come down significantly, but will be willing to do that?

iOS 12 Live Listen can use airpods to relay audio from the iPhone mike, a capability previously limited to hearing aids. Can be useful in a pinch.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/11/how-to-use-airpod...

I'm using hearing aids for almost 8 years now. Without them I can't interact with people without shouting or repeatedly asking them to repeat what they have said. I always have to take them out if I want to listen to music, when it rains very heavy, have to take shower or want to wear some headphones.

Initially it was very hard, but after a while you create habits around them and they become very natural. But still, even with a hearing aid, dont' forget that it doesn't improve your hearing, it just normalizes to a level where you can hear normal. In fact, because you're now running all the sound through a filter, a lot of frequencies get lost (in addition to the ones you're not able to hear anymore).

Anyway, I agree that nobody talks about the pricing. A good pair (say Oticon OPN 1) would cost me minimum $6.5K. Looking forward to see how Bose disrupts the whole industry with their entry level "hearphones".

Title correction: Why are glasses so expensive in the US? The American eyewear industry prefers to keep that blurry.

Please stop using the US as the "that's how it is"-standard.

In Germany, you pay a very reasonable (from my layman perspective) price for the lenses, maybe about 40$ plus another 30$ if you want to have non-reflective glasses or product from big name producers and stuff like that. Like every fashion product, frames start at a few bucks up to whatever you want to pay. Measurements, bending the frame are included in the service. None of this involves health insurance, as far as I know.

Canada is sadly also in the same boat as the US in terms of eye glass cost, so while the article is definitely American slanted it does effect more than just those folks.

As consumers, Canadians are not in the same boat at all, but in a tiny life boat which broke away from that boat.

I'd love to agree with that, but I think you're underestimating the impact the FDA and other US regulators have in Canada. It is possible that Canada will reorient to serve the asian/european market more, but right now most trade ends up going south of the border.

It's a US newspaper. Do you also ask the German media to specify Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel in every headline?

Knowing Germany they probably do tbh or at least it wouldn't surprise me if they did

If you've written out the full name of a prime minister you've already uniquely determined which country you are talking about.

Angela Merkel is Germany's Chancellor, not Prime Minister.

Fixed, thanks.

In Belgium it largely depends. I paid about 120 for my current glassed, but due to having bad eyesight (worse than -8.0) I almost don't pay for them at all! Socialism at work.

70$ for glasses in Germany? I have to pay about 200€ per glas. Maybe weaker glasses are cheap. After all you can buy glasses in the supermarket for a few bucks.

Those modern glasses get scratches after just a few years of careful handling and cleaning only with „Mikrofaser“ in my experience. No fun having weak eyes in Germany.

You might consider an ultrasonic glasses cleaner. They are pretty cheap (around €50), and clean without touch.

Thanks, I’ll check that out. But otoh it’s another thing you’d have to carry around.

I‘ll also try buying glasses online as suggested elsewhere. I do that with contact lenses already (dailies for when I’m on stage).

I've had good luck with eyebuydirect, and have heard some good things about Zenni too.

I'm sure you can get good glasses for around €120 in Germany. €60 at the cheap end.

I carry lenses made from mineral glass so I can wipe them with any cloth I've got handy. They are not more expensive and scratch significantly less. The lenses are heavier and shatter quicker though.

I had an eye exam today, and I need new lenses. The exam is vouchered on the NHS. I'm keeping the existing frames. The lenses will have an anti-reflective and anti-glare coating. I've never had a scratch, that I can see anyway. Total cost: £39.

I've recently got 1.67 thickness, de-glared, blue-filtered lenses for 149€ total, including the frame, and my diopter is -7. I think you may be paying too much.

Well it's a US site that talks mostly about US companies, US tech industry, and other US things. Talking about other countries is more of an exception to the rule than the standard (when discussing things where a country might come up). The article itself is a US newspaper with a largely US readership.

Really depends, you can easily spend hundreds on glasses if it's not something standard.

Yeah, it's pretty weird. Test and basic glasses are free or near-free for most people in Ireland (if you've got a job it's covered under PRSI, if you don't it'll be covered by the medical card). If you're covered by neither (ie fully private), ~60 euro. I'm not sure what's stopping US vendors from just importing glasses from Europe...

I'm not sure what's stopping US vendors from just importing glasses from Europe...

They do. Mine are from Germany, but still cost $700, large part because of my prescription.

They do import them... and then mark them up a huge amount. Unless you go to a few discount places like Costco or online vendors.

How much do the insurers get charged?

Because people can go long periods of time between exams/pairs as adults, it's possible they keep their cash prices low to convince the uninsured to step in the door.

Private optical insurance _exists_, but basically only as a corporate perk that pays for more expensive frames, etc. Most people wouldn't have it, and it didn't exist at all until a few years ago. Private health insurance is more common, but doesn't pay for glasses or routine eye tests.

I believe PRSI (the government social insurance scheme) pays about 30 euro for a basic eye test. At the big local chain, people without either PRSI or medical card (this would mostly be non-resident foreigners, plus maybe some early retirees etc), pay 30 euro, plus about 60 euro for basic frames with basic lenses.

I believe in The Netherlands glasses are also very expensive (unless prices have changed in the last 5 years or so, which I very much doubt). Usually my glasses and frames had costs a total of around ~400 EUR in The Netherlands.

Recently I bought new glasses in Thailand and there (to my surprise) they weren't much differently prices compared to The Netherlands, which didn't make sense to me, because that would make glasses too expensive for most people here (it's about a monthly wage upcountry). Or perhaps the government provides citizens through health insurance over here, I am not sure.

In NL you have a couple of good and affordable options now, such as Ace & Tate and Charlie Temple where you'll get glasses for under €100. Lots of movement in the market the last couple of years.

Got mine in South Africa (albeit with blue light filters) for roughly the same price. Possibly an almost universal thing for normal optometrists (ie not start ups).

You could probably order glasses from Zenni and have them shipped internationally. Even if you had to go through a reshipper, it should be a fraction of what you're paying.

I've used Glasses Direct (based in the UK, but ship across Europe) before and I really liked the lenses. They seem to last longer than the ones I get from high street costs (maybe because they are polycarbonate?). My only complaint is the selection of frames they do are a bit on the small side for me.

> In Germany, you pay a very reasonable (from my layman perspective) price for the lenses, maybe about 40$ plus another 30$ if you want to have non-reflective glasses or product from big name producers and stuff like that.

Uhm. Maybe this depends on the glasses you need? I'd not even come close to paying that little and my parents are paying even more.

I had to pay €150 for lenses in Finland. And this was at Specsavers, the "cheap" place. Frames were only €30 though. Maybe you have a very simple prescription.

The original article too long for you to get through? ;-)

The company that basically owns the entire eyewear industry top-to-bottom is Italian. Just merged with a French company.

I know it's popular on HN to talk about how crappy the US is, but in this case you jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Serious question: how can one "own" the whole industry? What stops me from opening my own eye glass store and sell my own made-at-the-back of the store glasses ??

Nothing, there are even a few startups that do that. Warby Parker for example. Plus there are cheap glasses available OTR at walmart/costco. This is mainly referring to the luxury market.

They own the distribution channels, top to bottom[1]. Lenscrafters, sunglass hut, target optical, etc. If you don't play ball, they'll kill your distro. They did this to oakley in a hostile takeover[2] – luxottica cut them off and took almost 40% off their stock price. Oakley was then bought by lux.

What's stopping you from selling mom and pop? Mostly nothing. Warby Parker – and to a lesser degree, coastal – are doing this. But it's a weird middle-market place to live. Similar to things like Daniel Wellington in the watch game – you're selling $5 chinese products for $100 because you have a marketing and brand engine that fashionable but unlearned people don't question. In reality, the same products can be had for far less. EyeBuyDirect is the best place for cheap glasses. First pairs are often free but for shipping, about $7, and later pairs are about #30.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica [2]https://www.thestreet.com/story/1509351/1/oakley-suffers-as-...

EyeBuyDirect is owned by Essilor. Coastal is owned by Clearly, which is owned by Essilor.

So Luxottica strikes again, and continues to build their monopoly. Even when you think you're voting with your wallet, they still profit.

They also own the 2nd largest insurance providers for eyeglasses, EyeMed. Your customers will likely pay extra to buy from you.

> The company that basically owns the entire eyewear industry top-to-bottom is Italian.

That is in the US (and maybe Europe). In India I got my glasses with all the regular filters from Titan for about 50$ including the frame.

Titan is a brand owned by the Indian conglomerate Tata. Not by Luxottica. So your example is still US-centric.

It might be an Italian/French company but that doesn’t mean they apply the same business tactics everywhere.

In the Netherlands, an eye measurement, a decent pair of glasses and a pair of sunglasses (both non reflective) will cost you ~ €250,- and that seems reasonable to me.

What? It's an LA newspaper.

They're very reasonable in Japan too. If you visit Japan, bring your eyeglass prescription. There are lots of stores in Tokyo that grind their own glass that are not owned by Luxottica. This is how I got the best (and cheapest) pair of glasses I've ever owned.

Postscript: My Japanese friends tell me they get their glasses from South Korea, because they're even better.

On a vacation, or online and shipped to them?

At some stores you don't even need your prescription. I recently purchased my best (and cheapest) pair while visiting Japan and an eye exam was part of the transaction - at no extra cost! As an American I was shocked at how seamless and quick I was able to walk out with a new pair of glasses

I've done the same. Did the eye test in English with really big writing on the cue cards :). 40 minutes later my glasses are ready. Real contrast to Australia where you make an appointment for an eye test for a day or two later. The test is paid for by the government (Medicare AUD$56.80) and then select your frames (AUD$150 and up) and then come back a week later. I suppose the delay justifies the cost or vice-versa.

Same here in Taiwan. Some stores like Jins and Owndays are everywhere nowadays.

Same here. I just moved from France to Tokyo last year and I bought a new pair (same characteristics).

France: 380 EUR, including cheapest frame (80 EUR), regular lenses and ophthalmologist (80 EUR). (I had no health insurance.)

Japan: 10800 JPY including pretty good quality frame (5000 JPY) best lenses from the store and no ophthalmologist.

In France, it is not uncommon to have a 500-1000 EUR pair on your nose. Not because people are wealthy, but because they have the health insurance which pays. The first question a glasses store clerk asks is: "Do you have your health insurance card, please? We're gonna check how much we can spend".

Was about to post this. Budget brand eyewear stores like JINS and Zoff are everywhere, and they provide glasses at around $50-100, eye exam included. I've bought several glasses from JINS over the past decade or so and had no problems with any of them.

I wonder if the San Francisco JINS store is priced the same, or they try to make themselves look like a premium brand like how Uniqlo does?

In the UK it’s expensive to buy glasses from the high street, but you can order them from one of several ‘online’ shops for cheap. I’ve bought several pairs of metal, rimless glasses for 30 quid a pair and they’ve been excellent. They would have been around £250 from the high street.

Do you think perhaps you could link to a site you have good experience with? I would love to get some backup pairs but I worry about the cost

I've used https://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/ . The prescription was wrong, so they gave me a massive headache, but an optician measured the glasses and said they were made exactly to the incorrect prescription.

(The second optician was helpful, so I bought glasses from her. I'll use Glasses Direct for sunglasses and so on.)

My dad has had a good experience with Glasses Direct in the UK. They are not the cheapest online store, but they have been around for a long time. They also offer a home trial for some of their glasses (if you are in the UK)

https://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/

As others have commented yes Glasses Direct are who I’ve used. They let you choose some frames to have sent to you to try on in a selection box. I did this the first time.

They require you to send your prescription (a photo is fine) before they make them, which makes me think they are being required to do that legally, or at least concerned they don’t want to get it wrong.

So this doesn’t turn into an advert for one company, I did notice that lots of other companies seem to offer a very similar service and they all seem to offer various guarantees regarding your happiness with the product, presumably because people are still wary of this way to buy glasses.

Another reason I’m slightly evangelistic about using these ‘online’ glasses services is that the high street opticians are obviously overpriced and I don’t think it’s right to make so much money unnecessarily from people who just want/need to see well - some of whom really struggle to afford the costs.

My problem with that is that my frames needed adjustment few times after I bought them(they felt fine in the shop, but after few days they felt a bit too tight). The retail shop I got them from corrected them for me for free, but had I bought them from an online store I don't know what I would have done.

>>Please stop using the US as the "that's how it is"-standard.

The US is the standard for the overwhelming majority of things that are commonly discussed day-to-day on this site. I'm not sure why anyone would take issue with this, other than having had their pride scratched.

Russia set the standard in interfering in the US elections and therefore the world...

Does that include the high-index material? Anti-scratch coating? Frames that don't look pathetic? Progressive lenses? Those are the things that really bring up the costs in the US.

At Topology Eyewear, we DON'T charge extra for super-high index (1.74) lenses, and all lenses come equipped with the best anti-reflective AND superhydrophobic coating. Because one shouldn't be forced to cut corners to deliver the best and most comfortable vision possible. Happy to answer any questions. Check it out at http://www.topologyeyewear.com

How do you customize nose fit? Sounds interesting but I don't know how a picture would be enough to determine the nose contour?

we build a 3D model of your entire face, including your nose. We then 5-axis CNC the shape of your nose into the frame, creating completely custom nosepads. We also use the unique location of each of your ears to craft unique left and right temples arms, each with custom length and drop angles to match the asymmetric location of each ear (everyone has a bit of asymmetry in their face). We also customize the temple arm angles based on the base curve (front curvature) of your ultimate Rx lens, so it all fits together as a system and will never stretch out over time. It fits perfect out-of-the-box, with no adjustments required.

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review the HN guidelines.

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No it does not. I bought high-index glasses (I am 5 diopter myopic + 1 diopter of astigmatism and I chose the highest index they had, 1.6 or 1.7) and a classic frame (round) and paid a bit less than 500 Euro. This was 2 years ago in Bavaria.

E: it has all the coatings too

Which German company are you using for your glasses? My wifes' glasses cost 750€ about 12 months ago. Nothing special in her prescriptions, except perhaps that she needed prisms.

The German glasses shop also have a bad habit of keeping the perscriptions after they have tested your eyes and not giving you a copy. Very frustrating!

Em just tell them to make a copy and don't give the original to them? Its your property.

True, the kind of US centrism is quite boring, and kinds of gives the impression of Americans as insular.

In India one could get a fancy, top of line pair of glasses for around 50$.

I echo your view. Here in Taiwan we have wide selection albeit non-branded frame plus prescription lens from about 20USD. I personally went with ic Berlin + Zeiss lens which was a lot more expensive. Still no where near the article’s USD800 example.

It's affordable for most of us to spend 20 bucks to buy a pair of glasses,but some glasses brand such as Baodao（formosa-optical）, it sells glasses too expensive,maybe we have to pay a few hundred dollars for a pair in mainland China.

Unfortunately, its rather similar in Australia. Got a recent quote for a pair of glasses to be at $1000.

I feel like something has changed in Australia. I've worn glasses a long time and remember them always costing a few hundred dollars per pair. A few months ago I went into Specsavers and was able to buy glasses for under $50 per pair.

My prescription hasn't changed but the prices definitely have.

IMHO, the prices vary extremely but if you want to get just a basic pair of glasses, you can get away with a very cheap. I don't wear glasses myself, but last August I accompanied someone to get a pair of new glasses from Fielmann (Wikipedia: 'Fielmann is market leader in Germany and Europe's largest optician').

In the end, one glasses cost 18€ (special deal) and the other one about 57€ (sunglasses, special frame). Given the 2+ hours, we stayed at that shop (sales talk + eye testing + frame adjustments) it was probably a net loss for the company on that day. I know other people who got their glasses for about 700€ from the same shop (more expensive frame + more features (e.g. thinner lenses)).

So it might be that the market situation is kinda bad and is getting abused. Nevertheless, I have the anecdotal evidence that if you are just after a vision correction (and not some fashion accessory), you don't have to pay a fortune (in Germany). This might be helpful to keep in mind when you are after your next glasses.

Zenni is very good. There is a slight difference in quality between them and the Armani Exchange glasses I got from an optician, but it's not significant. I got a basic pair of black framed rectangular nerd specs for $8 last week, and I'd happily wear them out.

Measure the frame of a pair of glasses that looks good on your face and then try to find glasses with those measurements on Zenni.

Agreed, Zenni has worked well for several years for me

How long does it take to ship a pair?

Between 2-4 weeks.

I have had good luck with Zenni, but I know others who have not. For example, a friend of mine unknowingly picked a coating that seemed to make his lenses appear slightly yellow. It was borderline visible so he kept the glasses but later regretted it. Another friend used his cotton T-shirts to wipe his lenses free of dust, and quickly filled them with scratches. I personally EDC lens cleaning cloths now because I nearly had the same issue.

There are also so many options in checkout now (as of a week ago) that if you don't know what you're doing you can easily overspend or buy an add-on that alters the look of your glasses when they are seen as lenses and frames together.

Aside from that though, they are amazingly convenient.

To be fair, I've had 'scratch proof' lenses from an optician that I have ruined in 2 months doing exactly that. And the addon coatings upsell is something many retail opticians do as well, unfortunately.

Although that doesn't excuse the practice, it still feels shady to me.

I wore glasses for many years before I was shown Zenni and I've never noticed a lack in quality.

If you have 'scratch proof' lenses there should be a warranty on lenses regardless of manufacturer. Industry standard is either 6 months, 1 year, or two years, and that is probably the greatest value in comparison rather than the nominal difference between hardness. Also any good optician will only say 'scratch-resistant'.

This is not normal behaviour.

20+ years of wiping several coated plastic glasses on tshirts several times every day and it takes 5+ years to put enough scratches in them to even be noticable (and most of those are probably sports artifacts and from the few times the glasses were put down glass-first).

They're also so cheap that you can order a couple variants and assume that a few won't work out for some reason. You'll then have a bunch of spares still at a fraction of the cost of the US monopoly eyewear companies.

I've had consistently excellent luck with Zenni. The key is considering measurements beyond simple pupillary distance, such as temple length and frame width.

Zenni is amazing. At less than $20 a pair, I can buy new every month. Everyone in my family uses Zenni and I get compliments on my glasses all the time.

I've been wearing glasses for over 25 years, the last 5 or so years I've been buying them from Zenni and it has been great. The best pair of glasses I've ever owned were about $25 from Zenni. I used to wear contacts a lot more until I got that one pair from Zenni. Now I wear contacts a few times a month.

I had to get a new prescription, so I went to a Walmart. After, they said that they could replace the lenses in my Zenni frames. It was going to cost me $180-240 just for the lenses!

I have never researched the economics of all this but there is an option for cheap glasses in the US that anyone with access to the internet can use. I wonder why people are still paying so much?

The conclusion from the article:

>Why do glasses cost so damn much?

>Because this industry has been getting away with fleecing people for decades.

That's all well and good but the fact that there ARE cheap options out there still begs the question, why aren't people using them?

> Why aren't people using them?

I've converted several people, but not being able to touch them and try them on first appears to be a significant problem.

I'd pay a fee to "borrow" the empty frames of 3-5 selections from Zenni and then return them prior to ordering. I've had mixed success on fitment from Zenni.

I tried this. They wouldn't take the return of empty frames. In any case, the cost was cheap enough to try. The frame quality is good enough for the price.

Eyebuydirect will return/exchange any glasses within 14 days, lens included. Since they are owned by Essilor, the lens quality is comparable to retail stores. Some of their frames are good quality clones of designer eyewear costing 10x up.

Actually, you need to be able to try them on to ensure that you get your OC (optical center) correct.

This isn't a problem for people with relatively low prescriptions, but the stronger your prescription, the more important it is to get this right.

Some online stores will try to get it from a photo, but your OC actually changes by how/where you wear your glasses along the bridge of your nose, and that in turn changes with the frame you wear.

So if you've got a low prescription, why not just go to the local pharmacy? They sell prescriptions as strong as +/- 3.5 over the counter for $15.

You get it measured by your eye doctor, then Zenni has a box for it.

They also give you a ruler with your first order, but it's crap, just have your doctor do it.

Lens and coating options are very poor at a local pharmacy. The styles will be extremely limited compared to the selection that the online retailers carry.

When I go to the eyeglasses store 90% of the glasses I try on look great on the shelf, but I hate they way they look on me, and that is after skipping those whose dimensions are more than 1 (units?) away from what I am currently wearing. I did not find Zenni's virtual mirror to be helpful at all. I can't think of any other product that benefits more from physically trying it.

If Zenni had a trial system, I would be all over them, but their restocking fees are too high to use returns as a trial, and I've heard reports that they don't accept empty frames for returns at all.

I agree. I feel like the author is alarmed that there are really expensive glasses that are getting even more expensive, but you can also still get cheap, good glasses as well.

Before I got laser surgery I used to buy 5-6 pairs of glasses from them (half of them regular, half sunglasses), keep the pairs I liked, threw away the rest. Not optimal, but way cheaper than the alternative.

Anyone else having trouble loading Zenni's web site at the moment? I've been trying it since yesterday. It's not showing images, search filters aren't clickable, etc. Looks like a JavaScript issue, but it's happening in multiple browsers, so it's probably not something on my end.

One word: protectionism. Nothing else can explain it. The U.S. healthcare system is rife with protectionism, and it's disgusting. From how hard it is to become a doctor, to how hard it is to build a new hospital (you need a "certificate of need" in just about all States to build one), to FDA regulations on drug manufacturing being extremely expensive, to too many drugs not being over the counter (thus requiring a trip to your general practitioner), it's all protectionism, all the time. On top of that we have huge distortions, like the non-insurance insurance schemes that have caused there to be no single public price for anything anywhere, thus destroying the single most important feature of free markets (price signalling). It's all a mess.

I think what you're describing is bureaucracy, red tape, over-regulation and crony capitalism. Protectionism as I understand it would be measures taken to reduce competition from outside the country, not within it

When the law requires that you get a "certificate of need" in order to build a hospital, that is very much a protectionist measure. Requiring that medical student careers be approximately a decade long is another protectionist requirement. The FDA often functions to protect large players. There is a ton of protectionism in the U.S. healthcare "market".

> Requiring that medical student careers be approximately a decade long is another protectionist requirement.

No, that's just reflective of how damn difficult it is to distill the body of knowledge required to be a doctor into a brain.

Just because you can learn enough Javascript in 24 hours to build an insecure one-page CRUD app with an animated duck, doesn't mean that you can do the same with the human body.

It takes years of theory (med school), and years of supervised on-the-job practice (residency), to build up the knowledge and expertise required to give people good medical advice.

Medical training in the U.S. requires first a non-medical degree.

yeah i remember my cousin telling me about how she -an american citizen educated in private schools her whole life- had to study english for some reason as part of the requirement of becoming a doctor. the pre-med requirements are pretty much stupid garbage

The non-medical bachelor's degree is not the expensive part of becoming a doctor.

It sure is expensive though, as it's four years of lost production. Four years' income is a big deal. Cost of opportunity.

> No, that's just reflective of how damn difficult it is to distill the body of knowledge required to be a doctor into a brain.

I guess Australian doctors must suck, given that they do it in five years.

If Australian doctors don't do residency, then yes, they probably do.

(Not GP) -- That may be the official definition, but I think he's right in that it is the same exact principle applied at the industry level.

Aka regulatory capture. You are both correct.

Have to share this related story. I recently got a new prescription and the glasses salesman at my optometrist said that my insurance is super generous and willing to pay upto $200 every year for new glasses, so I should definitely get a pair before the end of the year. So I looked around and picked a frame I liked. The salesman measured my PD and started offering me options on the lenses. Coat this, photo reflect that. I said no to every option that was offered since I know those will rack up the cost. In the end the salesman added up all the costs and said that the total will be $230. I was like that's great so I only have to pay $30 for them. But the salesman was like I already deducted your insurance payment in the calculation, the actual cost is $430 of which $230 you will have to pay. After hearing that, my eyes opened so wide that 20/20 vision was restored in them.

Hallelujah it's a miracle!

My optometrists have all used color-coded stickers that represent the price tiers of frames. Only one of them ever seems to be under my insurance allowance. They don't really have an incentive to make them any cheaper than the average allowance otherwise they would be leaving money on the table.

Yes, I noticed this as well and the one that is under the insurance allowance is comically ugly.

I bet this is a typical story across the board in US. The "salesman (or woman)" are just that. They are barely trained as technician in this field. But they are trained to sell.

I went to the optometrist recently. I needed to buy two pairs of glasses. I specifically told the sales guy that I didn't have $700 to spend, but I saw they had decent frames for ~$70-80 and I figured the lens wouldn't be that expensive - my prescription is not complicated - so I let him talk me into trying out some frames. We went through the whole process and the price came out to $670 for the pair. He was willing to give me a deal at $650. He was offended when I told him I'd buy them online for $75 a pair instead.

(I have simple myopia but I spend all day on the computer and my eyes get tired. I had the optometrist do the prescription at 20 feet like normal, then again at 2 feet, specifically for computer use. It comes out slightly weaker than my normal prescription. They also take a separate PD measurement for the computer glasses and it was a bit different.)

Jins (Japanese company) in SF makes glasses on site in 30 minutes for < $100.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/jins-san-francisco-3

Also, this story seems a few years behind given the rise of Warby Parker to address this very problem. If the person who felt compelled to spend $800 because they actually did not think they had any other option then they are living under a rock and/or being scammed by their optometrist.

Jins is great. I only buy eyewear there.

I personally had a great experience at Warby Parker. I probably saved $200-300 and didn't feel pressured to buy anything.

> If the person who felt compelled to spend $800 because they actually did not think they had any other option then they are living under a rock

...or they have really bad astigmatism.

Those lenses are not cheap and are usually excluded from 2-for-1 deals and other sales. Short of Lasik (which itself cannot always correct it) there really is no other option.

> being scammed by their optometrist

They also do that when it comes to frames, and it's really obvious.

The cheap/covered-by-insurance rack is usually a single rack in the back of the store, nondescript, and only mentioned if asked about.

After an eye exam the clerk will run your insurance, see what the coverage limit is, and guide you straight to a designer rack at an appropriate price point (unless you express interest in something more upsellable).

Have to second the recommendation for Jins (and they also have a location at Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose). If you have a prescription, you can be in and out with a new pair of glasses in less than an hour. There's a nice selection of frame styles to choose from, and AR/high index lens are bundled into the cost (~$80-120). Lens extras like transitions, progressives, polarized/tinted, and/or blue light filters are extra and special order (2-3 weeks).

They have onsite eye exams as well for ~$65, but you'll need to find a way to reimburse with your insurance provider on your own (for out of network).

A few years ago I found a technique on youtube to help myopia by wearing slightly lower prescription glasses. And the author recommended zennithoptical.com for cheap glasses. I was almost shocked to find their price to be that cheap. And when I bought a couple of pairs, it turns out their quality is quite decent.

I have since bought more than a dozen glasses from zennithoptical.com, at a total cost of about $300. And by using the technique, the prescription on both of my eyes dropped by 1 (from -5.75 to -4.75). Unfortunately that seems to be the limit of that technique. But I was extremely happy to find a source for cheap yet good glasses. Now I have two normal prescription pairs for daily use like driving, two more pairs for reading (1 for backup for each).

So the cheapest way to get glasses now is to get a prescription at Costco (cost about $40), then just buy your glasses online.

Is this technique a real thing?

Can we get an expert's opinion?

I'm not an expert, but I researched it a bit online since I found a charlatan who was promising people they could get rid of glasses completely.

Expert opinion is that this is not possible, myopia is a physical condition that cannot be reversed easily. It is possible to get used slightly weaker lenses, but this is mostly your brain learning to adjust to the slight fuzziness. This seems in line with what tianmingwu experienced.

Is that EndMyopia / BackTo2020? I signed up for the "email intro" just to see what it's about, but it's really just a bunch of breathless testimonials and random references saying that you should wear slightly less strong glasses than your prescription.

He's basically trying to get people to pay $99 for a forum to talk about the same stuff.

The TL;DR for his program seems to be that glasses cause myopia to worsen, especially wearing distance glasses for close-up work. Might have something to it, but not $99 for.

There's a free facebook group with hundreds if not thousands of posts with vision improvement stories. No money needed. But vision improvement takes way more effort/time/motivation than the average person can muster.

> cannot be reversed easily

Do you mean via some kind of therapy or intervention, or in general?

I had pretty severe myopia 30 years ago, bad enough that I needed glasses in order to legally drive. But it steadily has gotten better, without any treatment. I stopped needing glasses to drive about 15 years ago, and now I have nearly perfect vision.

EDIT: I searched around a bit and indeed it seems that the consensus is that myopia never natural improves with age. But...whatever was causing my poor distance eyesight in the 1980s slowly got better. DMV records (granted, not high precision data) demonstrate it. So I don't know what to say.

How old were you? Up to a certain age, your refractive power may change(in either direction). Doctors will often not perform LASIK until you have proven that your prescription has stabilized for a while.

My vision was at its worst when I was in my mid 20s. It's steadily improved since then.

I think whatever causes people with normal vision to become farsighted as they age also causes nearsighted people (or at least some of us) to become less nearsighted over time. It seems to be happening to me, though only slightly.

My eye doctors have always told me that we get far-sighted as we age, so if you were near-sighted to begin with, then the aging process is correcting it. In another 20 years I would expect that you might start needing glasses again to drive.

For anyone curious, the actual link is zennioptical.com

> A few years ago I found a technique on youtube to help myopia by wearing slightly lower prescription glasses.

That is not physically possible.

Maybe (and that's a big concession, I'm very skeptical) it could work with kids, with still-developing eyes. No amount of glasses trickery will reshape your cornea in adulthood.

Other than the physical world constraints, if this hypothesis was true, people's myopia would never progress, as you would, by definition, be wearing lower prescription glasses if this happened, so it would self-correct.

The only thing this will get you is a headache.

I don't know if it works with kids.

I'm a programmer, I look at the computer monitor probably about 8 hours per day. What I did was that I wear a glass with weaker prescription so that when I look at the computer monitor, the characters are slightly blurred but I can still read them. I did this for about 6 month and my prescription went from -5.75, -5.25 to -4.75, -4.25. Actually when I started even with the -5.75, -5.25 prescription my vision is about 1.2 or so.

Unfortunately this technique seems to only work at the beginning. In the months following the first 6 months my vision didn't improve anymore so I stopped it. But I consider spending $300 to knock off 1 point prescription from each eye quite worth it.

By the way I never got any headache from wearing weaker prescription glasses (and I did get headache before when wearing stronger prescription glasses). Actually I found it comfortable to wear weaker prescription glasses when reading, because my eyes don't feel stressed. That is actually the optometrist at Costo suggested to me.

It works for some people, not others. Reasons unclear, but there is published research which explores this topic at length, especially with techniques that can be monetized, such as special contact lens for myopia treatment. In some Asian countries, it is a national health/economic priority due to high prevalence of myopia.

Contacts are even worse. Did anyone notice that online vendors in the US like the 1-800 one were well cheaper, and now somehow they all have the same pricing? And that a special contact lens check is required, at a separate price, to get a prescription for contact lenses renewed, even if the script is the same for glasses and contacts, and you just did the glasses? And that while you can buy 100 years of contacts, the script is only valid for 12 months on the dot? Oh, and you can't resell your unopened box of contacts on eBay or anywhere.

Regulations are good but these laws in the US are very cartel-y. I remember in the UK in 2012 or so I could order as many contacts as I wanted with no script, no questions asked, online.

There are online contact lens providers which don't require prescriptions, regulations vary by country and state.

Your prescription cannot be the same for contacts as it includes additional parameters like curvature. The diopter may or may not be similar, true.

The whole point of a separate contact lens exam is to assess lens fit and check for corneal complications usually related to over-wear.

Curvature doesn't change.

The UK has or at least had the ability to order online scriptless, it's not exactly anarchy over there.

Also as mentioned I can order 10 years of contacts with one 'valid one year' script.

>Reminder, if you're in the US, the FTC says your eye doctor must give you your prescription after your exam. If a doctor refuses to do so, they can face legal action and penalties. https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2016/05/buying-prescriptio....

The doctor will leave off prescription information on-purpose? WTF?

I'm not sure what bizarro system the US has with opticians and buying glasses...

On a trip in the US I broke my glasses. I had to get a replacement, but I was in rural country, and it was a weekend. Now, even though there were shops selling eyewear open, I couldn't just get a pair, because they wanted a prescription from a doctor (I think I went to a Walmart, whose doctor that takes prescriptions was off for the weekend among other places).

In my country you can get a prescription on the spot at any shop selling eyewear (perhaps our law dictates that any eyewear shop has an optician in employment -- but any assistant can also take a lens of your old glasses and get the measurements). In any case, a prescription test costs nothing, and you can buy single use contact lenses with that immediately, or get the glasses in a couple of days.

No doubt discussion will turn to online optics (as it always does). The problem with online optics is the same as clothing: trying things on is important, and adjustments can only be done in person.

Last time we purchased Zenni Optical glasses we had issues, but none of which are Zenni's fault but rather inherent problems with buying glasses online.

The first issue was that the frames simply didn't look right/fit right/fall right even after using their photo preview to "try them on."

The second issue is that you're on your own for adjustments. What you'd typically do is at delivery have someone use a heat-gun and tugging to adjust how they sit. I had a heat gun, but was unable to adjust them to satisfaction.

Ultimately glasses and prescription sunglasses for $120 is very cheap, but there's issues with the whole concept, so we wound up just going to Costco instead. The Zenni ones sit in a draw as "backups," that is in spite of them doing everything they said they would do (i.e. prescription was spot on, frames were as-advertised, etc).

That's part of the reason I get my main glasses from my eye doctor, and then computer glasses or sunglasses from a place like Zenni. I don't care about how I look in them when I sit in front of a computer or in a car.

In fact, I have a wide head, and I've had better luck getting frames that don't squeeze into the side of my head through Zenni than anything I tried at an optometrist's. I basically just went with the widest pair offered, which they provide measurements for on Zenni, where I have to try each and every pair almost in person since they don't show those measurements.

Sure for some people this is important but many people purchase loads of clothing online as well as glasses. For me, not being able to try it on vs. not having to goto a shopping center is a tradeoff I usually accept with a smile. Luckily the market can still provide solutions for both options. I believe Warby Parker is continuing to build more brick and mortar stores.

I guess I'm just not picky. The very first pair I got off Zenni (for $5 shipped) were a little irritating to wear because the frames didn't have spring temple arms. Now I just make sure and sort those frames out and I've had zero issues with them.

My experiences in the US in 2015 and prior:

* Took exams, but didn't receive PD (pupillary distance). Had to take another exam and specifically ask in order to receive that.

* Frames from most places except Walmart were disproportionately expensive, and walmart's styles... were lacking. Only select styles were reasonably priced.

* Nowadays my family in the US uses Warby Parker. Last time I used it the prices were reasonable, one just needed their pupillary distance measurement and an eye exam taken within one year.

* For both Warby parker & brick and mortar shops, you had to wait for the new glasses to come in.

* The process for contacts was better, but still quite expensive. I had to drive to the eye exam so I couldn't do the enlarged pupil process.

My experience in Korea in 2018:

* I walked into a random glasses store, picked out a pair of frames, gave my old glasses to the clerk in order to scan them, waited 10 minutes, and then walked out with thin, good-looking, strong-prescription glasses for $80. Couldn't have been easier or more straightforward.

* This year I plan to get contacts to see what the process is.

Whenever we see an apparent monopoly or a confusingly high profit margin, we should immediately look for barriers to entry. Situations like this are usually explained by the existence of a racket with government-enforced barriers to entry.

Optometry is a licensure racket with strong legal barriers to entry. The sale of glasses is ostensibly a separate business without the same barriers, but I suspect it rides on the coattails of optometry's racket. I think there's an inertia tie between the eye exam and the purchase of glasses.

The cleanest way to end this nonsense is to break the optometry licensure racket. Think about what optometrists actually do. Think about all your eye exams and the whole "1 or 2" procedure as they flip through lenses. Honestly, most adults could probably do that job and produce a correct prescription after maybe a week's training. I'm not saying they're inherently bad people or anything, and I like my optometrist, but it's a racket just like realtors, lawyers, and other guilds that use the law to prop up their prices and reduce competition.

There's at least one startup out there that wanted to do eye exams through a specially designed web app. Expect the optometry racket to lobby hard against this, just like taxi rackets tried to stop Uber. And there ought to be companies offering cheap glasses online any second now...

I agree to an extent.

Most people could do what your average pediatrician does at a normal checkup. The reason you want a licenced pediatrician is for the abnormal.

While an optometrist isn't generally needed, they are sometimes. For example, they are generally the first ones to catch diabetes.

I'm not an optometrist, just someone that has worn glasses their whole life.

Me too. The diabetes angle is interesting – I hadn't thought of that.

Ever wonder why you cannot get glasses made of glass anymore? (At least that’s the case in Israel).

Glass used to be a lot cheaper than plastic, more durable and long lasting. You rarely needed to replace them every year or two like with plastic, unless you really smashed your lenses hard and got a nasty chip.

All plastic lenses get scratched within a few years and your sight becomes gradually foggy until one day it dawns on you. “I can’t see anything!” - and then it’s time to renew the... What? The SUBSCRIPTION!? Sorry, the prescription. Right.

With glass that would never happen.

The repeated mantra I’d always get from the optometrists is that glass isn’t sold anymore because it can shatter and splinters could get into you eyes.

I don’t know about others, but I’ve been hanging on to my glass pair for over 18 years now, not a scratch or a chip or anything, and they are on a half frame! And I’ve done sports with them too... maybe not the smartest thing to do, but I will not give up seeing cristal glass clear!

At one of the optometrists I used to go to where they’d sell me plastics I discovered they would use acetone to clean the glasses. Yes, acetone, which eats the plastic away. Something to make your subscription a little more often. I’m Never going back there.

What’s funny is that my glass pair has lasted so long they have gone in and out of fashion multiple times now.

I really wish they’d bring back the glass. I’m in the off fashion period now.

What are you doing with your glasses? Use a microfibre cloth to clean them and there is no reason that they get scratched, and especially not every couple of years. I've had mine for 8 years and the only reason I've recently changed them is to get a different frame. Also, glass is really heavy, especially if you have to have them with a significant diopter, and it also prone to breaking if dropped onto a hard surface. Here in Germany you can still get regular glass if you so desire, so maybe it's just Israel.

I'm Eric, the founder of Topology Eyewear. Our 3D face scan (via our iPhone app) is way more accurate than a standard pupilometer used in a Doctor's office (and WAY WAY better than a ruler or dots placed by a sharpie!). We solve for monocular PD, so no need to beg your doctor for this piece of info that isn't technically part of your Rx. Check it out at http://www.topologyeyewear.com or on the App Store at http://bit.ly/topologyapp I'm happy to answer here any optical or technical questions anyone has - just hit reply!

What are HN's rules regarding advertising? Where's the line between a helpful comment from someone recommending their own product and an ad?

Got me, but I just added Topology Eyewear to my list of companies to never do business with.

Don't spam in my pleasure reading.

It's not really spam when it's a legitimately helpful comment.

It pretty clearly crossed the spam line for me: The parent specifically pointed out that doctors don't give you the PD to in order to force you to buy glasses from them, but suggests there are other ways to obtain it. Eric replies to talk about how much better their app is than any do-it-yourself PD measurement but does not disclose that their app also doesn't give you the measurements in order to force you to buy glasses from them. I did not find this helpful and it is clearly commercial, since the app has no utility other than to sell you their glasses.

Oh look, a guy trying to be helpful while making some money mentions his product on a fucking tech-news website run by a famous startup incubator and you idiots want to report it?

Classy.

This is especially stupid considering the entrenched eyeglass industry is a monopoly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7H-_8UkmFU

Basically, this guy can't NOT be helpful

Posts like this are generally accepted by the community, especially when they make it clear that the commentator has a relationship with the company.

What is technically against the guidelines is complaining about the appropriateness of a comment. It is preferred that you downvote or flag inappropriate comments. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Curious about a couple points:

- How does the 3D scanning work? Presumably photogrammetry? What kind of accuracy are we talking about here in terms of typical measurement tolerances?

- The frames are actually custom-fit? Are they machined or 3D printed or do you just have access to many permutationsof a given frame?

[edit, formatting]

Newer iphones now have an IR projecting depth camera built in

Great question: -for older devices without a depth sensor, we do a combination of pure computer vision (detect landmarks in 2D, then solve for 3D, then apply a morphable model (3DMM). After an order is placed, we'll do photogrammetry to further refine the model. -for newer devices with the TrueDepth sensor (used for FaceID), we build a mesh directly from that. -accuracy is sub-millimeter. -frames are 100% custom. For each frame, for each customer, we adjust over 20 different dimensions for a perfect fit. Down to the unique contours of your nose. It's all 5-axis CNC machined (for plastic) and laser-cut (for stainless steel) (also sorry if I overstepped earlier. I'm just trying to be helpful. Long time reader, but first time commenter.)

Doesn't Apple limit the resolution of depth sensor data for 3rd-party apps? Such scans are much less accurate than FaceID or a 3D camera connected to a laptop or mobile device.

Right. Except that you have to buy eyeglasses if you want those numbers. The app will not tell them to you, and the frames alone are $349, not counting lenses. Total price starts at $600 and goes up. So, no thanks. I'll pass.

Spendy! Good to know, I'll skip the app and keep using zenni.

That's insane! $349 I could buy like 10 pairs at any other online store with the upgraded coating.

I live in ex-USSR in one of the poorest republics. My mom bought recently nice eyeglasses for $3.50. The procedure is this: you name the type of lenses (+2 + 3 etc) and they give a bunch of eyglasses with different ocular differences. You chose one that works for you and then choose the frame.

Yikes, that's a scam right there

I am extremely skeptical. Why? Because if you're using your phone to measure PD, you're presumably looking at the phone as you do so and your pupils are converged compared to a PD measurement when focusing at a distant (near infinity) object. It's not clear to me how using a 3d sensor to scan a face solves this problem and why this would be superior to the "focus on something far away and put dots on an old pair of glasses" method described here: http://www.daniellivingston.com/2012/06/measuring-your-own-p...

Expensive? I have astigmatism, top notch lenses with blue light filter and a slight varifocus (Eyezen, highly recommended for screen work) and a designer frame. This was a rather expensive purchase (around 350 euros) for me, but since I'm behind a screen a lot it's worth it.

Also, I bought these glasses at my local glasses store. I get headaches whenever my glasses aren't exactly centered or straight, so in a typical year I come in around 10-15 times to adjust them. They give me great service all the time, always cleaning the glasses and replacing screws/nose pieces for free. When I got theses glasses the lenses were replaced two times (I had transitions, didn't like them, and I got headaches from the second pair because my brain couldn't get used to the new astigmatic values), also without additional costs.

Buying glasses online is fine, but since I rely on my glasses every waking hour and require a lot of service, I'll keep buying them from my local shop. Probably not the most economical way, but 350 euros every couple of years isn't that shocking, either.

Walk into any eyeglasses store and what do you see? Tons of designer labels on everything, labels that were clearly just sold to some third party outfit to slap on their frames.

As someone who generally avoids high fashion it drives me crazy to see all of those expensive and useless logos on everything along with $400 price tags. I'm glad to see all of these online outfits so ready to undercut them.

Walmart wanted to charge me $180-240 just to replace lenses in my frames. Even without a brand name it's still expensive!

There are a lot of upcharge possibilites on lenses. High Refractivity, UV block, Anti-scratch, Anti-glare, Auto-tinting, etc... It gets expensive in a hurry if you say yes.

No-frills plastic can be ground out cheap but nobody wants to sell a low margin product like that.

Because you're lenses are coming from the same place. Depending on the contract year, your lenses are probably coming from Essilor, which at that point you should be probably be going to a private practice and getting better customer service and deals (in terms of warranties, and actually getting the most from the manufacturer). Though that really only extends to a two year period, if it is longer than than, it is pretty much considered a completely new order.

Disclosure, I work for Essilor.

I've been buying from a Chinese maker online, Zenni. They sell a pair with all of the trimmings for $120 that's about $400 at my optometrist's. I did not get a great fit on the first try, but did on the second, so that still saves around $160. And using the fitting for that pair I've bought three others that all fit well.

The worst part is the sad look in my optometrist's eyes when I say I'd just like the prescription please.

I was shocked that glasses cost as much as the lens of a DSLR camera, and glasses dont have all the moving parts and materials a DSLR lens have. I found some cheap glasses company on the internet and now I am very happy with the results.

I just use a 50 f/1.8 lens instead of wearing glasses. Problem solved.

I'm the CTO of an online eye test for the European market (https://easee.online). We work together with online retailers that want to offer prescription glasses at much lower costs and they need us to go fully online.

The industry has had pretty absurd margins for years, and that's fine for the fashion aspect of course, but I believe there should be affordable options for everyone, especially as the plastic only costs a couple of $ to produce.

I've been working in this space for one year and still have lots to learn, but I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have!

Looks interesting, I'll check it out!

FYI your copy hasn't been translated from Dutch everywhere on the English site. (Ik hou echt de stroopwafels!) Also your scrolljacking really works badly on Firefox mobile, it scrolls back up a bit five seconds after I scroll down, making it super annoying.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll sort it out with my team :)

This article is a literal translation of a 2012 60 mins show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voUiWOGv8ec&t=87s

Lensley Stahl is interviewing then Luxxotica CEO and his answers are really interesting. A must watch IMO.

More in depth article: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/10/the-invisible-p...

I was paying over $700 a year for glasses. Funny how the cost always seemed to add up to the max annual amount that my Vision program covered. Since my prescription basically stopped changing five years ago, I determined my IPD (pretty easy with a ruler and a mirror) and now I just order from online glasses providers, for about $100 a pair. No issues at all.

It's still important to see an eye doctor every year or two so that medical issues can be spotted early. But it's stupid to pay crazy prices for what should be a commodity.

> Funny how the cost always seemed to add up to the max annual amount that my Vision program covered

I can echo this experience. Buying eyeglasses from the optometrist office has always felt nearly the same as dealing with a car salesman.

There is a famous US company that has been making frames and lenses for decades. They are still around, offering classic models in a variety of custom sizes. They will insert any lens you need, even glass. Think of them as a time machine. They have their own lab.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browline_glasses

> Browline glasses were invented in 1947 by Jack Rohrbach, then vice-president of Shuron Ltd., an eyeglass company. The first browlines – sold under the "Ronsir" model name – were made out of interchangeable bridges, eyewires, and "brows," allowing wearers to completely customize the size, fit, and color of their glasses. At the time, most frame manufacturers offered a limited number of colors and sizes, making browlines a unique means of customizing one's personal appearance. The style quickly caught on in popularity amongst eyeglass wearers, resulting in numerous other companies releasing their own browline frames.

http://shuron.com

Today, few frame manufacturers offer the same style in multiple sizes. Virtually none allow you to mix and match temple length, frame width, bridge, etc.

The bridge of my nose is shaped weird apparently and it makes most glasses not fit very well, they tend to slide down all the time. I've gone to different places and perplexed the people there trying to help me find something that fit properly. They said everything sits too far off my face. I dunno what to do but push my glasses up. I basically cant buy any of the cheap online options though because they never fit.

I have a similar problem. I measure glasses that do fit and buy ones with the same dimensions using the search tool on Goggles4U. Sometimes they still don’t fit but are good emergency pair. I also heavily bend the part that goes behind the ear so they look more like an L than a hockey stick or straight line (like glasses meant for headphones/aviation).

You're not East Asian by any chance, are you? Our noses are slightly different from Caucasian noses. If you are, try finding "Asian fit" frames.

I've had the same problem any time I get glasses that don't have nose pads (i.e. the frame just sticks out a bit to touch the nose, rather than there being two plastic pads attached to the frame). But I found that you can buy stick-on silicone nose pads from Amazon, and these work perfectly for me. They're these little D shaped silicone pads that are sticky on one side, and maybe 1.5mm thick. You stick them onto your glasses frame and 1.) they help the frame grip your nose bridge, because they're silicone and therefore grippy, and 2.) they space the glasses a little further from your face. You have to replace them every month or two since the adhesive gives out, but they're pretty cheap and definitely worth the hassle.

Cheap ($10): https://www.amazon.com/GMS-Optical-Comfortable-Silicone-Anti...

Expensive (several $100): This company does a 3D scan of your facial structure, then your local provider designs a frame according to your anatomy and style/material/color preference. The frame design is then custom made, not 3D printed, https://3dna-eyewear.org

I wouldn't mind shelling out for the 3D scan if the product is good. Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding anything out about the company like reviews or pricing. Their website is very sparse as well.

The article mentions Warby Parker was started to combat these insane prices. NPR's How I Built This talks about the origins of Warby Parker in this podcast:

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/26/586048422/warby-parker-dave-g...

My girlfriend's worked in the eyecare industry for over 10 years now in just about every aspect of the industry. Cheap lenscrafter type places, respectable optometrists, opthamologists and the factories where they make glasses.

Just about everything is bullshit. The expensive brand name frames come from the same place as the cheap ones and cost the same, around $5-$10 for the store to purchase. Frames are marked up typically 200-300%.

Stuff like anti-reflective coating should not be charged extra. Most lenses are made from plastic with this built in.

Also, lenses take about 30 minutes to make on small CNC routers, which many places have in house and are usually made by the opticians working there in those cases.

While working for some of the shadier places, my girlfriend was told to straight up lie to customers(not patients....they don't think of the people that come in as patients) about what they needed to get them to spend more.

My recommendation would be to avoid opticians and chain type optometrists, they just want your money and they have no problem lying to get it.

The whole industry is ridiculously corrupt.

I just bought my first pair of glasses from the eye doctor – previously been using EyeBuyDirect. There's no difference in quality but they cost literally 10x ($250 vs. $25). I guess it's nice to be able to try them on in person and have a nice woman tell me I look good in them, but that's the only appreciable difference in the entire process.

In my experience, the legs on the cheap glasses online are rarely as long as they should be. That means the bend in the leg sits just forward of my ear.

The practical difference in negligible, though. They feel just fine, and they don't fall off or anything.

So yeah, I buy all my glasses online, and have been for years.

Most of the time you can adjust this with a heat gun. I've seen the guy in target optical do it at his desk.

They're metal legs with a plastic coating that was molded, in my case. Can't really bend them or reshape them.

And for the plastic ones, it would mean the ends of the legs would be rather short, leaving them to sit funny on the desk when open and possibly more likely to fall off if you lean forward.

I don't understand the difficulty here, at least for people with ordinary single-vision prescriptions.

10 years ago I was buying glasses mail-order from optical4less in Hong Kong: 58 USD for two pairs including single-vision lenses and shipping to anywhere in the world.

In the UK, places like speckyfoureyes are even cheaper, and have a wide selection of frames.

Both of these places show extensive details of frame measurements, which should allow you to choose frames that suit your face, unless it's your first time buying glasses ever (unlikely if you're an adult, as most of us develop issues earlier).

Sure, if you need to have name-brand frames or want a very specific fashion statement, maybe there's only one brand that will work for you.

But the fact that a particular person is satisfied only by a particular handbag costing $10k does not mean that 'handbags are so expensive'. Because most people can be satisfied with a handbag that costs 99% less than that.

One of my co-workers always had a new pair of well fitted glasses on every week, and I found out she was buying them online for like $20-$40 a pair. At first I was apprehensive about the fit and quality of the glasses, but after buying a few test pairs they really are just like the store brands.

Link?

https://www.zennioptical.com/ is what my wife uses. She pays for all the special coatings, anti glare, anti oil. Ends up being about 50$ a pair. She loves them, and I think they look cute.

I've used firmoo, zenni and warby parker. Warby parker is more on the expensive end but they have a store nearby and are still cheaper than a normal optical store.

She bought a new pair every week? What a waste of money. Consumerism at its worst.

As long as they weren't throwing them out, it's no worse than having different pairs of shoes/earrings/hats and alternating between them. Glasses can be an accessory.

So far I think the best value, even better than Costco, is Sam's Club. Bring them frames and they will trace them and measure your PD, then make you a pair of single vision Pentax lenses with AR coating, for less than $40. Add $60 and you have polarized sunglasses. This is for CR39 plastic which is optically superior to polycarbonate/high index lenses. There is also a great warranty, since Sam's Club will let you return anything practically any time.

You can find most frames for a few bucks on eBay, including popular brands like Ray Ban.

I have bought quite a few pair so far and am super satisfied, especially with the optical quality, compared to the competition's "HD" stuff.

Relevant previous discussion: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061380

I live in Portugal and I have needed prescription glasses since i was a child (I'm now in my 40s). I have always felt frames particularly are priced in a cartel like way. Of course for lenses there is more of a justification depending on the thickness/prescription (it is harder to make a more curved lens that is thinner and lighter).

In frames they try to get you to go for the branded style (Hugo Boss, Gucci whatever...) This is discussed extensively in the above article. [1] In lenses they try to sell you add on treatments (Anti-reflex, UV coatings, etc) In my experience some of these coatings end up shortening the lifespan of the lens as they create a surface that is easier to scratch.

I think local opticians take advantage of the fact that people's face dimensions vary so much and that people need to try on tens of options before they find one that is both comfortable and good looking.

Given the low prices for frames practiced by some online stores (https://www.zennioptical.com/ for example) I'm very tempted to even buy the frames online and then going into the local opticians to get them to make and fit the lenses. I'm pretty sure they will try their best to scam me into some overcharge if I do that though...

>they try to sell you add on treatments (Anti-reflex, UV coatings, etc) In my experience some of these coatings end up shortening the lifespan of the lens as they create a surface that is easier to scratch.

In my opinion, the best material for lenses is the cheapest: plain uncoated CR-39. It has the best Abbe number of any common material (lowest chromatic aberration), and good scratch resistance. I clean mine using a microfiber cloth (carefully pre-washed to remove any grit), hot water, and dish-washing detergent. This leaves them clean enough that water will "sheet" off them, leaving them visually flawless. I find dirt on the lens more annoying than reflections, so I'd rather have uncoated lenses than coated ones that won't survive aggressive cleaning.

I'd recommend CR-39 even for moderately high prescriptions. Weight of lenses increases super-linearly with size, and glasses inherently have bad off-axis performance, so there's little point wearing huge glasses where index of refraction makes a big difference. The low index of refraction of CR-39 also reduces reflections, which is important when you're omitting anti-reflective coatings. It's also worth considering that all glasses designs are trading optical performance for convenience; for maximum optical performance you need contact lenses.

Wow, cannot upvote this comment enough. Super helpfull, thanks! Definetely going to go with uncoated lenses. Will the opticians even know what I'm talking about when I ask for CR39? I have one concern though I'm - 6 Dioptre on each eye. so lens weight has always been an issue for me. even a few grams extra make a big difference. I always go for rectangular low profile lenses with the greatest thickness reduction they can apply and they always advise for Polycarbonate lenses.

What's your take on this?

All glasses are a compromise in some way, so you have to decide which flaws are most tolerable to you. -6 is strong enough correction that I'd seriously consider contact lenses if I needed it. Contact lenses avoid the image distortion and shrinkage you get with glasses, and because they move with your eyes, the image is sharp in all parts of your field of vision.

Polycarbonate is IMO a terrible material for corrective lenses. It has very bad Abbe number, so you get a lot of chromatic aberration (rainbow artifacts) and it's very soft, so coating is pretty much required. Its only real virtue is impact resistance, which is important in safety glasses, but you can get flat safety glasses that fit over your corrective glasses. The weight is marginally better than CR-39, but not enough to make up for the poor optical performance. I haven't seen it person, but going by the numbers, Trivex seems superior.

Wikipedia has some information on common materials:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrective_lens#Lens_materials

My preference for uncoated applies only to CR-39. Other materials have properties that make coatings more important. It's also possible that some coatings have much better resistance to cleaning than others. Unfortunately, details about coatings are generally secret, so there's no way to evaluate them.

I see, thanks for the advice again I will read more about it. Yeah i wear daily contacts for beach / swimming days, but unfortunately never managed to get used to wearing contacts as primary everyday correction.

I recommend finding an independent eye practice - independent ophthalmology practices are common and likely to also have optometrists on staff - and getting a printed prescription from your exam. This lets you sidestep the Luxottica monopoly completely when you take your prescription to an online vendor like 39dollarglasses.com. You can easily get two pairs of glasses with the full suite of antireflective coatings for less than the copay you'd pay buying glasses at retail with insurance.

Expensive glasses are expensive. There are online retailers where you can get glasses for $20 (not sure about more complicated prescriptions).

I go to this place where I can get a $50 eye test before buying them online. Only issue is that the people who do the eye tests leave out the PD number which is kinda important. If you ask them for it, they'll tell you to do it yourself or buy glasses from them. You can measure it yourself instead.

I'm Eric, the founder of Topology Eyewear. We agree that "stock" eyewear (a.k.a. off-the-shelf eyewear) is overpriced. Worst than overpriced, it doesn't fit you very well, because it wasn't made for you! Everyone is different, so we have figured out how to make every one of our glasses different: 100% custom made to fit each individual, like a custom suit; made from the same luxury Italian acetate (plastic) and full-hard stainless steel you'd expect from a high-end frame. And our optics are BETTER than you'd get from your doctor, b/c we compensate for 3D position of wear. And it's all done via an iPhone app using 3D face scanning. Check it out at http://www.topologyeyewear.com or on the App Store at http://bit.ly/topologyapp I'm happy to answer here any optical or technical questions anyone has - just hit reply!

I know doing the same for android is tough. But any plans to make an app for android?

Yes an Android version is on our roadmap, but honestly it will be quite a while. It isn't just the depth sensor, but also the ability to know for each phone model the intrinsic calibration of the sensor, the GPU, the IMU, and the screen size. We're doing real-time rendering and some very heavy computation at 60fps, which really does leverage tight software/hardware integration iOS and Apple hardware provides. That being said, if you are excited about what we're doing and the only think holding you back is the phone you choose to carry in your pocket, contact me or anyone on my team via the website and we'll be happy to give you a discount for the inconvenience of having to borrow a friend's iPhone.

Interesting how much prices can vary between countries. I just googled for the prices in several stores here in Poland and it seems you can get the most basic frames and lenses for about $20. You can get a very decent pair for ~$100. Many companies here have to reimburse you a pair up to ~$130 every 2-3 years and this is the only time when you need prescription from doctor, otherwise you don't need it.

RayBan, Armani, etc. cost a lot, but I never seriously considered them.

I got my current pair over 15 years ago. Back then I think they must have costed over $200 but only because I have asked for (at that time) fancy lenses. This was expensive but considering how long they lasted and how much they survived I consider them one of the best purchases ever. I have couple of other glasses (reimbursed by my company, i.e. free) which I wear every now and then but I stick to the old pair simply because I am used to them.

I’ve managed a few eyewear stores in Australia and it is important to not forget that the dispensing, fitting and quality checking of eyewear is time consuming if you don’t want to half-arse it. I’ve never worked in the very high end stores, but whoever is rolling in money, it wasn’t us.

> Because no one is doing anything to prevent a near-monopolistic, $100-billion industry from shamelessly abusing its market power.

> However, as with prescription drugs, government officials are content to pretend that “the market” will protect patients.

So the same old story from pretty much every other sector of the economy. America loves its monopolies and oligopolies and does everything in its power to promote their creation, including spreading bullshit about the how the market will make everything and everyone perfect forever and ever and grant everyone eternal life. Or however else they choose to describe the complete and utter chaos that is markets. It's amazing what getting even a small percentage of the population to believe in one's delusions will achieve.

There have been quite a few large threads on this over the years.

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061380

2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15736573

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13091936

2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9183464

2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718224

I signed up for an HDHP and HSA when I got my first job because I wanted didn't want a premium deducted from my paycheck (young and short-sighted), turns out it was one of the best decisions I've made financially.

I'm healthy so I haven't had many medical expenses at all, but I've been able to amass a decent health emergency fund through my HSA and "splurge" on certain qualified medical expenses. For instance I got a pair of relatively expensive superscription glasses over the summer paid for through my HSA.

I know it's not for everyone, and I'd really like Congress to make an HSA more appealing to lower and middle income folks, but I think an HSA is a solid way to plan for medical expensive if you're in the right demographic.

While an HSA is good this is completely unrelated to the topic. You still overpaid for expensive glasses.

Just an anecdote to add because I'm in the right demographic.

My company-funded HSA paid for my LASIK. Best $4000 to never come out of my own pocket.

In India you could get good quality glasses ~15$ to 40$

Surprised not to see mention of 39dollarglasses in this article or the comments. They've been great in my limited experience (two pairs of glasses)

[1] https://www.39dollarglasses.com/

I have been using 39dollarglasses for quite a few years, good service, and I've gotten quite a few unsolicited compliments on the frames.

There is a company in Sydney, Australia called Dresden that make cheap recyclable plastic glasses. The prices range from AU$49-$99 (US$35-$70) depending on how thin you want your lenses.

They keep costs down by producing a single, neutral, yet attractive style. You can have just about any color you want and a choice between four sizes.

An engineering friend of mine was helping them improve the recycling process. Once you are done with the glasses, you take them back to Dresden, they grind them down and reuse the plastic in new frames. I'm not sure if they recycle lenses.

https://dresden.vision/

Ironically, I pay even more to avoid Luxottica.

VSP encourages me to buy "preferred" brands with even larger frame discounts if I go with one of these generic "designer" companies.

Instead, I pay even more to get glasses I actually like; all-carbon-fiber frames from Bellinger in Denmark.

I pay an extra dollar or two a month in order to qualify for new frames every year; that money more than pays for itself when I get 20% off $600-$800+ frames.

As a guy, my glasses are about the only fashion accessory I have, so it's worth it to me. But if it's not worth it to you, Costco will happily sell you cheap glasses, as will the various online retailers.

As usual, don't trust what the industry wants to tell you you have to buy.

I have been buying glasses from Goggles4U for a decade or so here in the USA. I enter my prescription plus my PD. I get very good glasses for $20-40 all in. Recently I moved to progressives which actually cost a bit more ($20-40).

For comparison, last year my wife added me to her VSP. For $200 + $500 paid by VSP from a pocal optometrist/eyewear store I got glasses that might be a tad more stylish, but the progressive prescription is worse - fewer areas are in focus. What a joke.

Always buy online. At these prices you can trade a movie night out for a set of spare glasses. I have single focus distance, reading, sunglasses and progressives for about the price of the copay on a VSP.

The glasses industry is so structurally bundled and unsound that a disruptor like Warby Parker was able to come in and build a billion dollar business in a matter of years.

Hearing aids are similar as mentioned on the thread.

Wondering what other industries have these structurally integrated industries where a disruptor could deliver a tremendous amount of value with insider Knowledge or reintegrating a supply chain. I believe an original Warby team member worked in the eyewear industry.

I have a feeling things like Car Dealerships are next. You fundamentally have to be able to drive massive value to consumers by making a one time purchase expneisve good cheaper with an innovative business model.

It would also be nice to not need a prescription for contact lenses in the United States.

Second! My prescription hasn't changed in 10 years, do I really need to keep going through this?

And recently, it seems like all the optometrists have started tacking on a $40 "contact fitting fee" that technically isn't part of the insurance-covered exam.

Last year, I went to a JINS store in Tokyo Japan.

They gave me an eye exam and, in less than an hour, had made my prescription reading glasses (with AR coating). Total cost was less than $90 USD.

And I don't speak Japanese - I know less than a dozen words.

JINS has stores in California.

Here's a great example of the crazy markup. I use these $7 sunglasses for biking:

3M Virtua Glasses Gray Lens, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006PJHM6/

And these clear $5 ones for wind while biking when it's dark:

3M Virtua Clear Lens, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00166OALC/

Both 3M and Amazon make a profit on these! 3M's cost of goods sold is probably $1.25.

Someone was asking about glass lenses. They are now mostly a premium product, not many online suppliers.

https://www.2020mag.com/article/a-dawn-for-glass-lenses

https://www.eyeglasses.com/prescription-lenses/glass/

http://www.lensfactory.com/glass-lenses/

Essilor used to make them but are closing most of their lines. They are just not that in demand. They also take longer to make.

I hadn't thought of the cost, but the article does a good job of highlighting that. What I had noticed (in the UK at least) is how limiting the styles are by not being modular: opticians stock an impressive array of glasses, but it's incredible how inflexible it can be as countless times you find a pair that go well but then find there's some random flourish that ruins it - were the pieces modular (or better yet made to order by 3D printing) you'd get exactly what you were after - and then maybe I could just about stomach the pricing!

Great "Adam Ruins Everything" episode about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAeHuDcy_bY

My wife was an optician for 15 years; she left the industry because of the crazy retail sales environment (focus on sales and commission instead of customer service)

She had the idea of being an independent optician, but not selling glasses. Rather, offering services like adjustments, frame styling, measuring PD, etc, to service the growing market seeking out glasses from places like Zenni and Warby Parker.

Personally, I didn't think she'd find enough people willing to pay for those services, but perhaps there's an opportunity there.

I was shopping for new glasses a few months ago. Unfortunately, not only Luxottica brands where out of control expensive, pretty much all of their offerings where low quality. I mean really shitty quality. The quality you'd expect you get buying $5 glasses from shady fake crap stores.

I ended up buying La Coste frames. It was on a sales. Both the frame and the glasses cost less than $100. I think it is a fair price and one that makes me not think much about. But if I find cheaper frames, I have better use for that money.

I'm surprised that noone is blaming the health insurance and opticians for these prices.

In France when we need glasses we have to get a presciption and we can choose the glasses at the optician. The thing is that the optician will not give you a price for a pair until you have given your health insurance details, which allows him to know how much you will get reimbursed. And surprise surprise, the pair of glasses you chose is coincidentally just 5€ cheaper than the max limit paid by your insurance.

I feel that they steal the universe from me by making new prescriptions that presume normal distribution in use-case, and because the new prescription mandates new glasses.

I have heard that recycling of glasses is illegal. Isn't that like right-to-repair broken for 18th century technology? It is because someone in politics makes a lot of money from it. If someone were to dig out decent documentation there, and make it public, then the problem could be and not just patched with a band-aid.

Is this only a states thing or generally all of North America thing? An eye-doctor's visit, prescription, and two pairs can be around 200 quid[0] (adjusting for currency conversion).

[0] - https://www.specsavers.se/glasogon/bag-sok#sort=field_frame_...

About 20 years ago, while I was in highschool, my foreign student Korean friend would get care packages and in them would be 3-4 pairs of glasses to change it up depending on the occasion. Apparently, glasses run around $30, even with an eye exam.

When I visited a couple years later, I could get glasses, even with thei highest index for $30. Some places would charge 50-70 for frames + high index lenses, but the big volume shops, you could get a bunch of pairs for cheap.

When I last wore glasses, I found zenni optical, and got my prescription for $18, which would have been near $200 at a wal mart. They were great, and lasted many years.

I got Lasiks done last April. It was a very scary procedure but it worked. It cost $3000. I have saved about $300 in glasses so far... assuming I wouldn't have lost/crushed a pair.

My vision is now so good people say "wow you can read that (chalkboard specials menu in restaurant etc.)?!"

Still when I was laying there with my corneas being sliced... I wasn't sure if it was such a good idea!

Yeah, I got Lasik done 15 years ago at UCSF, where they trained ophthalmologists. It costed around $6000, with insurance covered around $1000. Best money I ever spent. The improvement to quality of life was incredible. Still get 20/20 at left eye and right eye degraded slightly to 20/30.

Just get lasik. I got it a couple years ago and I recommend it highly. Never having to buy expensive glasses again is just icing on the cake.

This is very timely for me as I have an optometrist's appointment this afternoon. My 3 year old prescription needs an update unfortunately. Three years ago these glasses cost me $NZ1500 ($US1000). I do have"off the charts" astigmatism and they're progressives as well. Does anyone here know if the online options extend to extreme corner cases like this ?

I have ordered four pairs of -4 glasses from aliexpress ranging from 1 to 7 US dollars, from four various sellers, some have arrived already and are surprisingly good, lenses are great really. Maybe I'm lucky to have standard distance between my eyes, but these super cheap glasses are just as good as those I used to buy in a local clinic for 50-100 USD.

An optometrist friend of mine once told me decades ago about an 'in joke' they had in the industry:

When you hand over a pair of glasses to a customer, you say "That will be $200...".

If the customer doesn't blink, you continue "... for the frame, the lenses cost an extra $200...".

If the customer still doesn't blink, you continue "... each.".

It seems like a perfect opportunity for someone to disrupt this market.

I have never spent more than $100 on prescription glasses ($20 for lens with AR coating). I understand there's lack of information, otherwise people would buy just them online but the convenience and trust factors might also be in play.

People don’t buy glasses that often. A single pair can last a long time. So even tho gross margins can be rich, the annual volume may not cover the fixed cost of marketing, r&d, etc. and don’t forget the optician isn’t really making money from the checkups, it’s the glasses and contacts.

I’ve been getting glasses from selectspecs.com for years now. I just buy 3 pairs for about £15 each and then swap them out when I break them (which happens often due to clumbsiness). Quality is fine. Glasses are just made of plastic. No reason they should be expensive as far as I can tell.

“Eyeglass sales are becoming a very competitive market, with frames and lenses available in a range of prices and quality levels,” Bajwa said. “Today’s glasses aren’t the glasses of 20 years ago, and the price can reflect these technological advances.”- This is exactly a true statement.!

I can't really do online lenses because I'm at -10 diopter and special techniques have to be used. But I always buy my frames online cheaply. Then I take my frames to my local optometrist and have them cut lenses for the online frames. It's cheap and quality.

As a related aside - I got lasik surgery a couple years ago for $3000 on the dot and it was easily in the top best life decisions I’ve ever made. Most lasik practices I know of have low-no interest financing options that are going to be cheaper long term than glasses.

One word- Walmart. The most durable frames and AR coatings I have ever bought. The frames are a Chinese knockoff. This industry is completely automated and relies on CNC automated finishing and batch costing. Walmart evidently made a centralized investment.

Do-it-yourself wooden frames: https://www.instructables.com/id/Techniques-for-Making-Woode...

Because Luxottica is the DeBeers of glasses. Warby Parker, and IIRC Walmart, are the major insurgents against them in the US. I thought Costco also was after their business but it looks like they sell a great deal of Luxottica product.

http://www.luxottica.com/en

in NL there is a documentary about this company and how much of influence they have on the market. Interesting, though if true, worrying

In Brazil the regulation states that you must have a prescription in order to buy and it _must_ be no more than six months old.

So if you lose your glasses after as little as six months and can't find your prescription, off to the doctor you go.

I wonder if there is a market for an iphone app that uses the Face ID sensors to measure pupillary distance (PD). Last time I got an eye exam, the optometrist would not share the PD measurement without purchasing frames as well.

I bought 40€ glasses online, send them back and got 200€ glasses at a normal shop.

I see the issue that everyone should be able to get glasses as it is that important but I will not compromise my eyesight quality because of a few hundred bugs.

How long before 'Jeff' gets into this industry? [1]

[1] Amazon of course is what I mean.

We’re fortunate enough to have a Warby Parker retail store nearby. $95 all-in for glasses. This is 15-25% of what I’ve spent elsewhere.

It’s considerably more if you have progressive lenses. Nearly $300. Still far off the norm.

I enjoyed the Adam Ruins Everything segment on Luxottica... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAeHuDcy_bY

Brings to mind the advocacy of William Horatio Bates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method

one would think in free market US economy you will have tons if brands to choose for each budget but the article imply opposite, is it really truth there it's unregulated monopoly? can't you buy cheap glasses in supermarket for few dollars or some event brands for let's say 50-200$ online? looks odd from Europe

of course luxurious brands cost more, bit who is forcing people to buy luxurious fashion brands? that doesn't sound like monopoly to me

Why aren't insurance companies putting pressure on the market to get more inexpensive options? Is the overall savings (~$200 every few years) just not worth it?

I want to buy glass lenses, not plastic lanses. Plastic accumultes many fine scratches over time from cloth etc. Which online supplier sells glass lenses?

The answer: The Government.

In the UK you can grab a pair of decent frames for as little as £15 and and an eye test for about £30 at most optics stores.

Single vision lenses £50 at the most.

They're not tho... https://www.zennioptical.com/

I would also like to know why it takes my HMO (Kaiser) 6 weeks to make lenses, and why their invoices don’t list what products they sold you.

I understand the Luxotica monopoly but everytime this comes up people recommend some Japanese company -- I can't recall their name.

No surprise when there is no competition in the market. Companies are just greedy and margins are high in almost everything these days.

Zenni's glasses start at $6 (lenses and frames included).

I usually splurge and spend around $15 a pair.

Glasses are cheap. Many consumers are hoodwinked by vendors.

I bought 2 brand new pairs of glasses for $40 in China in 2014, including eye exam. They've lasted me for the last 4 years.

Ive been buying my contacts from Europe without a perscription for years now because of the scam that is US healthcare industry.

I've been meaning to bypass this racket for a while. Can anyone recommend a good chinese/indian seller for eyeglasses?

39dollarglasses.com is what I use.

Same; I have several pairs from them and they have always been fine.

Zenni Optical is fantastic. I buy several pairs in different frames / tints / etc just to see what it looks like. I also orders glasses in slightly different strength for near/far operation.

I just bought a pair of glasses of Warby Parker for 135 dollars. They will last me multiple years - how is this expensive ?

I have started buying my glasses from Costco. I was blown away by how cheap they were there when compared to other places.

I do wonder how easy it would be to complete automate eye tests. It seems to me a robot could do the job very easily.

So for average US optometrists, what % of the revenues and profits comes from eyewear sales vs services (exams etc.)?

They aren't expensive. There are stores like Specsavers that charge USD20 for a pair of affordable glasses.

Retro Super Future is a great brand for sunglasses and optical. Stores in the states and Europe, made in Italy.

Just making list of industries where market forces have failed to give a way to monopolies, at least in US:

- Cable TV/Internet

- Prescription glasses

- Hearing aids

What else?

Warby Parker is a good alternative to the Luxotica monopoly but I think even their lenses are Essilor

Go for lasik. 4500 bucks in abq 0% over 2 years. Best thing ive ever done in my life

In France we have lunette pour tous and it's 10€ for a pair. It works wonders

I had lasik eye surgery 15 years ago and never looked back (pun intended).

Maybe that's because a single company controls 80% of the market:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7H-_8UkmFU

(it's an Adam Ruins Everything about the eyeglass industry)

And why is optical/optomechanical lab equipment so expensive?

Probably because of the small market and the precision required in manufacturing it.

Anyone know cheap online glasses seller that shipping worldwide?

A massive portion of the industry is owned by a single company.

You think glasses are expensive try hearing aids.

Don't hearing aids have electronics and batteries in them? Glasses don't.

I can hear Luxottica laughing in the distance

Obligatory manufacturing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCH1SEYbrVA

I got a chance to do some due diligence on a company that was trying to "print" lenses with an interesting sintering process. It was a creative idea but I don't think it went anywhere useful. Dr. Strand at USC was researching holographic lenses which was something I high hopes for.

Wow, did this post blow up or what.

anyone who spends excessively on glasses should consider a laser-correction

why can't we just 3d print and laser cut these things already?

Use zenni. Cheap af.

Glasses are not expensive.

Convenient glasses, or glasses with recognizable brand names, available in one hour at your local mall are expensive.

My glasses were $29 plus shipping.

The magical mystery superpower that I developed after being bitten by a radioactive wombat which enabled me to break through the chains of Luxxotica and do (according to people on the internet) the impossible and escape their "monopoly" was: using Google to find online eyewear retailers.

Haha, that's what I was wondering. How is this a monopoly if I'm able to buy glasses for $25?

Also, how is this a monocle, if I'm able to buy a full pair?

You're taking a pretty narrow view of what a monopoly is with your anecdote.

A monopoly is where a company gets large enough that it is able to leverage its market share in anticompetetive ways (charging outrageously high prices, far above the competition, for exampe).

NOT where its literally impossible to buy other brands or where a company has 100% market share. That scenario is impossible and will never happen in any market.

Yup, perfectly fine experience online here as well. Good thing, too, because if my son's eyeglasses cost more than $35 to replace every time he broke them at school (ball, bike, wall, jerk, etc.) or outgrew the frames, I'd probably have let him go feral by now.

Glasses are expensive if you choose to pay a lot.

I get super cheap yet fashionable and long lasting glasses at the WalMart optician's office. WalMart does a better job than the private practice guy I saw for years. I get lenses with all the extras and it's still cheap. They also give me the prescription rather than fuss about it.

If anyone is still paying $200 and up for glasses it's because they choose to do so. The market works.

Same goes for generic drugs. Most things a month supply is $4 at WalMart. Some people prefer to go to a small pharmacy, use insurance, and end up with a $20 copay for the same drug. That is their choice to do so but they should not complain.

Likewise with the MRI cost crisis. You can get an MRI and the reading for $250-$500 depending on what state you are in. People paying $10,000 are choosing to pay that. Excepting cases where they are unconscious of course.

Just buy glasses in / from India. The Indian government price protects most prescriptions because otherwise the poor will be absolutely excluded from them. So too with eye glasses. I bought mine in 2005 for the equivalent of $20 & they are running perfectly fine even now. I bought another pair in 2016 for the equivalent of $55 & they are now my backup. Both prices are including frames. My prescription had changed very little.

This is an area where I feel like AI could one day give you a comprehensive eye exam and even measure your face and head displaying a number of frames that would suit you. Once you decide on color and style, they would then be 3D Printed and the Lens could be ground while you wait. Perhaps just a tech to assemble would be all that is required.

I haven't tried this personally but I should plug endmyopia.org if for no other reason than to give some more picture on the practices of this industry.

Is the glasses industry heavily regulated? because if not, this is evidence that free market forces tends towards monopolies and wealth inequality.

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