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.
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?
I've converted several people, but not being able to touch them and try them on first appears to be a significant problem.
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.
They also give you a ruler with your first order, but it's crap, just have your doctor do 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.
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.
Although that doesn't excuse the practice, it still feels shady to me.
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).