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Comment by janice1999 | Hacker News Reader

janice1999

> If I want to buy a pair of glasses with arbitrary optical properties, why shouldn't I be able to?

Don't sites like Zenni Optical already offer this?

No, you need to upload a prescription.

That's blatant nonsense. In practice, you do need to have a prescription so you know exactly what to get, but you can type in the numbers without having to upload anything.

That's literally not true. Places will request your prescription and will not fulfill your order until the prescription is sent over.

Nope, not true at all. Go to eyebuydirect.com, enter any random prescription and buy those glasses. I've done this like 20 times, mostly because my prescriptions were from doctors outside United States.

It's an American company. AFAIK there is no regulation in the US that requires prescription from a doctor to get the glasses.

Yes me too! This is amazing for reading glasses -> computer glasses. Converting a normal distance -> reading means adding 1.15 to one column of numbers. But it was too strong for me, so I used eye buy direct to try a sweep from 100%, .66%, and .33% and each are great for different situations

.33 of 1.15 was amazing for computers, comfortable but I can still look at distance somewhat

This thread was a reminder that I needed some prescription sunglasses.

There was an option to upload my prescription, so they could auto-detect the values from it. But there's a button just below that for "manually enter". I never saw any other prompts, on the way to checking out.

Maybe in the US. You can just order glasses globally (friends use HK, I'm in Europe) and nobody gives a damn about any prescription.

I have used Zenni and several other online stores, and all of them will require you to upload a current doctor ordered prescription (one that has not expired). You cannot just take the numbers you already know and order a pair for yourself on any of these sites, as far as I know.

If you look closely, there is an option to enter your prescription numbers manually.

Glasses do not require a prescription - you can enter arbitrary values. Contacts on the other hand, require a prescription within the last year and is verified with your optometrist.

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