In addition to being an online trainer of optician students, dispensing opticians and other eye care professionals, I am a licensed optician who has worked for a mall-based optical chain and two different independent doctors of optometry, both with large dispensaries. I have more than eightteen years “in the business.” I know exactly what optical products cost and how they are marked up. You are not going to read any “industry insider information” here, because none exists. What I can share with you are some common-sense guidelines about what you should know or seek to learn more about on your own.

Let me be very up-front here: There is nothing wrong with making a profit on goods or services. That is how our economic system works. Directly or indirectly, it is how you pay your bills, feed your family and buy new things for your home. But there is something wrong with taking advantage of people and overcharging for products and services that have little real value.

As a consumer, the first thing you must know is that you own your eyeglass prescription. Once your exam has been paid for, you may ask for a copy of your prescription. By law, your doctor must give it to you. You are free to take that prescription anywhere you want to have it filled, just as you would for a prescription for medication. If your doctor hesitates or refuses, then you are being taken advantage of. (Note: This does not necessarily apply to contact lens prescriptions.) You should also know that a prescription for eyeglasses, NOT CONTACTS never “expires”. 

When I was teaching opticianry courses, in an effort to get students to think a little, I opened my first class with this statement: “The only thing that matters is who makes your glasses.” This prefaced a discussion on the perception that somehow the place you buy your glasses matters, or that the person who sells you your glasses matters, or (my favorite) that how your glasses look matters. Yes, of course these things do matter. However, your primary goal when getting the prescription from your doctor filled is to have it filled correctly. The person who really controls that is the person who actually creates the lenses, mounts the lenses, and inspects the finished product.

Lenses are ground or made to fill prescriptions at huge factories, not behind the wall in your local optical shop, big or small. The fanciest and most expensive store in town is probably using the same optical lab as the discount place on the corner! Lenses may be ground to fit a frame in a shop, but not ground to fill an individual prescription. The optician or eye care professional (ECP) has no control over determining the prescription or how it is created in the lab. Like lenses, frames are made by the millions, in huge factories, located all over the globe. They are not hand-crafted in the back room at the optical shop. How a frame looks is often unrelated to how well it works for a given prescription.

So why is the optical shop important? Optical shops provide you with access to a wall of frames to try on so you can really look your best. Maintaining that inventory costs that business $10,000 to $100,000. They stock repair parts and they have the tools necessary to properly and safely adjust and repair your eyewear. They provide education and information about new products that can provide you with better vision. Only an experienced ECP can provide you with a proper fit for your new eyewear. Only an experienced optician or ECP can take accurate measurements for the proper alignment of your eyeglass lenses. It will be the ECP that you work with and develop a relationship with that will take the time and care to assure you are getting the proper prescription by doing a final inspection of the product. It is your local shop that can handle warranty issues.

Eyewear is an odd commodity. A pair of glasses can cost from $18.00 from an on-line retailer to $18,000 for gold frames studded with diamonds. If you are shopping at the lower end of the price scale, then you may not give all that much thought to your purchase. If you are shopping at the high end of the scale and are buying frames that act as real jewelry, then you may not have to give much thought to your purchase, since you have enough money to spend it on luxury items. It is the consumers shopping in the middle ranges who need to do their research and learn a little bit about what to expect when they walk into a store to buy glasses.

I was going to open this section with this paragraph, but decided that you might not keep reading. So here it goes: If you are able to shop in Le Fancy Optique, where the floors are covered with plush carpets, the walls with expensive art, and the staff are dressed in their fine clothes, do not whine about the price of Le Fancy’s glasses. If you are on a budget, go to a warehouse outlet (Consumer Reports likes Costco) and buy your glasses there. You do not get a Mercedes at a Kia dealer, and you do not go to Kia for a Mercedes. Decide what you want, and prepare to be satisfied with your choices.

With that said, I am going to go out on a limb. If you feel a level of dedication or loyalty to a particular store or doctor’s office, then good for you; I think loyalty is sadly lacking in our world today. However, if you are on a budget – which many of us are in these hard times – then shop around. Is a pair of $500 glasses better than a pair of $200 glasses? Not necessarily.

Expect to pay about this much for complete pairs of glasses, frame AND lenses (subject to regional differences):
Single vision glasses: Between $100 and $300.
Lined multi-focal glasses: Between $150 and $400.
Progressive glasses: Between $200 and $600.
Non-glare coatings: add $75 to $150.
Changeable tint lenses: add $75 to $150.

The bottom line is if you are paying more than $900 for progressive lenses with AR and Transitions Lenses then look around and ask some serious questions about what you are getting (you can get the best of all three for that much or less with NO exceptions). With the exception of “Kid Packages” or “warehouse prices,” if you are paying much less, I would question the quality of the product you are receiving. See below on Internet shopping.

A recent newspaper article broke down the costs built in to your eyeglass purchase. the list was fifteen items long and included many of the hidden costs like, wages, staff benefits, rent, utilities, marketing, equipment and the costs of frame warranty parts and shipping. Eyewear, just like any item you buy has to pay to run the business and create a profit above that. Your plate of spaghetti when you go out dinner costs them $1.19 to make but you pay $19.00 for it and then leave them a tip! Think about it…

Frames:

Frame pricing is consistent throughout the industry. Almost all optical retailers mark up frames along similar guidelines. Of course, there are exceptions, and it is up to you to shop around and be sure you are not overpaying for a specific frame. It is common to find identical frames selling for within a few dollars of each other in local markets. Unless the frame is unique to a very small vendor, chances are excellent that at least one other shop in town is selling the same frame.

We all want to look good. Eyewear today is a fashion-driven industry. So, rule number one is: You will pay more for a frame with a designer name. Frame manufacturers spend millions of dollars buying the rights to put designer names on their frame lines. They have to recoup that cost somewhere, so the higher the brand recognition is, the higher the cost of the frames.

That leads us to rule number two: Designer frames look better than non-designer frames. Do not kid yourself. The frame companies know how to manipulate style. The best-looking shapes, styles and colors are combined in the higher cost designer lines.

This leads us to rule number three: Just because it has a designer name does not mean it is a better product. In fact, it is almost a certainty that it was made on the very same assembly line and from the very same materials as the company’s house brand.

When you by a frame, think about how and when you will wear it. If you wear your contact lenses 99% of the time, then buy a house-brand frame, and save your money. Does it really matter what your bedside readers look like? Do you need a designer frame for your computer glasses?

To see how a frame should fit and how a frame should NOT fit see our Frame Fit Photo Gallery. 

Lenses:

Unlike frames, lens pricing is very inconsistent throughout the industry. Almost all optical retailers will mark up lenses to what the local market will bear. Of course, there are exceptions, and it is up to you to shop around and be sure you are not overpaying for a specific lens (see below).

Single vision lenses are pretty basic stuff. If you have a low prescription, or wear your contact lenses most of the time, then just about any lens will do. If you have a higher prescription and wear your glasses all the time, then you will want to consider aspheric designs, coatings, and material (see my Lessons 3 and 8).

Multi-focal lenses (bi-focals and tri-focals) really have not changed much in the last twenty years. You will probably get what you had before and be pretty happy with them.

Concerning progressive lenses (and some single vision lenses), the single greatest piece of advice I can share with you is this: The latest and greatest is not always the greatest – only the latest.

Advertising is a powerful medium, and lens companies spend millions of dollars promoting new lenses. As a consumer, you only see the tip of the iceberg, since many of the ads appear in trade magazines which are directed at doctors and Eye Care Professionals or ECPs. In addition to the ads, there is a legion of industry representatives out there selling the lenses directly to the stores. Sometimes, lens manufacturers have to push sales on lenses that don’t necessarily perform well.

When buying eyeglasses:

Do know that all current brand-name lenses and many new free-form house brands are pretty darn good. If you are being told that a certain lens is above and beyond all others IN ITS CATEGORY and is worth more money than other lenses IN ITS CATEGORY you are probably being fed sales propaganda.

Do buy a quality non-glare coating. Non-glare coatings allow you to see better, look better, and makes for a better pair of glasses. Get the best non-glare coating you can afford. If you can afford it, get the good coating on every pair you have. Just like lenses, your optician should be able to tell you what brand and what type of non-glare coating you are getting and give you information about your coating.

Do try to buy a brand name lens that has educational or consumer information available about it. This might be web-based or through a printed brochure. If your optician or ECP cannot tell you exactly what lens you are getting and provide you with information about it, then you are being sold a very low-end product.

Do try to buy a lens produced in the last year or two. Progressive lenses are still getting improvements, so many new designs are actually easier to wear than those made just a few years ago.

Do know that in the US your doctor determines your prescription, not your optician or ECP. So please do not get angry with them when a new prescription does not work for you. It would be like yelling at your pharmacist because your antibiotic did not cure your cold.

Do realize that if you are presbyopic (meaning that you need an add power, and wear a multi-focal or progressive) and that if you have a change in prescription, that one area of your vision will be better and one will be worse!

PLEASE re-read that — realize that if you are presbyopic (meaning that you need an add power, and wear a multi-focal or progressive) and that if you have a change in prescription that one area of your vision will be better and one will be worse! Stop torturing your doctor, optician or ECP! It is a simple fact that you cannot have perfect vision in all ranges. You are o-l-d. Get over it. If the doctor’s prescription provides you with crisp distance vision, chances are that you will lose some of the clarity that you had with near vision in your old pair.

Do buy a BIG frame if you want a progressive to work well. If you want a progressive to work well, it needs room to do it. Yes, the ECP will probably tell you it will work just fine, and the lens company will probably tell you it will work, but guess what: it won’t.

Do NOT buy the latest new thing, unless it comes with a 100% money back guarantee.

What you need to know about taking your glasses back to the shop:

Optical shops, and that means all optical shops, big and small, hate to take back or swap lenses (known as remakes in the industry). When a shop takes back lenses, they lose money. Store owners, big and small, hate to lose money. It is that simple, and it is a universal problem. Sure, most opticians or ECPs will smile and accept a remake, but they are thinking either, “This is costing me money,” or “I am going to get in trouble.” Many opticians and ECPs work on a commission basis, and remakes affect their income. A frame that has been returned can be reused or returned to the manufacturer for a credit. Lenses, since they are ground to a single individual prescription, cannot be reused, so they just become trash. I am not defending the industry or the practice, but you must understand the reluctance of your doctor, optician or ECP to remake lenses without being 100% sure that they know what the reason is.

Internet Shopping

Internet or on-line shopping for glasses is a relatively new phenomenon. The industry is known for being slow to embrace new ideas. However, the industry is about to have a serious shift in business practices. You cannot overlook a complete pair of glasses for $18.00 when similar or even identical products are selling for a hundred dollars more at the local shop.

As things stand in August 2010 as a consumer, would I buy a pair of glasses on-line? Only if it was my only choice. Working with an ECP is worth it. The optical industry has no federal oversight, no recognized standards, and no enforcement agency to regulate accuracy. Glasses require a prescription for a reason. You probably will not die if you get the wrong one, but you may not see as well as you should. The best way to know that you are getting your prescription filled properly is to have it done by a licensed optician. Licensed opticians have demonstrated competence, and have passed a rigorous examination.