Just shelled out nearly £600 on glasses for Mrs M & myself and although the frames are a smaller part of the cost, for a small amout of metal and plastic they must be more expensive than gold ounce for ounce?

.?????

Prescription charges are free, no? Then http://www.glassesdirect.co.uk

Do you require crazy strength varifocals?

You could have spent £20 each- so the answer to the question ‘why are they so expensive?’ is the same as the answer to the question ‘why did you spend £300?’

🙂

What frames did you get? Did they have writing on the outside to reassure others of your brand loyalties?

You’ve paid for full retail and the cost of running a shop on the high street. You’ve probably also paid for a brand name and the associated advertising. It’s good to get personal service by highly trained people, but that costs money. Some people need it too, if their prescription is odd, but lots of us can do with online for less.

@Moe long or short sighted ? I have a few back up pairs of reading glasses I got from Superdrug for £2.50 a pair. Glasses or short sightedness (ie you can’t see well for things at a distance) are more expensive as lenses are more complex.

I’ve been complemented on my £1 poundland readers and had Gucci go largely ignored – The most savy consumer should shop for frames and lenses independently . The whole industry defo places an emphasis on style over substance – most frames fail at the hinges – pricey frames don’t have better hinges .

They’re not, just high street shop rents are very high. Buy online and they’re about 25% the price.

I paid for an eye test at Boots, they take nice shots of the back of your eye now, cool. I need strong-ish -4 lenses but nothing for reading.
I then went to speckyfoureyes.co.uk for some no logo frameless specs for a good price.
Varifocal is a different story, bonkers prices.

My last lenses cost over £500, but then I have a -11.5 prescription which requires extremely accurate lens centre positioning, the lenses are the highest index bi-aspheric lenses available currently and have some cute mounting tricks to reduce their apparent thickness to others, I like going to a central London opticians and they make sure that I’m not inconvenienced due to my high prescription and other eye issues any more than is necessary.

I went for an eye test recently and discovered I needed reading glasses (wasn’t much of a discovery to be fair I’d been putting it off for ages)

A friend recommended Vision Express for the eye test as they are really thorough. They were, no complaints very thorough and professional staff, would happily recommend.

The only frames they had I liked were £269 Oakley (natch) There was no way I was spending that on reading glasses

So I popped along to Boots and got a very similar style of frame for £89 instead.

Designer glasses are expensive. Other models are available

I pay about £300 every 3-4 years for my specs, the reason for the costs is not the frames but the high index lenses to stop milk bottle look from my -7.5 prescription. Once you’ve paid over £200 for the lenses I don’t see the sense in paying £10 for a pair of cheap functional frames.

ah yes … lense costs … Every 3 years (just about !) but then i
cop for a +4.75 and +1.75 near addition. would be masses cheaper if
i ran 2 pairs but swapping glasses at 50kph to check the garmin is
not to be recommended 😉

Some high street opticians are complete rip off merchants. Big name high street opticians wanted £250 for my last set of lenses. Small independent optician 5 doors along wanted £100. These were for exactly the same lenses, made by the same well known lens maker in the same factory, delivered in the same time and fitted.

One of those things where shopping around really pays off. Get a prescription and don’t necessarily get the glasses from the same place. If you have an easy prescription then online can work, or small local independent or mobile optometrist.

After years of listening to the main stream shops tell me they couldn’t re-glaze my current glasses, & I need to buy news one… I’ve discovered a local independent optician, who have happily reglazed all my glasses, and so have had all of them done! Sunglasses an all.

It does annoy me that it is seemingly impossible to get spares for frames.

I have a pair of decent Police frames that would be perfectly usable except one hinge is completely knackered (thanks to a curious but clumsy toddler).

You’d think it would be easy to buy spare parts for such a major brand, but no. You can’t even buy generic replacement parts (that I can find).

Asda £70.00 why pay more??

£600 ???? Should have gone to specsavers. I paid £125 for 2 designer pairs including frames. By one get one free.

As did I.

I bought an Oakley frame about 6 years ago I have had it reglazed 3 times the build quality is better and certainly the rubber nose pads easy to replace . I did not know they were Oakley’s when I decided I liked them the assistant just got a few she thought would suit my face and got me to try them on really quickly rejecting those I didn’t like on snap decisions . I did wince at the price but it is the frames I have liked the most in 40 years.

Thread title edit, “look at me everyone, I can afford to spend £600 on 2 pairs of specs even though £200 would have done”

It does annoy me that it is seemingly impossible to get spares for frames.

I have a pair of decent Police frames that would be perfectly usable except one hinge is completely knackered (thanks to a curious but clumsy toddler).

You’d think it would be easy to buy spare parts for such a major brand, but no. You can’t even buy generic replacement parts (that I can find).
It would be very difficult to replace a hinge on any frame, because it’s either part of the actual structure of the frame in metal frames, or is moulded into the plastic on plastic frames, and if the hinge itself gets twisted or broken, then it cannot be taken off and replaced.
I’ve got loads of pairs of sunglasses, and prescription glasses using either new frames, or sunglasses bought cheap and re-glazed, and I can’t think of a single pair that could be rescued if the hinge got mangled, that includes Oakley, RayBan, and Arnet. If it was just the arm/temple that got trashed, that could be replaced, provided a spare could be found, however, I’ve got some that are too old to even find a reference on the Internet, like my Arnet Hornets, which I bought in Vail in ’93, the shop was about to send them back because nobody wanted to buy them; I doubt there are many in existence, same with my Arnet Dusters, which I got from Florida via CraigsList.
My current glasses are a pair of RayBan Lennons, with multipoint varifocal lenses, DriveWear photoreactive tint and
Multilayer A/R coating; the frames cost me $50 from fleabay, and the lenses £260 from a small independent optician, who sadly are no longer in business. Shame, because they were a five minute walk from where I work.
Looking at the work that went into shaping the lenses, I can see (ha!) why they’re expensive.

Just buy them online.

Mrs FD does it all the time. Boots / High street will be £400 etc online will be £150

£600 on two pairs? Sounds like a bargain.

(Dodgy prescription – can’t read with my left eye after an injury – handmade Andy Wolf frames and a MILF optician. Why wouldn’t I spend several £hundred every 3 years for items I wear for 18 hours a day?)

I just love the way folks weigh in with “could have got them for £xxx”. Without knowing the requirements of the wearer you have no idea how much lenses are going to cost. If you can get away with 2 quid supermarket reading glasses think yourselves very lucky.

Like aP, I have a fairly (not ridiculously) extreme prescription. I don’t want lenses which look or feel like they are made from the bottom of Newcastle Brown bottles. So I have to pay a lot. £600 a pop for my last few pairs. No fancy designer frames either. Don’t tell me I could do better on line. I couldn’t.

I knew it was a bad idea to post just before leaving for work!

I have only been wearing glasses for a few years but due to my job use varifocal, reactolites with antiglare coating. All I was actually querying was the manufacturing costs compared to retail cost, the mark up has to be huge, or am I missing something?

Afford £600? … I have insurance, I’ll get a fair bit back but hey if that’s the way you like to judge people….

This is bl**dy fiddly on a phone!

You need new glasses

I paid about £350 for mine. My visits to the optometrist also include a really good check that there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, I have to pay for that somehow. A pair of lenses lasts me 5 years, that’s 20p a day for a (varifocal) lens that properly set up for me.

I also have an old pair of rimless varifocals that I use for cycling etc, and carry with me on kayak camping trip (I wear contacts on the water). About 8 years after I bought them, the screws holding the bridge pulled out of one lens. The optometrist I bought them from had retired and I took them to my new place – they sent them off to the makers for repair… no charge from either opticians or makers. So I think I get value for money.

a mate did some consultancy work for a big high street optician chain and said the markup on glasses was the biggest he’d come across.

You’d think competition would drive down prices but perhaps that hasn’t happened yet?

a mate did some consultancy work for a big high street optician chain and said the markup on glasses was the biggest he’d come across.

I wonder what other markets he has investigated.

i was trying to work out how my glasses were so cheap…

first: the eye test, £20.

how? i was there for at least an hour. I get paid a lot less than an optician, and my kit is less expensive, i charge £95/hour.

then, the glasses: £130 for the first pair, £50 for the 2nd (driving sunnies).

bargain.

(boots)

They must have seen you coming.

£600!

I rarely pay more than £50 at Specsavers. I don’t go with the top designer stuff, but not the cheapest budget either.

That said I get discounts by being on a contacts subscription (about £5 a month for monthlies, and I buy the solution separate). The budget stuff is then free, the £100 stuff is half price etc.

Guess I’m also not fussy about the specs as mainly wear the contacts when out and about, and especially on bike rides.

Though weird prescriptions do whack up the price understandably.

The mark-up on anything sold in the high-street has to be high to pay for the rent of premium space. Same thing with Coffee shops etc.

£600!
I rarely pay more than £50 at Specsavers.
<SNIP>
Though weird prescriptions do whack up the price understandably.

Really? 🙄

One of my colleagues has been banging on for the last week or so how he’s bought some new reading glasses from Poundland, and how I’m elitist, arrogant, “up-my-arse” and patronising because I have expensive **** glasses.
Today, however, he’s decided that actually they don’t work and make his eyes hurt.

slowoldman – Member
Really?

Point was that the OP is staggered about the cost of glasses but I’m stating that glasses are generally very cheap.

This is why it’s expensive… “varifocal, reactolites with antiglare coating”

Even then they don’t have to be. Go for the top of the range varifocal and knocking on £200 lens, but cheap varifocal is a fraction of that. Antiglare coating is usually peanuts but you can pay for fancy. Reactolite is a premium though.

Though true expense comes from really awful vision but wanting to have ultra thin lenses, combined with varifocals. Then you’re getting into £300+ territory even for non trendy glasses.

Moe – Member
I have only been wearing glasses for a few years but due to my job use varifocal, reactolites with antiglare coating.

If it’s solely for your job you can try to get it covered through work or money towards it. That’s on top of them paying for the eye test.

Though true expense comes from really awful vision but wanting to have ultra thin lighter weight lenses

I’m not that fussed about the thin-ness, except that it reduces the number of people being painful arseholes about the likely quality of my eyesight. Even someone I’ve worked with for nearly twenty years has recently started to be annoying about this.
Cost of eye tests? I haven’t paid for eye tests for over 10 years.