My other half is considering varifocal lens glasses to replace her current distance and reading glasses. (She's had varifocals before, so knows what they are about).
She currently uses Vision Express, who are not particularly competitive, in my opinion.
I have been looking at on-line specs sellers and am wondering if any of you have had first hand experience of buying on-line and if you have any recommendations about good suppliers?
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>> I have been looking at on-line specs sellers and am wondering if any of you
>> have had first hand experience of buying on-line and if you have any recommendations about
>> good suppliers?
A year ago I bought 2 pairs of prescription glasses from Glasses Direct for £23 total including postage, and have been very happy with them (although I don't wear glasses very often (yet), so that might not mean much). This is one pair:
www.glassesdirect.co.uk/glasses/gd-solo-539/?prca=PRCA20111778&aspect=360-initial
I think they were half price thanks to a Money Saving Expert promotion that was running at the time.
EDIT: www.car4play.com/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=19090&m=423006
Last edited by: Focusless on Mon 14 Mar 16 at 12:53
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I have used www.spex4less.com several times and have always been happy with the glasses. They also have a no quibble refund policy which I don't think many of the other ones do.
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Ineedspecs.com
Cheap, fast, good quality, vast range of styles, even traditional gold-rim half-moon reading glasses.
It's a proper prescription service, not like trying them out at Boots. You fill in the whole prescription.
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For basic specs, yes on line is fine. For Varifoclals? no way, its not just an eye test, advice and proper dispensing is vital.
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>> For basic specs, yes on line is fine. For Varifoclals? no way, its not just
>> an eye test, advice and proper dispensing is vital.
That would be my take too. Even properly dispensed varifocals an end up with focus centres in wrong place. Don't think there's a snowball's chance of getting them right without an optical technician in the mix.
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>> For basic specs, yes on line is fine. For Varifoclals? no way, ....test, advice and proper dispensing is vital.
>>
I would not buy Varifocals online. A agree with the previous comments.
I guess " ordinary" glasses bought online are a slight compromise re comfort/fit or do they advise how to heat the plastic over ears bits and bend the nose pad supports ?
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I dislike varifocals, they don't work properly on me. I have distance/driving glasses, and readers for close-up stuff.
When I bought some glasses online I found that my measurement of pupillary distance (unusually wide in my case) was rejected by the suppliers as outside their norms, and they sent me crap specs.
Much better to go to the proper place and pay through the nose for proper measurement. They won't reject their own measurement as too improbable. Well worth the money. How often does one need new glasses after all?
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>> I dislike varifocals, they don't work properly on me. I have distance/driving glasses, and readers
>> for close-up stuff.
>>
If you at least had bifocals you would be able to drive and see the instruments, could save on speeding tickets.
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>> If you at least had bifocals you would be able to drive and see the instruments, could save on speeding tickets.
I don't need bifocals to do that. I can see the instruments fine through the distance spectacles.
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What terrible eyesight some here seem to have. Mine was exceptionally good when I was young, contingent Best Shot (small-bore) at my last school, and you needed 20/20 for that.
Age, booze - alcohol in paticular has a baleful effect on eyesight - and illegal substances have caused a certain attrition over the years reducing my eyesight to something like normal. Nowhere near as bad as some of you make yours sound.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Mon 14 Mar 16 at 15:55
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>>Age, booze - alcohol in paticular has a baleful effect on eyesight
My neighbours cat, Peter, is almost totally blind, but has never touched snout, booze, or illegal substances.
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>> My neighbours cat, Peter, is almost totally blind, but has never touched snout, booze, or illegal substances.
You don't know what Peter gets up to behind yr neighbour's back Perro.
Cats get toxicara don't they? That eats the eyeballs out of your head so to speak.
Could be that all these vices are actually good for one's eyesight. They are in my case.
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Alcohol is a natural preservative, so you could well be right Sire.
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>>When I bought some glasses online I found that my measurement of pupillary distance (unusually wide in my case)
Lucky the midwife didn't bin you. ;>)
A LADY HAD BEEN GROCERY SHOPPING and was walking to her car when she tripped and broke a paper bag containing a gallon of water, a dozen eggs, and a pound of bacon. Everything splattered all over the pavement. The lady was so upset that she started crying. A drunk walked up, surveyed the situation, and said, “Don’t cry, lady. It wouldn’t have lived anyway. Its eyes are too far apart.â€,?I>
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The best varifocals I've had were from Glasses Direct, but I do not have a difficult prescription. -0.5 on one eye, nothing on the other plus the age-related presbyopia addition and a touch of astigmatism on the eye that needs distance correction.
I have a proper prescription with centres of 34mm and 36mm rather than a single pupillary distance, and I was careful to order specs with adjustable nose pads (I have a narrow bridge). I worked out how to adjust the nose pads myself.
If your prescription is very strong then then there must be more benefit in using a proper optician/dispenser but I have had some carp ones, notably the local branch of Specsavers who started off by cocking up the eye test (missing the astigmatism).
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>> >> Specsavers who started off by cocking up the eye test (missing the astigmatism).
>>
They (Specsavers) have recently done the same with my 8 year old daughter regarding astigmatism. A local independent optician nailed it and her (daughter, not optician, before WDB starts) performance at school has since been transformed for the better.
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>> I have a proper prescription with centres of 34mm and 36mm rather than a single
>> pupillary distance,
Are you telling us that one eye is 2mm further away from your nose than the other eye?
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>>
>> I guess " ordinary" glasses bought online are a slight compromise re comfort/fit or do
>> they advise how to heat the plastic over ears bits and bend the nose pad
>> supports ?
>>
I worked that out for myself. Dip the ends in hot water and bend very gently.
Use fine-nosed pliars on the nose pad supports and don't strain the joints.
I super-glued the pads to stop them twisting or coming loose.
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...or, if you can't d-i-y, take them into your optician and give them a tenner to do it, still works out cheaper!!!
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With all due respect, once you've had your prescription that's the last you see of any experts in my experience. Your glasses are made up and a shop assistant fits them for you once they are ready. The prescription does, I believe, include everything except the pupillary distance (PD) which you can measure yourself.
I've used optical4less on a number of occasions for varifocals as they are less than a third of what specsavers want and their product is considerably better. (I know that because I took them in for some adjustment and Specsavers didn't recognise the lens make and asked me, as they were so impressed with the frame and lens quality). One of their premium lenses, which outperforms the £330 optician lens, came in at £130 last week when I priced it up.
My prescription is a bit more complex than SWMBOs. but before she had to get varifocals she always got them from optical4less, buying two or three pairs at a time for less than the cost of a single pair in the High St.
The main downside is not being able to try on the specs, but most people get something similar to what they previously had and you can usually find something suitable on the internet websites.
You can tell that my experience with the High St chains has generally been been pretty awful :-)
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>> For basic specs, yes on line is fine. For Varifoclals? no way, its not just
>> an eye test, advice and proper dispensing is vital, otherwise one tends to collide with buses.
Is that ok?
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>> >> For basic specs, yes on line is fine. For Varifoclals? no way, its not
>> just
>> >> an eye test, advice and proper dispensing is vital, otherwise one tends to collide
>> with buses.
>>
>> Is that ok?
No, colliding with buses is never ok.
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>> For basic specs, yes on line is fine. For Varifoclals? no way, its not just
>> an eye test, advice and proper dispensing is vital.
>>
Agreed, too risky when Specsavers basic varifocal lenses like mine are around 50 quid. Mind you they try really hard to upsell you to the 120 quid ones.
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They never mentioned anything below £300 last time I got them there (2 years ago). Albeit with free sunspecs.
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>> They never mentioned anything below £300 last time I got them there (2 years ago).
>> Albeit with free sunspecs.
>>
The upsell is pretty intensive. Last year I bought two pairs of varifocals; one clear, one tinted, for 150 quid total. SWMBO walked in and they wanted 230 quid for a single pair of varifocals.
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>> The upsell is pretty intensive. Last year I bought two pairs of varifocals; one clear, one tinted, for 150 quid total. SWMBO walked in and they wanted 230 quid for a single pair of varifocals.
Were you trying to pretend that she wasn't with you?
:-)
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These are dream prices. My last pair of varifocals were £550, and that didn't include any free extra pairs.
Yes, I am very short sighted. Yes, I do want the thinnest possible lenses. No, Specsavers couldn't do lenses as thin as the independent optician. Yes, Boots could do ones ALMOST as thin, but wanted £600...
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My last pair of Varifocals were done by Boots. While I've no reason to believe the got ditance between pupils wrong some elements, in particular close vision, are too low in the lens leaving me with a 'nose in the air' pose using a PC.
Working at a desk all day, doing telephone calls, is fine. Just take the glasses off and put them on again at end of my shift. Doesn't work so well when I get 'volunteered' to do face to face. Glasses on, glasses off, on top of head or left on a desk in an interview room. Currently experimenting with contact lenses which are mostly fine. Only problem is doing outreach where 'remote access' means I get PETRA - CA case management system - as a 4:3 screen shoehorned into the middle of a 16:9 laptop display - bit difficult to read text in boxes that are already small in full format.
Manuals are OK 'cos I can access them directly on the laptop.
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The important thing with spectacles is that the lens centres should coincide with the distance between the pupils. Plastic lenses, these days very good and durable, come in a very large size and are cut down to fit the frames preferred. There's no need for the shape of the frames themselves to reflect your grotesque physiognomy.
A proper optician can sort all that out as routine, find the lens centres exactly. As in all things a bit of intelligence helps.
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That'll be the PD you are talking about. It is really not hard to measure that yourself, although easier with an assistant. You just hold a tape measure across the eyes. look straight ahead and read off the distance between your pupils.
The fact that varifocals are a gradient from your close vision prescription to your distance vision mean there is not really a central point to the lens horizontally as such.
Last edited by: smokie on Tue 15 Mar 16 at 16:39
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>> You just hold a tape measure across the eyes. look straight ahead and read off the distance between your pupils.
Yes, that's what you do. The problem comes when your PD is outside the optician's 'norms'.
If the optician is a bit thick, and they can be, they will simply reject the evidence of their own eyes and give you unsuitable rubbish spectacles. As I said above, a measure of intelligence is a great help.
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>> >> You just hold a tape measure across the eyes. look straight ahead and read
>> off the distance between your pupils.
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>> Yes, that's what you do. The problem comes when your PD is outside the optician's
>> 'norms'.
Or when the PD, as measured from the centre of the supporting hooter, differs slightly for each eye as it commonly does.
The boss came home today with a new pair from Booits in Aylesbury, at vast expense. I didn't interfere but she says they are good.
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That's torn it then Manatee. She'll now be able to see what that Roomster thing you bought her really looks like...
Good luck with that one !
;-)
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Yesterday I thought I had lost my distance specs, couldn't find them anywhere. I had started to look for the dodgy ones with the wrong pd, as better than readers for actual driving. Perhaps no specs at all would be better still, but tiring after a while.
Then the proper ones turned up, in the bathroom, without anyone saying a word about them. What could have happened? No one was saying anyway. Must have abandoned them at some nearby scene of rural debauch. Aren't people sort of, you know, decent and sensible somehow?
These coated distance specs are very good indeed, more or less perfect rain or shine, and very resistant coating that tolerates being wiped. It seems very dumb though to have only one pair. You would expect a rational person to be more rational, somehow. It's depressing.
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Specs on-line. - Focusless
