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Grumping at the optician's
Dec. 11th, 2013 07:45 pmLast week I went to the opticians - I'd noticed I was stuggling to focus at the MoL and NPG when we've been to exhibits recently, bouncing back and forth between looking through my glasses and peering under them.
I tried a different branch of the opticians this time, b/c the local one was so crap - poor service, clumsy efforts at upselling me at every opportunity.
The verdict: I have a small change in my Rx, and perhaps I'd like to try varifocals.
I waffled, went back to reprice them...and balked. Nearly £320 for two pairs of glasses, or £250 for a single pair, with varifocal lenses and a moderately priced frame.
The 2-for-1 upsell pricing irritates me; for 'only' another £70 you can get a second pair! which suggests that the first pair is not worth £250, but closer to £70...or possibly nowhere near either price, who knows? There's no easy way to see the markup on lenses and frames.
There are certainly specialist materials and skills involved in grinding lenses, but I suspect the process is now all done mechanically - if, as the pricing suggests, it's just as easy to get 2 pairs done at once as one pair, then they're not being ground by hand.
The frames are certainly not created by hand, except perhaps in assembly and fitting.
I cannot see what separates the expensive frame from the cheap ones, other than ugliness, and designer names. Only in a few cases there are extra features like hinges to prevent you from snapping the arms, or special materials like titanium. You can get expensive plastic frames as easily as cheap ones, and just as ugly.
So - buggerem. I walked out. I don't need the Rx change; my close vision is fine, though I had hoped that there would be an option to improve it; my current glasses aren't broken.
Buggerem.
Next step: better lighting for winter crafting and scribing.
I tried a different branch of the opticians this time, b/c the local one was so crap - poor service, clumsy efforts at upselling me at every opportunity.
The verdict: I have a small change in my Rx, and perhaps I'd like to try varifocals.
I waffled, went back to reprice them...and balked. Nearly £320 for two pairs of glasses, or £250 for a single pair, with varifocal lenses and a moderately priced frame.
The 2-for-1 upsell pricing irritates me; for 'only' another £70 you can get a second pair! which suggests that the first pair is not worth £250, but closer to £70...or possibly nowhere near either price, who knows? There's no easy way to see the markup on lenses and frames.
There are certainly specialist materials and skills involved in grinding lenses, but I suspect the process is now all done mechanically - if, as the pricing suggests, it's just as easy to get 2 pairs done at once as one pair, then they're not being ground by hand.
The frames are certainly not created by hand, except perhaps in assembly and fitting.
I cannot see what separates the expensive frame from the cheap ones, other than ugliness, and designer names. Only in a few cases there are extra features like hinges to prevent you from snapping the arms, or special materials like titanium. You can get expensive plastic frames as easily as cheap ones, and just as ugly.
So - buggerem. I walked out. I don't need the Rx change; my close vision is fine, though I had hoped that there would be an option to improve it; my current glasses aren't broken.
Buggerem.
Next step: better lighting for winter crafting and scribing.
