They are expensive!!
Sure you can buy a cheap pair, but the ASDA glasses I paid £99 for have the platinum package and are varifocal which adds £145 to the basic prices they quote. You can have two pairs for £157 and they are so called designer frames.
The "old" high street opticians exploited their near-monopoly. I find SpecSavers much better, especially with the old farts discount. One thing I like about SS is that they do retinal pictures each time, and compare them with past records. I've never been quite brave enough to try on-line. As Nightjar says, a lot of people don't really understand glasses.
Cheers Dave, always a pleasure to deal with you, even though your wife is from the dark side! Only joking, i've only dealt with two VAT inspectors, including your missus, and they were both lovely. But that's probably because i'm really honest!
And my websites are (rather embarrassingly) almost always under construction. I'll get there one day!
It's true, almost all of the designer stuff comes from only two companies, De Rigo or Luxottica, the designers themselves have little or nothing to do with the process rather than selling the right to use their name.
What is this thing with two pairs? I can only wear one pair and I don't use/need sun glasses(*). I can count on the fingers of half a hand the number of occasions I hve lost or broken a pair of glasses in the 40+ years I've been wearing them. Spare, just in case of the rare event of breakage/loss? That's what an old pair are for...
(*) I do just occasionally when driving and the sun is low and/or the road is wet. I have a clipon polarised plastic "lenes" for that occasion clipped to the sunvisor so easy to find and put on.
looking
Aye, and there is a good number of people who deny that they need glasses at all for quite long periods of time. Particularly as they got older and their arms shrink so they can't hold things far enough away to see them properly... Or the younger set where mypoia slowly creeps up on them and they find they can't read road signs until they are 20' away.
I can't get on with varifocals/bifocals, so, in theory, I need three pairs; distance, computer screen and reading. In practice, I just have distance glasses and, as the prescription is so strong, I can adjust to those to the other focuses by sliding them down my nose a little.
Colin Bignell
When I'm at work, if I wore glasses, the law would require that I carry a spare pair at all times. I drive for a living.
The same rule applies to car drivers.
I always carry my previous pair. The prescription doesn't change enough to make them unusable.
Colin Bignell
I mainly use reading glasses....walking around doesn't require them. I just have pairs in rooms in the house where I need them. And a pair in the car and one at work.
The portable version is the monocle, which is easy to carry anywhere.
This all means I never have to carry glasses around much.
I carry reading glasses at work, and at home I have the correct magnificati on at each place where I sit:- A 1.5 for reading my 32 inch computer monito r, 2.5 for fine print in a book, and 4.0 for taking out splinters. They all cost about $2 each, which is about a pound. I've been to two opticians and was not impressed by the sloppy way they mea sure anything. The first one changed their name and threw away my old recor ds. I have mild astigmatism but have not yet bought the correct lenses for that . I reckon opticians are mostly gigantic scammers.
What happened to the guy who invented variable glasses? They were liquid fi lled and you could adjust for magnification and astigmatism. They looked ra ther clunky!
Absolutely essential. Without mine, I couldn't read the speedo, let alone see the end of the bonnet!
Chris
No, she buys hers for about 99p from a local, uhhh, 99p shop, whereas I buy mine online, I was merely saying that _looking_ online began when SpecSave rs ripped us off. Oh, and giving a link to calculate the PD
Yes. The bathroom/library pair which are current, the office pair now 4 years old.
However, I also have a *distance* pair which I use for watching TV. I consider my distant vision to be very good but find the correction helpful for the light levels put out by LCD tv.
Because Specsavers offer a 2 for 1 deal, I also have a workshop pair where the optimum distance is arms length.
Varifocals certainly have their limitations, which is why I end up wearing my computer pair for ceiling work, and my distant ones for night driving.
Chris
As I have aged, as expected, my focal point has moved further away. I can now see clearly to about two inches off the end of my nose without glasses.
Colin Bignell
Thanks, but the lack of webcam... Yes, I want to try on line - when I have the distance. If I get a new pair made locally, one of the old pairs could be sent as a sample.
That must cost eventually.
I'll see what I can find about doing it manually then, if I need help, my neighbour's a v. highly qualified nurse who'll understand the procedure without too much explanation. Actually, her son's an architect but if he did it I'd end up with a 20' high triple-glazed sliding lens!
He was bought out by Google - now your 32" monitor is built in as well.
No, she buys hers for about 99p from a local, uhhh, 99p shop, whereas I buy mine online, I was merely saying that _looking_ online began when SpecSavers ripped us off. Oh, and giving a link to calculate the PD
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I was just responding to the generic response that is bandied about of "go online and you can buy them for 2 quid"
You can only go online and buy them for 2 quid if they are reading glasses, which oftentimes the parrot doesn't understand.
If you need distance lenses then you can't get anywhere close to that price online. They may be cheaper but they are still an order of magnitude more expensive than 2 quid.
tim
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