I have a weird script and wear progressives. I got my first pair of glasses from Zenni this week. They are great. I got a $57 pair just to test it all out. I can buy another five of these for what I pasig for my last set. For the first time I’ll be able to get prescription sunglasses. I don’t know what it’s like to choose to see clearly or be shielded from the sun.
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Alright, looks like online is good even for complicated prescriptions, but as I mentioned, my insurance completely covers my glasses.
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I’ve heard good things about Zenni.
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I’d not used them for a few years, but it’s good to know their reputation is as solid as ever.
And the sports sunnies I bought then are still going strong. 
Sounds like a great idea for contact lenses, too!
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Yeah, the best mine will do is cover glasses with flexible spending.
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Some of the newer online options accept insurance. So while you’re not gonna be saving money by doing it. It may be an option if you see some frames you like. The local optometrists near me (even Costco and Walmart) have really limited selection on frames. So even if I wasn’t operating sans vision coverage I’d probably still end up shopping on line.
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And Costco doesn’t do “driil mount” frameless glasses. (Though my first and only pair of these from a place that wasn’t’ Costco starred at the drill hole. Trivex is the best material for preventing this, but A) I didn’t know then B) the place I wend doesn’t offer Trivex and C) Trivex is expensive because of the ingredients and it is cast and cured rather than quickly thermoset).
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Melting the sand into molten glass using the heat of their taint.
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Hmm…I think there is a book and a movie in there somewhere. “Returning from a war that changed everything, these soldiers have one thing holding them together - their love of making artisanal glasses from scratch with their bare hands. A story of sandy discovery, of the furnace of desire, and a grinding love. Read By the Heat of Their Taint. A story of the love of real men. In book stores everywhere.”
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I’m Australian, so I’d have to find one that would take Australian insurance.
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Surely it can’t be any worse than 50 Shades of Grey.
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Well, that depends on what they used as the annealing oven.
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And filled with macho yet literary glass-blowing inuendo. You’ll never buy store bought glasses again.
Next up, Mark’s Optibot, a $500 home lens grinding bot for people who want to hack their own glasses. And Hornbot, an additive 3D printer which prints horn-rimmed glasses frames using a proprietary blend of horn with a plastic binder.
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Another Zenni believer here, progressives and polarized sunglasses. My only complaint is the coating could be more robust, it starts to peel from the edges and a scratch will have coating peel propagate from it. But the far more expensive glasses I used to get at BJ’s seemed to only be coated on the front! Anyway, when glasses cost $60 I don’t mind replacing them every year, I scratch them up pretty good in the workshop, getting abrasive dust off glasses isn’t easy when you don’t want to make a production out of it.
PS Zenni includes with orders a PD ruler that you put on the bridge of your nose.
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I have pairs of glasses everywhere thanks to Zenni. An emergency pair each at home, in my car, and at work, plus the pair I’m actually wearing most days, and my sunglasses for driving. And all the places I’ve lost pairs. 
If I had to pay regular prices for glasses, I’d be in serious serious trouble any time I lost a pair.
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So, the mechanical act of fitting the lenses to the frames… what happens when the lenses are cut slightly too big? Got a new prescription a year ago, new frames for the first time in 14 years, and they were great… until the screw for one side started backing out every day. This was under in-sewer-ance. The sewer is gone now. I assumed this shit is because the Luxotica cartel has no need for lasting quality, just felt quality in the showroom, like Ferrari.
One side responds to the clear-nail-varnish Lock-Tite trick for a few months, but the other side lasts less than a week before it begins backing out. Do I need new lenses cut or can my current lenses be recut? Can I get longer screws with locknuts?
I’ve tried asking for my pupillary distance twice. The first time, the optician laughed and said “sure, if you buy a pair of glasses here, I’ll give you your PD. Otherwise, no.” I changed opticians. My new optician flat-out refused to give it to me, saying “No. If I do that you’ll buy crappy glasses online that’ll mess with your eyes.” On to optician #3.
All that said, I’ve been using Zenni for years and have had zero complaints from measuring it at home with a ruler.
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That’s sort of the best thing about cheap online glasses. Even when I had insurance they only covered an exam and one pair of specs every two years. So if I wanted to see faces while wearing sun glasses I would have had to shell out at least a few hundred bucks. So I just never pulled the trigger. Even with the upcharge for tinting I can now get as many pairs of prescription sun glasses as my non-spec wearing friends do. For nearly as cheap. That’s pretty rad.
Most of the sites are actually country specific. Presumably for shipping and tax reasons. Though IIRC the bigger discount sites often ship internationally or maintain websites and presence in multiple countries. But those ones don’t seem to take insurance. IIRC most of them are doing direct sales from a handful of Chinese eye glass factories that manufacture most of the worlds frames. Sort of a classic generics situation.
So I think you’d be looking at finding whatever the Australian equivalent of a Warby Parker would be. Basically designing their own more limited product line, having it manufactured, and selling direct via the web. Those sort of companies form the higher quality step up option in cheap online glasses. There’s been a proliferation of companies following that model, so there are probably at least a few down your way. Its a few of those I’ve seen advertising that they take insurance, and those seem to have started as traditional optician’s practices and expanded into online stores with their own product lines.
Still a good option for cheap spares and sunglasses though. If you’re insurance won’t provide additional pairs.
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Whenever I go into a brick-and-mortar store they never seem to have what I’m looking for in stock and keep asking demeaning questions like “why are you shopping for new glasses at a masonry supply company?”
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