Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Affordable Glasses isn't a thing of the past!


I have decent Optical Insurance. It has a low deductible and pays for quite a bit. However, I recently did a little research that was quite shocking to me! I wanted to find out what it would cost me to get one pair of single vision glasses with an eye exam. The following might scare you, I know it did me!

The Eye Exam was quoted at $115 a little high because I was a new patient. That I could kind of understand. But when I asked about frames they had pretty much just two tiers. The lower tier started at $85 and the upper tier started at $250. That is just for the frames! Single vision lenses with no coating of any kind were an additional $150! Even with my decent optical insurance I was going to be out $200+ (that is the deductible plus the part that insurance wouldn't cover)

After that news hit me I started doing some research. Wal Mart has optical centers in most of them now. The price for an single vision eye exam? Around $60 and that isn't so bad. The frames and lenses were still quite high so I decided to look online. There are many low cost places on line! You can actually get overwhelmed if you are not careful. I decided to look at one place that a couple of my friends had mentioned. Zenni Optical.

They have glasses starting at $12.95 Yep, that is COMPLETE glasses, frames and lenses and a case and a cleaning cloth! And it is only $3.95 shipping (there are higher options but that is the base) There is a slight drawback, some of the glasses are not available depending on your pupil distance. Please note that you have to have the pupil distance measurement to order glasses and most Optometrist do not normally put that on your prescription so be sure to ask.

So, I decided to order a pair. I didn't like the cheap ones so I settled on a pair of $30 glasses. My prescription is pretty strong so there was a small fee for the stronger lenses. I opted to not get any coatings on the lenses as well to save on price. Total price on my order was $43. I have been wearing the glasses for about a year and I have had no problems of any kind.

So to summarize my eye exam was $56.00 and my glasses delivered was $43 for a grand total of $99! My deductible for my optical insurance is $100. So, I got my eye exam and my glasses for less than the deductible on my insurance. How is that for saving some money!

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