Monday, January 7, 2013

Contact Lenses and Glasses: My 3 Month Mission

This may come across as a rant post, and what I have to say to that is... yes I am ranting a little. I have been spending the last 3 months of my life looking for the perfect glasses for myself and to get new contact and eyeglass prescriptions. In this long and 'so ridiculous its kind of funny' process I have quite honesty, learned more information about how to choose the right pair of glasses than I wanted to know. Despite the fact I am still without any glasses of my own.

eye chart
In trying to do something as simple as going to an eye appointment proved excessively difficult. I'm not insured for vision to start off with (even if I was on my parents insurance I wouldn't get any good deals anyway, which is another rant for another time!) so I'm paying for everything out of pocket. I tried going to Wal-Mart because everyone said it was low cost, however, me being the penny pincher college student that I am, I tried looking for other places. So I searched and searched and came upon this local place that does it for like $20 but to my high disappointment I found out last minute they only do an eye examination but do not give you a prescription, which was my whole point of going anyway. I went back to the drawing board after that, and through a coarse of events, including price comparing at Lens Crafters and Pearle Vision and trying to get a student discount, I finally decided to cave in and go to Wal-Mart, however the customer service is crappy and there doctor was never around, even when I tried to go reschedule at different nearby cities. After all that hassle I decided to say screw it and go to whoever will take me first and at the cheapest price.
The choice I've come to is America's Best which apparently charges $69 total for both contacts and glasses, we'll see how true that is when i get there.I'm a big opponent against false advertisement so if the the price is not what I was told or advertised they will definitely hear from an angry customer.

eyeglasses
So I've managed to get that done but the big thing is getting my glasses to wear. I tried buying my glasses online and after weeks of trying on glasses through Glasses.com (check it out its free to try them on), and finally going to buy a pair they tell me they don't do lenses for my prescription because they're so thick  -10.25 and -9.00. They only go up to -10.00., I tried going through other online places like Framesdirect, however every place I went had something wrong about it. Things like websites having bad return policies in case the lenses were not right, bad selection of frames, they don't make the lenses thin enough for me and bad overall customer reviews were the kind of obstacles I came across. I then decided to get some glasses at a brick and mortar store but once again I run into similar problems. I also have no idea whether I should get 1.67 or 1.74 high index glasses (the higher the number the thinner the lens) because some people have told me to get one and some told me the other and its a big price difference between the two so I don't want to pay for 1.74 high index glasses unless it proves to be a big difference between the two.

As of now I've got my eye appointment scheduled, I even got an idea of the glasses I want, yet I haven't even bought any because for me personally, I have yet to find a place that will give me real advice on what I should do about choosing eye glasses. That is pretty much how far I've gotten in the three months it has taken me to find a stinkin' pair of glasses. Maybe I'm making things overly difficult on myself but I thought it would be way easier to find some glasses than it is now. Comment below if you have any ideas or suggestions or even rants of our your own about this.

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