YIKES!! A bit of a surprise, today. . .

[OregonLuvr]

I always get my prescription from whomever does my exam. From Zenni I usually order a couple of pairs of bifocals and then strictly a couple of distance ones for driving and tv. Then I order a couple of pair of sunglasses. So far I have liked every pair. I just order the medium frame and it fits me well. All for the cost of one pair at the eyeglass places in town.

[BirdbyBird]

I am late to the party but I have also used Zenni and ordered on line. The only time I had an issue was several years ago when I tried to order transition lenses that would darken like sunglasses when worn outside. The lenses seemed really distorted and appeared wavy. Everything else was great and best of all I was able to find frames that I liked. I had gotten tired of the cost and not finding the shapes and choices I liked. And as I say about my inexpensive readers.....I don’t want to cry if I loose my glasses or scratch the lenses over time.

[Cudedog]

Here is an update on my glasses adventure!!

It was a bit of a steep learning curve trying to figure out the Zenni website (thanks to all that recommended Zenni), finally got 'er done after an hour or so, only to discover that they can't make my prescription due to my prism value.

So, after spending several MORE hours online (OMG - the internet is supposed to make things "faster and easier"? I think things take the same amount of time to get done - and even more! - but instead of running place to place, getting in and out of the car, walking, etc. - everything is done with one's butt nailed to the couch. Not a good thing. . . ),

Learning the ins and outs of each succeeding internet eyeglasses website (you need to fill out a whole lot of crap before you come to the part where they tell you they can't handle your prescription!) I finally landed on GlassesUSA.

Checked out the reviews, looked up the complaints. . . looked do-able.

One of the reasons my glasses are so expensive is because they are Progressives (pretty much these are blended tri-focals). Since I never use the reading part of my Progressives anyway (the reading part was always blurred, so I am used to picking up my reading glasses for. . . reading ) I decided to order distance lenses only.

The cost for the distance lenses and frames is $70.00 (instead of $500.00). If they come, and they are good quality, I might go back and order Progressives from them as well. We shall see.

To keep my credit card number out of their hands I paid using PayPal - which I usually do when I am unfamiliar with a website I wish to purchase something from. Supposedly, PayPal can get your money back if an item is unsatisfactory (although friends have tried to get money back without success). Whether or no, when using PayPal the merchant doesn't get my credit card number.

I'll keep everyone posted on how this comes out.

A final note: Anyone these days without a cell phone and a computer is kinda hosed. I had to upload the prescription that my optometrist sent to me as a .pdf - GlassesUSA doesn't accept .pdf, so put the .pdf into my PhotoShop program and converted it to .jpg, then was able to upload it.

The many multiple HOOPS one must jump through these days to get anything at all accomplished!

Wish me luck.

Anne

[BirdbyBird]

And we are retired........ thank you for sharing your thoughts, I just always figured it was me that made the process of researching and reading the fine print so time consuming.....I am then thankful that I am retired and have the time to sit with my butt in the chair long enough to figure things out.

[Bethers]

Anne, most of my Zenni glasses have been progressives. My last were just distance as I don't need the progressives as often. I'm glad you found a site that could make the prescription you need.

[Cudedog]

UPDATE

Well, well, well.

Another day, another 'adventure'.

Tina:

And we are retired........ thank you for sharing your thoughts, I just always figured it was me that made the process of researching and reading the fine print so time consuming.....I am then thankful that I am retired and have the time to sit with my butt in the chair long enough to figure things out.

Thank you for this, Tina. I often feel the same way - everything just take so dang long. Your words put a smile back on my face, when I wasn't much feeling like smiling.

I'll try to keep this short. Read on, it does have a happy ending, of sorts.

About 4 hours after placing the order, I received an email stating that I owed an additional $30.00 (which is almost 50% more than the original $70 I had been willing to pay) before they could begin to process my order. "If I had any questions" there was a telephone number to call. Called it, I was told that the additional $30 was for the prisms for my lenses.

Yeah, right. I was very careful in placing the order, checked the box for "prisms" saw it added to my total, explaining this to the woman. $70. What I did not do, and should have done, was to save screen shots of each step of the online transaction for my records. I almost always do this when dealing with a new online vendor, but my butt was so numb by this time I didn't do it. So I didn't have a record showing that my purchase included the prisms.

The woman on the phone wasn't listening, insisted that I had ordered the "upgraded lenses" without the prisms, and not the "basic lenses" including the prisms. I had not. I had - purposefully - ordered the cheapest pair that I could, for this first time around.

I objected, insisting that I had ordered - and paid for - the "basic lenses" with the prisms. She then said (get this!) that I needed to pay the additional fee, first, and after I had paid she could then put me down for the basic lenses, and then give me back a 'partial refund'.

In other words, pay more to get less.

What she did not say is that she could fix the order as we were speaking, downgrading me to the basic lenses as we were talking about it. Well. . . I'm not stupid (much) and I wasn't born yesterday, so I can see the classic bait-and-switch coming at me from a mile away. It has been tried on me often enough.

I said cancel the order.

She said she couldn't cancel the order but that I would need to go back on their website and fill out some paperwork or other to get the order cancelled, and my refund processed. I managed not to say any bad words - at all. Not a single one, and I even remained polite (Martha, I think you would be proud of me - I learned this from you! ).

The first thing that I did is that I went back to my PayPal account to see if I could cancel my $70.00 payment. Nope. I found that I can file a complaint against GlassesUSA.com, but need to wait a bit first. The PayPal website suggested that I contact the seller first (It seems that actually talking to someone on the telephone is a thing of the past).

My next step was to go back to the GlassesUSA.com website, spend some time hunting for the alleged form . Finally found the form, filled it out, submitted it and was informed that I would be refunded in 7 to 10 days.

Expecting to maybe be out a fast $70.00 (again, at least in using PayPal the vendor doesn't get ahold of one's credit card number), I have just checked my email this morning (the transaction was yesterday) and, amazingly, I see that I have already been notified by PayPal that I have received a refund.

I really had not expected this. My bad.

So, now I am a bit flummoxed. I still need glasses. I still don't want to fork out a fast $500.00 + for glasses from my optometrist.

Truthfully, against my better judgement, I am now a bit impressed that GlassesUSA.com processed my refund so quickly, when their website had said "seven to ten days". (I had been prepared to bombard the internet with bad reviews of this company).

So. What to do, everyone? Look elsewhere (as all of you know, searching/verifying products on the internet can take a mind-numbingly long amount of time)?

Or try again at Glasses.com? (This time I would definitely save screen shots).

Please let me know what all of you think. I sincerely value your opinions.

Thank you.

Anne

[OregonLuvr]

I would try again, because even with the $70 + $30 = $100 is still way cheaper than the $500.

[Bethers]

I agree with Karen. And, yes, take screen shots!

[BarbaraRose]

Why wouldn't Zenni do your glasses?

I used to go thru 39dollarglasses.com. Maybe check with them. I didn't have any issues using them but I didn't have a complicated prescription.

After that experience, I would be very leary about going with them again.

[Cudedog]

Thanks to EVERYONE who recommended Zenni, and the online purchase of new glasses!

Time for an update on my "glasses adventure".

After the first problem/misunderstanding at GlassesUSA.com, I decided to chance ordering from them again, since they refunded for my first ordered pair within hours (see above).

As Karen said, I still needed glasses, and the $500.00 quoted by my local optometrist (and this included 20% off!) wasn't going to change, and seemed pretty over-the-top.

In doing the re-order, I saw where I might have made an error on my original order (I guess I am getting old - semi-complex website ordering forms are getting more and more difficult to navigate) and had (maybe) checked the box for "upgraded" lenses, when all I really wanted (at least for this first order) was the "basic" lenses.

The new glasses, with what looked-like-in-the-picture nice frames totaled out to $73.00 (vs. $500). I placed the order, sent in my prescription, and the wait began.

Oh - Barbie, you asked why I didn't go with Zenni - the reason is that I require "prisms" for my lenses. Although Zenni does offer prisms, they don't offer prisms at the strength that I need (I even emailed them directly to ask). But GlassesUSA.com did offer prisms of the strength needed. The needed prisms added about $30.00 to the cost of my glasses - without the prisms they would have been about $40.00.

My old glasses are "progressives" (tri-focals). I can't seem to use regular tri-focals (have tried, they give me vertigo), even with progressives I have still always used separate reading glasses to do close-up work - from computer time, to reading, to crafting. The ordering of progressives from GlassesUSA.com would have put the price at about $150, so I decided (at least for the first time ever) just to go with distance vision lenses (since I have always used reading glasses anyway).

After ordering, the wait began. And continued. And continued some more. . . Just to be up-front here, I need to say that getting glasses, even from the optometrist, has always been a bit of a crap shoot for me. Things never seem to be "just right". I have, I think at least twice in the past, had to return new glasses because they just weren't working for me. With this in mind, I had strong doubts on ordering glasses sight-unseen (LOL - no pun intended!) online.

How could this EVER work? But I am cheap . . . I mean thrifty. . . so I thought a gamble with my fast $73.00 might (I hoped!) be worth it.

Plus, I am kind of a "glass half empty" kind of person, so as the wait went on I became less and less confident of a positive result.

The day finally came. . . the glasses were here!!. . . I carefully took them out of the box, put them on, and. . . EWWW!!! Something definitely wrong, here, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. . . DANG IT!! I looked down at my feet. . . they seemed VERY far away (really strange!). . . but in focus (?). . . could even see dirt bits and dog hair on the floor (where did that stuff come from? Never seen anything like that down there before!). . .

And then it hit me. . . looking down, from a standing position, one is generally looking through the bottom of progressive lenses. . . which is where, in progressive lenses, the "reader" part of the lenses are. . . the light bulb flashed on (LOL. . . I guess I am generally a "dim bulb" with such things) and I realized that I had not clearly seen my own feet - or the floor - from a standing position in maybe ten or fifteen years (since I started with progressive lenses). . . because I had always been looking through "readers", which made the view of my feet and the floor very blurry. . .

OMG! What a revelation!! Not only on my eyesight, but on my housecleaning abilities!

SO. To make a long story a (tiny) bit shorter, I resolved to give these new, online glasses, a good and honest "try out" to see if they would work for me.

The upshot of this was that, a few days later, after piddling around the house for a few hours not doing much of anything, I thought to myself that I really needed to put those new glasses on and see IF they really would work for me. . . but I couldn't find them! Dang! Where did I put those darn things???

Ahem. . . after a few minutes of searching around (well, more than a few minutes, actually. . .), I realized that they were already on my face - and had been for the last few hours!!

And, really, this was the best "test" of all - wearing these glasses, and forgetting I even had them on! I'm SOLD!!!

I am put in mind of Karen's post where she said: "From Zenni I usually order a couple of pairs of bifocals and then strictly a couple of distance ones for driving and tv. Then I order a couple of pair of sunglasses. So far I have liked every pair. I just order the medium frame and it fits me well. All for the cost of one pair at the eyeglass places in town."

All of this was, actually, a bit unbelievable to me. Even though Karen said it, it seemed unrealistic. Now I see that she is 100% correct!! I am a person who has never had a "spare" set of glasses, because they were always just so dang expensive ($1000.00 + for two sets of eyeglasses - never gonna happen).

Who-ee! I am now thinking of - maybe - getting a pair of progressives (jury still out - not sure I really need them), maybe a spare pair of these new ones, maybe a pair of prescription sunglasses - LOL, the list goes on - the ability to buy multiple pairs of prescription glasses for far LESS than what it would cost me for ONE single pair from my local optometrist kind of blows my mind!!!

Didn't mention the frames - the frames are really nice, appear to be well-made, in a lens size and shape that I prefer - and a size and shape that wasn't available from my optometrist. Also, the glasses came with a nice hard-shell glasses case, a couple of cleaning cloths, and a spare set of nose pieces (my glasses are a kind of modified wire-frame - I have always preferred wire frames because they are lighter in weight, therefore generally more comfortable to wear).



Over-all, I am one VERY happy camper!!

And I couldn't/wouldn't have done it without the encouragement and support of all of you here!!

So, thanks to everyone who responded to my original post, as I contemplated getting my feet wet in the online glasses world! Your encouragement and sharing your own online glasses-ordering experience has been worth it's weight in gold.

To sum up: I think that, from now on, I will ALWAYS purchase my glasses online!! I'll never look back!

Thanks again!!

Anne

[Bethers]

To sum up: I think that, from now on, I will ALWAYS purchase my glasses online!! I'll never look back!

Exactly what happened to me. I'm glad you are happy with them. And what a shock it must have been to realize you were wearing them and they were doing exactly what they should be doing.

[BirdbyBird]

Yea! I loved getting to buy a frame or two with color, since I had my safe black or tortoise shells..

[OregonLuvr]

So glad you came over to the "Darkside' ha ha ha