The Truth about Online “Discounts”
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Low cost eyewear seems to be a major draw to online eyewear. The contributing factors to this mentality are the perceived high cost of eyewear, but are the costs really that high? The average sale in an optical shop is $242.00. The average purchase interval is 2.4 years, so that breaks down to less than 28 cents a day. I went through the steps of picking an average frame and lenses from one of the largest online vendors, and the cost of an Aristar 6022 with polycarbonate lenses came to a total of $166.73. Now I have to admit that’s not bad for a pair of glasses, but what am I getting?
The lenses come with their 100% accuracy guarantee; this means that the lenses will be made to my exact prescription and measurements. The measurements come from where? This particular site recommends:
“A PD Measurement or Pupil Distance can be taken at any optical store or from your doctor, and many optical stores will provide this service free of charge.”
This Achilles heal is handled quite well by many online vendors. This service has never been free of charge - most opticals include this as part of their fitting process, which is incorporated in the price of the eyewear purchase. Is their value to a PD? Well of course there is, it has to cost something to measure and take on liability for the proper fitting of eyewear. It seems that the most common approach is to demonize the brick and mortar optical by making the consumer believe that the measure is FREE. Most small independent business owners pride themselves on the way they do business, I am sure many don’t like being told what part of their services is or should be FREE by their competitors.
Even with the proper measurements, there is no guarantee the glasses will fit properly. This particular site also recommends:
“It’s helpful to know what size frame will fit you. You can find this information easily by looking at a pair of frames you may currently own, or by visiting a local optical store.”
Again the patient needs to come into and visit an optical store. I’m starting to get the feeling that the brick and mortar dispensary or “show room” has a value.
The proper fitting of eyewear isn’t complete once the proper sized frame is chosen, the frames don’t come one size fits all and neither do patient’s faces. This is why optical shops spend time choosing the right frame for the patient and their prescription, as well as fitting them upon dispense. This particular vendor has no recommendation for how to get this eyewear fit properly once they arrive.
In order to realize the potential savings for internet eyewear, the patient must be able to keep this pair up to 2.4 years, which is the average purchase period for internet eyewear. Since the company offers no warranty on the frames or lenses, the patient is in a position where they need to carefully care for their eyewear and hope for the best. The downside to online eyewear is going to be the disposable nature of this product with little to no service, unless the patient truly believes that they can walk into any optical shop and have their online eyewear serviced, which is a fallacy that many of these online vendors will continue to perpetuate.
Well, what about convenience? Wow, you wake up and decide to roll out of bed and purchase your eyewear while still in your pajamas - can’t beat that for convenience, right? Well can we? The patient will more than likely have come from the eyecare practitioner who provided the exam. If they’re lucky, they remembered to ask for their PD. If the patient is really lucky the office took this measurement and if the moon, the planets, and the sun line up in perfect harmony they may have even gotten this measure properly done by a qualified professional.
Let’s make the assumption that all these things came together in perfect harmony and the patient was diligent in their office visit and received everything they needed to process this order online in a proficient manner. They go to the website and try on glasses, as this particular site boasts a virtual frame system, which allows the patient to upload their photo and superimpose various frames onto their image. Now as nice as this feature may sound, didn’t they just leave an office where they could have actually tried on the glasses and seen how they really look on them? Virtual doesn’t trump actual, does it?
So after they virtually try on a few pairs without the guidance of a professional, they decide on a frame. Now they need to make a decision on the various lens options. This particular site offers a short 150 to 200 hundred word paragraph that sums up the benefits of each material and option, and since there are many to choose from, the patient will require time to read these and must ultimately make a decision as to what they think will work best for them. Professionals spend their career developing methods and questions to streamline their process for helping a patient chose the right combination of lenses and options to suit their particular lifestyle. We even came up with a nifty nickname for that process called “lifestyle dispensing” which involves getting to know your patient more intimately, by probing them for details about their hobbies and habits.
As the online patient chooses their lenses and options and places the order, the patient is met with a prompt to make sure to fax the prescription to this particular vendor. The patient hopefully has a fax machine or scanner handy to scan and email the prescription. Once the fax or email is sent, one to two weeks later a box arrives with glasses in them. If the patient is lucky the glasses fit, if not this particular company is gracious enough to offer a one time replacement, but the patient will have to ship them back on their own dime and wait another 2 weeks. Once they finally arrive there is still a matter of being fitted properly and again with luck there is a shop in their area that will provide this service and hopefully they won’t know that it was purchased online so the patient can potentially get away with their savings.
This whole ordeal could end up with at least 2 to 3 trips to a brick and mortar optical for various supposedly FREE services. When it comes to convenience, most brick and mortar shops can match that number of trips and often only require only 1 to 2 visits.
I personally don’t understand the allure of online eyewear, but in its current form saving $75.00 by navigating through the various land mines like PD’s, properly sized frames, measurements, fitting, and warranties seems to be more inconvenient and potentially more costly. These potential savings are also realized by deceiving local eyecare providers out of professional services. Call me crazy but I like my patients enough to actually take care of them, especially when the savings is only $75.00. I won’t allow my patients to sell themselves short, they deserve better quality and service and if it costs $75.00 more I am here to help them realize the value in that.
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