To think nowadays you need a mortgage if you need glasses?

[LarryForPrimeMinister]

Today I went for my usual eye check up. £40.
Asked if I wanted photos taking of behind my eyes to check my eye health additional £20.
My prescription has gone up to - 5 in both eyes.
So needed a pair of frames, £100. Wasn't even the expensive pairs.

And then I was told they have 3 different price ranges for thinning the lenses. If I don't have them thinned they stick out like a eyesore.
£80 to have them slightly thinned, £140 for medium thinned o £200 for super thinned.

Walked out £300 lighter!
Now I wear glasses all the time I am blind as a bat without them but jesus christ I nearly died at the expense.
Two years ago it cost me £200 for the same thing now £100 increase! Aibu to think opticians are taking the piss and becoming like dentists?

I went in for glasses last year on a £70 two for one deal . £500 later by the time you add on the extras eg driving lenses

I get mine at Asda. I have varifocals in Ralph Lauren frames, and the same for sunglasses, and it cost £220 for both pairs I think.

What extras? I have varifocals and I’ve never heard of driving lenses? Isn’t that just what your glasses are for?

I’m not sure how complex your prescription is but second Glasses Direct .
I have readers and drivers coming in at about £60 for the two pairs . Buy 1 get 1 free offers and regular discount sales I tend to buy 2 or 3 pairs of both a year so I can afford to lose the odd pair ( misplace not lose !) .
Quality is fine .
My sister has complex prescription she pays an optician plan which I think works out a bit cheaper - usually has not put some money toward new specs but not as much . Local optician not a chain.

Blind as a bat at -5! I’m minus 16 in my worst eye!

I agree it’s extremely expensive to be short-sighted. I must have spent a fortune over the years (I’ve been short-sighted since I was 7), whereas my sister who has perfect vision has been spared this expense.

I get free eye tests as I have complex lenses, and I get something like a £15 NHS voucher off the cost of glasses. But contact lenses, solutions and glasses are all expensive. Glasses cost me around £500. I have to pay for thinning - and the lenses are still quite thick due to my prescription. This limits the range of frames I can choose (I have a basic non-designer frame).

I looked at having the lens replacement surgery - that’s about £10k!

My daughter is on the myopia control glasses and lenses, which are also expensive compared to children’s standard glasses.

There are cheaper methods to get perfectly good glasses. You just went in and ticked all the boxes on the list.

Do you wear the glasses for work? If so you work will cover the eye test. Then you take the prescription and go to one of many places that can make them up for you that have been listed here. Or just get a set of lenses made up for an existing set of frames.

Or even look at deals they have on. I pay £13 per months for my contact lenses which gets me a pair of glasses half price (including lenses).

I do agree they're ridiculous, my last pair were £500 and most of that was on the lenses, but that's partly because I was already committed to spending about £400 so paid extra for a special coating I wanted. They did come with a magnetic sunglass clip on thing which is handy.

The one thing I would say is the last place I went were more specialist so while I could have got them cheaper, it was the first place I've ever been that were able to thin my lenses enough that I could have any frame I wanted. My prescription is so strong (+6.5ish I think) that the delicate gold frames that had become fashionable were out of the question elsewhere. So that made me feel better as I'd already tried specsavers/asda and they had very limited choice in the usual chunky frames I would have had to get from them.

They're called the spectacle factory, we only ended up there because I needed frames quite quickly and they make a lot of the lenses in house, but afterwards I realised they have a YouTube channel and lots of glowing reviews from people that come all over the world to go there. So just mentioning because I think with the prices high street opticians charge nowadays they could be doing much more! I'd already had to get a second eye test from Asda because the people at Specsavers had got my prescription so wrong.

I keep continuously getting text message reminder from Vision Express that my eye test is very overdue.

Of that I’m aware as I’m still saving up for the financial onslaught of discovering how much my new prescription is going to set me back….

One word: Asda. I bought my last pair there and was pleased. Very reasonably priced. I have bough on line but that depends on mot being very fussy, in my view. The other thing I've done is reglazw existing frames. I went tobBoots for that because I wanted glass not plastic lenses for thst particular pair. Boots do Zeiss lenses and the total was cheaper than plastic because more was included in the initial price.

I’m sorry but I just thought that’s not too bad. My DH’s glasses have been costing us £700 + for years my sons cost £200 even with an NHS voucher. So I figure anything under £300 is cheap. I should add we don’t skimp on the thinning and have transition lenses because they have such high prescriptions. (Long sighted)

Tbh my glasses have always cost around £300. I get super thin lenses and scratch resistant coating as wear them all the time.
Plus mine will last me a good 2 years so work out like £3 a week. I spend more on coffee

I am minus 7.5 and it’s so hard to get glasses under £500 because of the lens thinning needed. I buy crappy frames because of that.

I don’t expect change out of £400 tomorrow at my appointment. -11 and -12 here. I have to pay for the thinnest lenses and I am very limited in frame style and size to fit.

I use Glasses Direct too. I wait for decent deals and usually spend around £50 a time to get a few pairs in different colours so I can swap them around as much as I want. Eye tests are free here too (and this has reminded me I actually need to get booked in soon for it). They do try the selling afterwards but I just tell them I can’t at that moment.

I pay between £45 to £65, I just get standard lenses and the cheapest frames. Then I make sure they fit me perfectly and get them adjusted and pop back in if they become lose.

I have a -5.5/-5.75 prescription, wear varifocals, thinned down to the thinnest lenses I have ever had, free tint, anti scratch and something else I can't remember, got designer frames and paid £120 from Asda.

I have been using them for a few years and they start at either £40 or £50 for frames including all the extras.

Got quoted from an another opticians for the same and the price was £465, Asda only do one type of varifocal lense and its the most expensive one that all opticians try and upsell you too.

I don't work for Asda or the Opticians just love getting a bargain in eyewear when I can't see a thing without my glasses.

Please give them try

I'll stick with the independent, family run, opticians I've been going to for 30 years thanks, who know me by name, also treat my parents and husband, and know me so well they noticed I had a new bag when I went in last week. Didn't pay for my eye test, additional imaging, or contact lens check as that's covered by having the lenses and discount off my new specs too as my prescription has changed and these frames are knackered.
If I wear them every day over the 2 years before the next eye test, they're less than about 75p per day. Can't drive without them etc, DH basically cannot function fullstop without his.

A few years ago someone on here liked to glasses direct:
https://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/

I have had 6+ pairs from here now, started with standard prescription sunglasses and recently brave enough to order my varifocals which I now wear daily.

The frames can be plasticky but very robust. I measure the arms/width of my favourite specs to filter the styles to my preference.

There's various deals on and there's usually 10% cashback available on Top cashback too:
https://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/Casi1231/?source_id=4 (cheeky link to TC).

Costco eyetest 19.99

I got the free frames at Boots and nothing done to the lenses. 50.00 for two pairs.

Get your prescription and then glasses direct

Boots £55 for normal eye test!! What a rip off

“ Thinning “ does not cost the supplier nothing! Thinner lenses are made from a different more advanced material, they are more expensive because of that. If it was just shaving the lenses to make them thinner that wouldn’t be a thing - in fact opticians will advise you on frame shspe and size and order the size of lens to make your glasses look as good as possible ( or they should be…) but there is only so much that can do which is why the new materials were invented in the first place.

Please at least get a proper eye test regularly even if it costs. I was extremely short sighted all my life and glasses were always around the £500 mark then I had cataracts so don’t need glasses all the time. I just buy cheap reading glasses and varifocals for work but suddenly last year I had an issue with one eye I got an emergency optician appointment straight away and was then sent straight to hospital for an op which saved the sight in my eye. I have family members who are blind believe me they would pay any amount of money for glasses if it helped them.

This, my family have had a lot of success with GD
unfortunately my prescription is too complex but I think -5 would be fine