Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Buying Glasses Online

If you’re like many people, you’ve probably avoided buying eyeglasses online because you were afraid it was too complicated. However, buying online is not only easy, it’s financially smart too.

With that in mind, here are four of the biggest fears when it comes to buying glasses online, along with reasons why those fears are overblown.

Hopefully, after reviewing each one, you’ll have the confidence to shop online the next time you’re in the market for prescription eyeglasses.

Myth #1: Ordering glasses online is complicated

Ordering glasses can be accomplished in just four easy steps:

1. Get your prescription and pupillary distance (PD) from your eye doctor. Keep in mind that eye doctors are legally required to give you your prescription for free — but you need to ask for it. As for your PD, while most doctors will give it to you, some may charge a fee or even refuse, because they know that once you have both your prescription and your PD, you have all the info you need to buy online. The good news is, you can measure PD yourself.
2. Figure out what kind of glasses you want. When making your decision, be sure to consider your face shape, personal style, and lifestyle
3. Find your glasses. A big advantage of shopping online is the inventory size. You can find glasses as traditional or as modern as you’d like.
4. Place your order! You can rest assured that ordering prescription eyeglasses is no different than ordering anything else on line.

Myth #2: Glasses ordered online are poor quality

A quick web search will help you find reputable online sites that sell the same quality of frames and lenses you find at typical optical retailers.

How can online retailers be so much cheaper? Well, they can save on overhead costs such as sales staff, maintain expensive inventory and renting a retail location. Also, like in many other businesses, they can sell cheaper because they do more volume. While a typical optical retail location might sell one or two pairs per day, online sellers sell upwards of one-thousand pairs.

One major consideration in choosing between online retailers is that quality may be affected by the location of the labs. Some companies use labs located in Hong Kong and other locations overseas, whereas others are based in the US; this can affect the quality and time it takes to get your order.

Myth #3: The glasses won’t look good on me.

Receiving unflattering glasses is a legitimate fear, as buying glasses online means you can’t physically try on the glasses. However, glasses retailers provide resources to help you out. Some companies, such as GlassesUSA even offer a “virtual mirror” to help you decide! In most cases, if you find that you don’t like the glasses you bought for any reason, return policies for most online glasses retailers are often 100% satisfaction guaranteed.

Myth #4: The glasses won’t fit correctly.

If you have an old pair of glasses that fits you well, you can use their frame size to ensure they fit properly. Just look inside the frame for a series of numbers — they’re usually on the temple — such as 50-18-140. These numbers are the lens width, bridge size, and temple length in millimeters. The good news is the numbers only need to be close, not exact. The lens width should be within 4 millimeters, the bridge within 2 millimeters, and the temple within 5 millimeters.

Reap the Rewards!

Hopefully, you now understand that you’ve really got nothing to fear when buying glasses online. Best of all, by buying online, you can save hundreds of dollars on a pair of same-quality glasses offered at brick-and-mortar stores; that’s cash you can use to supplement your savings account, or retirement fund — or even splurge on yourself.

Photo Credit: GlassesUSA