It's expensive because Luxottica keeps quiet. It's a monopoly and needs to be broken up.

Seems like the glasses market is ripe for a disruptive startup company?

Dumb question. Frames can be 3d printed right? Is it possible to so the same with lenses?

Sounds like a "neighborhood/artisan" lens and glass maker could so this easily for a reasonable size neighborhood lucratively?

Ha! One might ask the same about braces.

Because of insurance, which distorts markets.

Lots of people get benefits that pay for their glasses, so they're not incentivized to be economical.

Looks prime for SV disruption, no?

It's wonderful for them. Everyone who has eyesight really wants to see clearly. After air, food, water, eyesight is kinda crucial.

Maybe we should tithe them in thanks for not making it way more expensive.

It was practically dripping wasn't it? :)

I have purchased < $20 glasses from zennioptical without a perscription online many times that were every bit as good as $500 ones I bought at lenscrafters, with near identical styles.

I started buying in bulk and worrying less about losing or babying them.

Great suggestions for cheaper alternatives in this thread! Does anyone knows if it's possible to get cycling sunglasses of similar quality as Oakley/100%? By cycling sunglasses I mean:

-shape (those need to be big and go over forehead so you see clearly from hunched position)

-lenses (tint, increased color contrast, preferably not polarized), anti fog -safe in case of a crash

I tried shopping around but couldn't find anything that fits as well as 165$ pair of Speedcrafts (the lenses are amazing as well). The glasses are just 4 pieces of plastic (frame, lenses, nose bridge, nose pad) but somehow it's not easy to find a decent cheaper alternative.

I own exactly one pair of "expensive" glasses that I got from a retail chain and use as my primary pair.

I will admit, they are of much higher quality than the glasses that I order online as a back-up.

But outside of that pair, I get a print out of my prescription and go to places like www.eyebuydirect.com to get any other pairs.

The quality isn't there but we are talking about hundreds of dollars cheaper. And if anything was to happen to my main pair, I can quickly grab the $80 and I doubt anyone would even notice.

Plus, it makes wearing different styles from time to time a much more attractive offer.

Glasses are expensive because they are not just a medical device, but also a fashion accessory, and this market is a fashion market.

I have to try about 20-30 frames or so, until I find something that looks OK on me.

But! It is still possible to buy cheap enough frames that look fine. Why the _lenses_ are so expensive, that’s a different question. I routinely pay $700 or so for the lenses. Many professional multi-component _camera_ lenses cost much less than that. And it has nothing to do with Luxottica.

In my last summer vacation I travelled abroad and forgot to bring my sunglasses.

Looking for a new one in the stores I found that prices for regular Ray-Ban (owned by Luxotica) were too expensive for my taste (~120 USD). So I decided to get a Polaroid sunglasses instead, for a third of the price (~40 USD).

My only concern was wether the lenses polarization would be up to standards. So I Googled it and found out that Polaroid was in fact the company that invented polarized lenses :)

This must be a US thing. In UK you pay £25 for an eye test (which employer is required to cover if you have to wear glasses at work) and then you can order online with prescription you get from test for £40 and usually there are 2 for 1 or 50% offers even on that. It is baffling that you would have no competition if this was costing $800 ... is there IP or regulations stopping this or something?

I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil. There is a glasses retail chain here called Gassi which sells 2 pairs of glasses (frames + lenses) for around 40 USD.

I now have to use reading glasses. First few prescriptions were eye-wateringly expensive.

Now I just order a 4-pack off Amazon for about a tenner - never been happier. I have a pair at home, at work, in the car, in my bag and if they break I just toss 'em away without a second thought.

I'm sure it must be a lot more tricky for those with unique prescriptions but for stock readers this is definitely the way to go.

Reminds me of the time I found out that golf balls and eink screens are also a "secret monopoly" kept by highly litigatious patents.

Ah, eyewear! I see Luxottica is mentioned. Kind of similar story behind optical glass (lenses, namely) and Schott (Zeiss) behind all of it.

I used to pay $800-1,000 a pair, then I heard that the exact same glasses from the exact same factory just without that fancy logo costs you about $100 a pair. Bought a few of them, never looked back.

People need to accept that you get ripped off all the time, it just a normal part of everyday life. when you think a $5 walmart tshirt is cheap, well, the factory gets probably 50c.

There's plenty of margin in the industry - as an anecdote, I've paid around £40 for a pair in the UK through an online retailer (Glasses Direct), around ~₹1500-2000 in India through an online retailer (Lenskart) and ~₹800 by visiting a local store in a Tier 2 city in India

In Poland you can still get very decent glasses (that could be even with a premium brand frames) with top service included for about $300. I believe it's just a market that makes it expensive or cheap. Oh, and you don't need a prescription.

I had the same pair of glasses for 20 years just getting new lenses as needed. A year ago I had a slight change in prescription but also had to make the plunge into bifocals. Cost to me even after insurance? $800. And they're terrible.

Sunglass frames are in every petrol station. Would it be possible to 3d-print a resin with known index of refraction, then go to town on the buffing wheel for an hour?

Would love to hear more about DIY corrective lenses.

My go-to is Payneglasses.com. They're easy to work with and have incredible deals. Most of the frames I buy are $5.95 and then I add on the blue blocking protection and antiglare.

I started looking at getting new glasses recently and due to my extremely poor vision, need all these extra addons for lenses (high-index, progressive etc.) and they get EXPENSIVE very quickly.

I wonder why the Euro bureaucrats are not doing anything about one of the biggest monopolies in the Europe. Guess they are just too busy figuring out another way to milk Google.

Get your eyes tested and buy glasses at Costco. Also if your prescription is a simple one, Costco sells off the shelf reading glasses for around $20 for three pairs.

Well, don't try GlassesUSA. They are a scam operation operating under various names, working hard to test your resolve to prosecute them.

Archived: https://archive.ph/jhgdR

After decades with private practices, since I switched to WalMart my prescriptions are more accurate and glasses cost almost nothing.

Why isn't there more competition? Or, as Jeff Bezos would say: "Your margin is my opportunity."

FACE À FACE are high-quality glasses and I'm happy to pay the premium. They are not owned by Luxottica.

> Search engines don't seem to work anymore to find controversial information so I could not dig up the info again. It was from several years back it might be starting to change now.

Hmmm.... not really a satisfying answer for me. I wouldn't make such claims unless I was confident about it.

> The golf balls are more interesting

I'm not interested in the golf balls part.

Probably Italian designed China made

Yet, EL makes most of its revenue from North America. Europe-middle-east-africa is close behind :

NA : 9,87 B

EMEA : 7,95 B

AP : 2,54 B

LA : 1,13 B

The frame size is normally written (in Europe, at least) on the inside of one of the arms of the glasses. Find an existing pair that fits you and note the measurements. That measure, together with your prescription and PD should be sufficient to order online.

Sorry coatings are much more expensive, lotsa markup, bucko.

I've tried Payne, and they have tons of styles to choose from, as affordable as Zenni. https://www.payneglasses.com/

Maybe EyeBuyDirect or Goggles4U.

And yet, most people don't know google own Waze, Youtube, Gmail, Android, Chrome, Chromecast and so on.

They also don't realize most sites use Google Analytics, meaning your activity on a site completely unrelated to google is still recorded.

They don't realize that Meta own not just Facebook, but also Instagram, WhatsApp or Oculus.

They also don't realize all sites that use "share with facebook" send date to facebook, meaning your activity on a site completely unrelated to FB is still recorded.

We know that on HN, but ask somebody in the street, they barely know what a URL is, how would they understand a monopoly?

Yikes, I did have my suspicions about their 'no-scratch guarantee' and why it wasn't simply called a warranty.

Not to mention their warranty on frames are also only 30 days...

It's true, Shurons are retro style frames. And some of them are...eccentric to say the least. But the zyl they use is pretty high quality compared to others. And the hinges...I haven't found a brand of frame with tougher hinges. My faves are either the Sidewinder or the Ronsir Zyl (the latter is the original "browline" style frame as worn by Malcolm X).

  > very old styling

Correction: Original styling. These were the guys who invented that styling. The problem is, they've hardly innovated styling at all for decades.

Yes, the prices aren't really competitive. You do get really good quality, though, especially with their "individual" lenses. Also, in the EU at least, Luxottica is less dominant. There are many smaller designers (like ic berlin for example). I don't see much price competition, though — it's all ridiculously expensive.

It's actually quite reasonably priced (for the market, which is still absurdly marked up). Mine ran me 95€ a piece, where the Luxottica equivalent would be over 200.

Retail stores can be started by anyone, and there are tons of optometrists that sell glasses from their own store.

The “insurance” company presents a higher barrier, since it is basically the government handing a discount to people for buying via employer subsidized vision “insurance”. The discount is that this benefit can be paid with pre tax dollars, so it obfuscates the real prices when people with vision insurance shop for eyewear.

I put “insurance” in quotes because the annual benefit maximums, like dental “insurance”, are so low that the premiums are simply prepaying for routine exams/eyeglasses. In effect, employer subsidized dental/vision insurance is just an advantage for large employers who can afford to administer those benefits and the employees who are lucky enough to work at those kinds of employers get to pay for routine dental/vision with pre tax dollars.

Since Luxottica bought out RayBan, the quality has plummeted. I have a pair of original Wayfarer II's that I got years before the buyout. The plastic is noticeably higher quality, the lenses are polarized and Bausch & Lomb. And they have five barrel hinges! Built like a tank and have survived many drops. Mine are still going strong and are 'buy it for life' quality. Still going strong after 38 years...I got them when I was 16 years old and in HS for a trip to the Bahamas.

Compare that to current RayBans. Cheap plastic. Plastic lenses. Spring hinges that break quickly and don't last. And worst of all, branding everywhere. On the temple. And again on the lens. Terrible.

It was concentrated liquid that was mixed with water and heated. If you can get your hands on it, yeah, it can be done at home.

Edit: We used BPI(?) dyes and UV. Make sure you don't have anything other than scratch coating. A/R, Mirror, etc. will likely craze in the heat.

Competition can arise but then it's bought out by the monopoly.

Here in the US I could buy reading glasses in a pharmacy for less than $10 (several variations). They come in a range like -2.0 to +2.0 in increments of 0.25.

I don't wear glasses, but I suppose I did I could get something that roughly works for me for a price of a coffee and a couple of doughnuts. These glasses don't look cool, but don't look ugly either, they are just extremely basic. Likely fine for reading at home.

Sorry the word is "prism", not spectrum.

Skilled labor is dirt cheap in India. Most car mechanics will do an oil and filter change for INR 200 (USD 2.46) if you bring your own materials. Practically a rounding error.

So, probably someone is actually selling them at very low margins and/or it is subsidised by some entity.

Doesn’t all fsa account cover glasses? Pretty easy to use that for pre tax dollars on eyeware. You can spend it wherever you want.

> The fact of the matter is that few patients benefit all that much from toric lenses that fix astigmatism. Most people have less than 1 diopter of astigmatic error, which they don’t even manufacture a toric lens for at any usable tolerance (the FDA allows a +/-0.50D tolerance to all lenses including torics), and surgical modifications can nullify that to some extent.

I do think the cheapness of astigmatism correction in lenses for glasses means that more people get full correction than in the past, but if you're like me and apparently descended from mole people then correcting distance vision alone does squat. My distance vision is far from the worst at 7-8 diopters, so can be mostly corrected with normal lenses, but my astigmatism is bad enough that I wouldn't be able to legally drive without correction. Despite that, instead of getting insurance covered IOLs, I'm paying 3k each for the IOL for each eye.

Only real problem with the one I have so far is that the existing "accommodating" IOLs simply aren't particularly good, and the varying types of multi-focal IOL do cause halos, so if you're like me and already get halos they're off the table. So on the one hand my right eye now has 20/20 vision, on the other: instant presbyopia.

> [...] they don’t even manufacture a toric lens for at any usable tolerance (the FDA allows a +/-0.50D tolerance to all lenses including torics)

I tried a quick google search but couldn't immediately verify. That seems horrible. Really production/specification tolerance, or just eye-correction tolerance to determine the need for a change?

I feel tempted to replace the lenses when eyes have changed by 0.25 (though delaying until 0.5 off). I have returned glasses which were mis-manufactured with the cylindrical axis for one eye off by 10 degrees.

I also prefer glass lenses. The tradeoffs seem to be weight (glass weighs more) and durability (glass can be cleaned with cloth or a towel without scratching, plastic lenses need to be babied with a microcloth or else you get little swirly scratches that will eventually ruin the lenses).

I'd rather have my glasses weigh a bit more if the lenses are more durable.

The high end luxury brands such as Silhouette offer very advanced lens coatings and materials that aren't found in any of the discount stores online or brick-and-mortar, so there's definitely a difference there. It's only their full priced partner shops that carry them. They also claim to use custom technology that allows their 10+ layers of coatings to stick together much better and not flake off.

The mid range to entry luxury brands, many owned by Luxottica, use broadly available lenses and coatings, or so the discount online stores claim.

I've never been to a discount brick-and-mortar store selling the full range of Luxottica products, usually only a few styles here and there. So I can't comment there.

What I'm asking is if the claims of discount stores, like that they have access to the same lenses as full priced Luxottica stores, are actually true.

And whether they are honest with their shipped product.

e.g. How would anyone know if they in fact got a X layer coated lens (where X could be from 3 to 8) from a discount shop?

It seems trivial to ship a X-1 layer coated lens instead, with a very low possibility of getting caught.

you ordered from a brand which is considered premium in India. You can get similar kind of glasses at even lower price at lenskart.com and from local stores.

So we can't trust the store to give us the glasses we ordered, we need to test them. To get a control to test against, we're then going to...trust the store and have them provide the control?

How do you know those glasses on the counter touting 8 layers actually has those 8 layers?

It kind of sounds like all you can really do is see if the glasses have the features you requested. Do they transition? Does it seem like they transition as much as you were wanting? Do they seem like they don't have bad glare? Does it attenuate the glare as much as you were wanting? If not, then return them. This is entirely possible with online glasses retailers, they usually have decently generous return policies.

People don't buy glasses because they have 8 layers instead of 7. They buy them because those layers give additional features and it's the features they want. If they can do the features you want in 7 layers instead of 8, does it really matter if it's only 7 layers?

What stops us from making , decent quality 20 $ glasses and selling in US for 50 $ max ? (inclusive of shipping, export duties etc)

The dish detergent seems to get under coatings and ruin them, in my experience. Glass cleaner is fine, though.

Not to mention the pupillary distance is not commonly included on optical prescriptions which creates a significant hurdle, even though it can be measured yourself or usually given when asked.

I'll second this recommendation. I've had the same pair of $35 glasses for 5 years now, I wear them every day, and they're still good as new.

I have been using zennioptical for years, and I’ve saved friends and family lots of money with my recommendations. They don’t do fancy, brand name frames. But otherwise the quality is fine.

It would be nice if any of these sites had an AR solution that was completely clientside. I can't bring myself to agree to let them store my face + face info for 3 years.

What they don't have is a good anti-reflective coating. If you want that, you end up back with Luxottica (Essilor.)

They usually have a machine that reads it a bit more accurately.

Correction: "the equipment to add PD to his prescription" is called a pen.

In the US anyway, they're legally required to give you your prescription (SPH, CYL, prism, etc). However, PD and other ocular measurements aren't classified as part of a prescription.

Correct! By law, they're required to give it to you. If they refuse, just use an app on your smartphone. (eyemeasure is the one i used)

Not the poster but I see no reason to doubt the claim. A while back when dealing with glasses that didn't come out right my eye doc wanted to check the PD in an attempt to figure out why my glasses were bothering me (I'm incredibly sensitive on my computer pair, I can't tolerate anything that isn't absolutely spot on)--and she walked over to the optical center to borrow their PD measurer. She didn't have one because it's not something she normally needs.

I've been seeing the same ophthalmologist for years, but last time, they told me I needed to get the COVID booster for next visit. So there was no next visit. I have other doctors and a dentist, and none of them push that.

He's also absolutely dogmatic and dismissive about how LASIK is safe (although he didn't push it for me).

He did give me my PD, though.

I got it wrong the first time. He’s an MD ophthalmologist.

They reduce the chance, however. Imperfect protection is better than nothing.

I've had very good luck ordering from Zenni and Coastal. It is perhaps a bit harder to find a frame style you like, but once you have a frame of reference for say width measurements it's not so bad.

They're especially good for cheap prescription sun glasses. I bought a whole stack of them years ago I'm still working through. If I go to the river or where ever and something happens to them I'm out $25 instead of $250.

It also helped that the last time I went to a local shop it proved to be a ridiculous experience. I ordered a pair of clear acrylic frames, and for whatever reason when they came in the sales clerk got bored and thought it'd be interesting to use highlighter on the insides of the frame to see what it looked like. But then it wouldn't come off so she just kinda tried to play it off like nothing happened when I picked them up. It was completely absurd. I had to wait another month for them to reorder.

So yeah, eyeglasses are now one of those categories of local businesses where I've learned they're basically all scams.

Related: it's getting hard to find a cleaner that does alterations in house vs mailing them off to a service. Last couple times I've had to do that it turns into a 4 to 6 week long game of "where did your clothing disappear to and will the store find it this time or tell you to come back in a week yet again."

Why is it so many of these simple services increasingly feel like total scams in the US?

> I don't think that I'd ever pay more than $100 for a frame again.

$100 sounds like it's ~10x what the price should actually be for simple plastic shapes, and it's probably more than 100x the actual cost to manufacture them.

Indeed. I buy 5 pairs of glasses at a time (cheapest ones I can manage which look OK). 5 at a time is still cheaper than 1/3rd the price of low cost normal glasses.

And each of those 5 pairs is half as durable.

It is a similarly wild situation where eye exams at Walmart can be cheaper than at a regular eye doctor covered by my insurance.

Zenni is a good choice _if you know your PD_ (pupillary distance) - the distance from nose to center of pupil. 1 mm off will turn your glasses into headache machines. And the phone apps that purport to measure this are universally bad. Get it professionally done at a place that will give you the value. Costco will do so.

If you don't want to purchase online Costco is decent price - $180ish for the progressives lenses I just purchased vs $400+ from LensCrafters. Downside of Costco is a limited selection of frames, but worth a look. Also heard good things about Warby Parker but have not purchased lenses from them.

Oh, Zenni's progressive lenses have a much narrower distance vision section in the lens than Costco's. So I get progressive glasses at Costco then single reading and computer glasses (for < $40 each) at Zenni.

How does buying glasses online even work? I have never tried, so I'd expect it to be like buying shoes without trying them on (which I won't do either, based on in-store experience I'd be returning 9 pairs out of 10 for bad fit).

I wear glasses for 95% of time, I want to not hate how they feel.

My friend has purchased several pairs from Zenni but the frames kept cracking around the lens even though she only wears them for a couple of hours each day. They'd send her a new frame and it would do the same after a month or two. She didnt really like the metal frames they offered so kept choosing plastic frames. Finally she got fed up with Zenni and purchased slightly more expensive glasses from Warby Parker and has had zero issues since. It definitely feels like a "you get what you paid for" type of story here. Zenni is much cheaper than buying frames from Luxottica but there's definitely some happy medium where you aren't overpaying for glasses but still buying something of comparable quality to the overpriced brands. She used to get Ray-Ban frames while on her parent's insurance but when she got her own, she could get a free years supply of contacts or Luxottica-priced pair of glasses. So now she gets her big supply of contacts from a retailer using insurance and buys a new pair of Warby Parker glasses using HSA money.

For Europe, Ace & Tate [1] are affordable and pretty good quality. Frame + lens go for €110, or €120 to include blue light filter coating.

Frankly, unless we're talking about real designer pieces, glasses have been a completely utilitarian/commodity item for the past half century. The real achievement of Luxottica (which also reflects in their brand name) is that they still manage to sell them as premium/craft products.

[1] https://www.aceandtate.com/

You can buy frames with glasses in India for less than Rs.800 (less than $10)

I paid $11 (shipped) for a pair of glasses from them for use in VR. I didn’t want to screw up my normal glasses. For eleven bucks they aren’t bad at all. Not my style. And I didn’t get any coating so the reflections are bad but man, I can’t see for shit without glasses and I’m happy that if I even fall on hard times I can at least pay for a new pair of glasses.

I definitely think it's cool that they have some pretty freaking cheap frames. That said, I didn't pay more than $100 for my frame.

They didn't have that many $100+ glasses at the store. I think the frames that I bought for like $60 (didn't even hit the max, so they were free). Honestly, think they're nicer than most of the frames there.

You can buy oakleys for like $40-70. Even the sale ones tend to look better than the ones on zenni. Some of the nicer zenni's are $40+ anyway.

Of course it is really cool to see decent frames for $20 or less. I'm going to keep it in mind in the future.

Zenni is a Chinese company that wouldn’t ship to Lithuania presumably because of Taiwan situation. I’ve got new sunnies from them just few days ago, but still super wary. There must be better.

They charge $167 for my transition lenses, last time I got them locally I paid 262€. Per lens O.o I guess I’ll try them.

Damn I bought mine for ₹ 5000 (~$60) and I think I overpaid.

Is that the same co as eyebuydirect.com? That’s who I’ve used

Another great site is goggles4u.com

Independent doesn't mean that there isn't a profit to Walmart in having it there. I go to one of those Walmart eye docs--she's independent of the store and has her own office staff, but her office has a second door that opens into Walmart's optical center.

For me it’s always been chlorine and other cleaning products. Salt water and sweat doesn’t help either.

Forget to take the glasses off before you jump into the pool or readjust your glasses while cleaning the house and before you know it the coating starts to dissolve. Even if you’re religiously rinsing them, the accumulated damage to the coatings fogs up the lenses and weakens the surface against scratches.

Rinse with water before wiping.

For a lot of people you can just take lenses from the production line and cut them to shape and be done but that is not always the case. Personally I always have to wait 2 to 3 weeks to get new glasses done as the lenses have to be made to spec and the lenses alone are around 350€ and no they are not any cheaper at any online retailer that operates here if they even offer to make lenses to my spec.

This life hack really isn't necessary, you can just ask for your PD distance and they'll bring out a little machine that measures it. No optometrist has ever been weird about it, a few have even told me a few sites to get cheaper glasses.

Just ask for your PD. Nobody cares. I'be never heard of anyone sleazy enough to not give this information out.

Measuring Pupillary Distance (PD, or distance between your pupils) is easy! Here's how:

1) Stand in front of a vertical mirror, making sure you are square to the mirror.

2) Place a horizontal ruler on the surface of the mirror.

3) Close one eye and move your head until the reflection of the centre of your pupil lines up with zero on the ruler.

4) Keeping your head still, open your eye and close the other eye.

5) The Pupillary Distance is the reading on the ruler that lines up with the centre of the reflection of your pupil.

6) If you want to double check it, just swap the opening of your eyes and check that the other eye still sees itself at zero.

I use this method whenever I order glasses online and have yet to have a pair of glasses that have any error in the manufacturing. I now only buy glasses online.