Too bad their support couldn't explain why they were hassling me for a document they didn't need (except for in a legal sense).
Zenni also requires an up to date prescription.
No they don't. You just have to enter the numbers.
If I have to insert earbuds to talk to Alexa, then I could just bring up my entire phone.
> an insurance system that's designed to benefit only Luxottica (via their stranglehold of both insurance companies AND lens producers).
How is this a thing? Couldn't a startup come in and trounce them by offering $10 frames and lenses? The optics aren't that complicated, and frames are... plastic?
Eyeglasses are an interesting example of a market failure - customers have been paying 10x the actual price for an important item, for 20+ years, and the market hasn't fixed it.
In Beijing I used to just head down to Panjiayuan Zhaojia Glasses City and get pairs for ~15 bucks. Rest your head on a machine that reads your prescription, pick out frames, bargain, 30 minutes later you have your glasses.
In the US glasses are medicalized, which hides the reality that glasses are really cheap and simple to make; for people without money this causes real harm.
And then to deal with the sheer operations (talking like ten thousand plus frames per day).
They had a deal at that time too - $99 for exam and one frame/lens set, done in a couple hours.
They're fine - have worn every day for 3 years. No 'insurance' to worry about.
However, it's not for everyone. For one, it's out of network for insurance providers, so you have to deal with paperwork yourself and the deductible is high. Also since they are online only, you have to adjust it yourself, which isn't always easy. And being online only means you can't try it on beforehand.
Unfortunately, nobody wants to change this because insurers love charging premium rates for low risk recurring costs, providers love obscuring their prices, and consumers have come to demand their insurance covers “the basics”.
I actually got a pair of prescription tinted (as in sunglass tint) aviator high-index frames w/ lenses for about $110.
There was a site, myopticalshop.com that could do high-index rimless for $150, I haven’t checked in awhile, though.
[edit]
So, the rimless frames are $50 and 1.74 index lenses are an additional $129.
You can get polarized glasses from Amazon for $20.
Zenni gets you in the door with a low base price then slams you with the add ons.
If you have a reasonable Rx, Zinni are likely using finished lenses. Polarized have to been surfaced in the lab.
Ultimately even with insurance it is often cheaper to go outside of Luxottica's network, but many people don't even check and just assume that because they have reduced cost "insurance" that it will be cheaper to stay within Luxottica's spiderweb.
The way you solve this is to split up Luxottica via strong competition controls. Have one retail giant and one eye insurance company, not one monolith doing both.
Luxottica owns EyeMed, which isn't VSP.
Luxottica just purchased Essilor -- so, now, one company handles the insurance, frames, and lenses...turning it into a bigger monster.
This also already exists with companies like zenni optical.
See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-luxottica-own-80-of-t...
No mention that Luxottica merged with Essilor a year or two back. Essilor are mainly lenses, but also have a range of premium and designer frame brands they bought. EssilorLuxottica has a huge portion of the resulting market. No idea if it gets near or past 80% now, but they're a $50bn company.
This seems like smartnes.
Pretty much every employer vision plan I've had for the last 20 years has given its employees $150 credit toward frames. So now employees can opt for paying $29.99 out-of-pocket for Echo frames, instead of $150+ out-of-pocket for frames, since any frames worth putting on your face cost $300+.
The last time I got new glasses (a few months ago), the cheapest pair of frames in the shop was $450.
Frames and lenses are always covered with separate co-pays/co-insurance at every employer I've ever had.
There are online retailers with cheap, but also decent frames, for much less than what you are quoting.
It may be the case that you are much pickier than I am, or that the frames in the same price range don't fit you properly. But I have a feeling that you can get much better deals if you shop around. 450 for the cheapest frame is insane. I'll be re-evaluating the 'vision plan' I got in the open enrollment period, because the value proposition is not clear – they haven't even covered the costs at this lower price point.
People need to avoid Luxottica's retailers. That price is absurd. The insurance isn't saving you a dime, the amount you're paying after insurance "savings" is likely higher than you would pay outright elsewhere.
In other countries that I've lived (where you pay cash, no insurance) frames top out at $150~ equivalent (for branded/designer) and start under $30.
Yes, their ultra cheap frames aren't as nice as the $180 but $30 after insurance ones, but now I have a pair of glasses with different characteristics in the car, in my home, in my office, and in my gym locker. Previously I would use basically one pair to multitask it all because of the price.
I'm reaching this conclusion too.
I have a difficult prescription and my eyes are very important to me. I can't trust them to discounters.
I don't know where you got this odd idea about lens quality but it isn't factually supported. You can buy thinner and thicker lenses for additional cost, but both will be as accurate as the prescription is.
The lenses that you get from a discounter will match your prescription, but expensive shops can have differentiating features.
People who've only gotten cheap glasses/lenses don't even know how important it is. I get my frames from DITA (www.dita.com) and they've lasted me 5+ years, never bend, warp, etc. Lenses get replaced every 2 years.
In practice different materials of the same index can have significantly different abberation. When I very recently got work-optimized glasses from a local optician, I could sit down and compare the materials they could get. One of the 1.60 index materials (Hoya, I think) was as good as thicker lenses while another (Essilor?) would have given me noticeable fringing on a monitor.
Now try to get a place like Zenni to so much as tell you what they're selling.
The general trend is that higher-index materials tend to have lower Abbe numbers, but there are exceptions. Polycarbonate is a cheap and popular mid-index material that's widely recommended on the basis of its mechanical strength. Its index of refraction is 1.59 and its Abbe number is 30, but there are numerous materials with a similar index of refraction around 1.6 and substantially better Abbe numbers of 41-42, or materials with a significantly higher index of refraction (1.67) and Abbe numbers that are slightly better than polycarbonate.
Zenni and EyeBuyDirect don't want to promote awareness of chromatic abberation, but they do make it easy to know whether you're ordering polycarbonate, and they both have 1/6/1.61 index materials with better Abbe numbers than polycarbonate. Zenni uses one of the Mitsui MR materials for their 1.6 lenses.
Yes, for 2-3% of customers or something that may be relevant (strong enough prescriptions at the tail of the distribution or using glass).
Most of the glasses I get from Zenni cost about $30.
This lets you use Alexa without taking your phone out or wearing ear buds. If I liked Alexa and wore glasses, I could see myself being into this product. Even if I didn’t wear glasses, being a hardcore Alexa fan user might justify wearing “fake” glasses just for the convenience.
On Amazon’s end, it’s a smart move. If this product sticks in any way at all, they’ll have a platform to iterate on in the upcoming years - such as making more premium versions with cameras/display/AR/etc. Because this is such a basic product, it will likely not face the same kind of backlash as Google Glass did, and lets Amazon usher the age of face wearables in a much smoother way than Google’s attempt.
So again, I hate voice assistants with a passion and have no interest in this product, but I think this is a very clever product move from Amazon.
Whether you like it or not you will be in their product if people are walking around in public or at work while wearing these. Isn't the future great?
"Amazon open-ear technology directs sound to your ears, letting you discreetly access Alexa. With your ears uncovered, you’ll be able to hear without blocking out the world around you."
It is adding weight, complexity, and limiting choice to your eye-wear while effectively doing a similar thing to half a dozen wireless earbuds already on the market. It isn't really comparable to Google Glass, because Google Glass used projection onto the glasses themselves (creating a unique value).
Plus Amazon are trying to integrate with the US's predominant eye wear monopoly (via insurance/out-of-network frames) instead of just bypassing it and producing the lenses themselves. So you're paying $179.99 for empty frames and then untold amounts for the actual lenses, and trying to ingrate with an insurance system that's designed to benefit only Luxottica (via their stranglehold of both insurance companies AND lens producers).