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 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.