I've heard ...

Heard from whom?

  I know a lot of them advertise identical quality
  but did you ever confirm that to be the case?

You can choose what types of lenses you want. Zenni, for example, offers multiple lens options, some of which are from specific brands.

https://www.zennioptical.com/glasses-lenses

When you buy glasses from a bricks and mortar optician, you're getting whatever bog-standard lenses they sell, unless they specifically mention they're high index, or have some specific feature/coating, or are from some specific manufacturer.

Just like when you buy glasses online.

There are definitely differences in lens quality, but the available range is just as wide in retail stores as it is online.

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.

> They also claim to use custom technology

Can I get them with a protective undercoating and extended warranty?

> 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?

How do you know you're getting it from the brick and mortar?

Presuming that they have multiple different lenses in stock you can compare them side by side visually?

You can wet them, shine a flashlight, put them under the sun for transition lenses, etc...

Not foolproof, but it would make it harder to substitute the lower end lenses, 3 coatings vs 2 coating would likely be noticeable.

8 coatings vs 7 coatings might not be.

So for the mid range and above it probably doesn't make sense to discount shop at all. Your entirely trusting the brand reputation or shop reputation on whether they will deliver.

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?

Well that’s why I mentioned in-store testing would likely only be useful for low end lenses.

For mid range to high end lenses it would probably be impossible to confirm the actual layer count without destructive testing.

Of course it would be reputation and gut-feel-perception based for most buyers in any case.

However, for the higher end stuff, gut-feel-perception probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Human eyes can’t perceive the strength of lamination between layers, for example.

So it would be entirely reputation based at the higher end.

Which probably explains why high end glasses are vastly more expensive then Warby Parker and other discount places…

What a weird argument. Obviously a company can go n-layers deep when it comes to misdirection, but I'd say going to a store to physically inspect what you're getting is a much better option than blindly trusting everything they tell you.

In a store you can compare things side by side. If you order something, you get what you get and have no frame of reference.

I can personally attest to this. Warby Parker lenses delaminated quickly. Measured in weeks.

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...