i've spent the last couple of months trying to get the best bang for my buck on a new pair of glasses, without insurance. i thought i would compile a short helpful post on the resources i came across while i searched.
- if you are not that picky and you have a low to moderate prescription, your best bet is absolutely going to be zenni optical. even higher-powered prescriptions are $75 for 1.74-index single-vision lenses, and if you get all the bells and whistles plus their bargain-bin frames you're still looking at around $100. down side: no indication of whether they roll & polish thick lenses, which i'm assuming means they don't.
- if you are picky (or have an unusual face shape that demands uncommon sizes), you probably won't find frames any cheaper than ebay. i was able to get a lovely pair of frames with magnetic clip-on sunglasses included for $15, free shipping.
- the absolute cheapest option for lenses that i was able to find is selectspecs.com, which offered 1.74 index lenses with AR, UV, and scratch protection coatings for $95.62 total. again no mention of roll & polish options, though, and they are located in the UK so you not only have to pay about $12 for return shipping (if you're in the US), you also have to pay that much to ship your frames there, and the turnaround time from leaving your hands to coming back is probably going to be around a month.
- second-cheapest option is either US-based 39dollarglasses.com, which is about $105 for 1.67-index lenses, polishing & shipping included; or myeyewear2go.com (i don't actually know if they offer plastic/polycarbonate lenses only, but they do offer lenses only for high-index). myeyewear2go ranges from about $75 for 1.67-index (AR coating alone is $40, which was the priciest of the sites that sold it separately, UV & scratch protection were $10 each) to $130 for 1.74, but they also have an intermediate 1.7 index option and they go all the way up to 1.9 index glass lenses ($300).
- if you don't want to ship your frames somewhere yourself, costco is most likely the cheapest BUT both pearle vision and america's best will price-match costco. i ended up using america's best because costco wouldn't accept frames with rhinestones on them and pearle vision could only promise to "try" to price match, whereas AB just called up costco and got a quote over the phone and matched it right there. costco usually quotes a 7-10 day turnaround on lenses while AB takes 2 weeks, maybe less if you're lucky. america's best also has some pretty impressive deals on complete sets if you just want to one-stop-shop it and you have a less severe prescription.
i did some searching here as part of my process in finding the best price and found that a lot of these options weren't mentioned, so i hope this helps someone else like me get the cheapest glasses possible. :)
May 02, 2017 at 10:17AM
