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serynIt doesn't feel like I've been busy, but the open tabs in all my browser windows belie that.
--- The promised story about buying glasses ----
I need new glasses. It used to be when people's eyes got old they got bifocals, then trifocals to help with the disparate correction needed for near, mid, and far distance viewing. Now they have "progressive" lenses. This is better because it requires less training on the part of the user and inherently has that mid-range correction.
Now, progressive lenses are expensive. Better progressive lenses, which have significantly less distortion, are even more expensive. To keep in mind here, Lenscrafters and their ilk do not have lens-quality options. In order to get the lightweight polycarbonate lenses with the correction levels I need, one store is looking to charge me $600. Just for the lenses.
So I wasn't thrilled, but mostly I didn't particularly like the frames. They had only options that are flimsy and insubstantial or things that are straight out of the late 60s-early 70s. The time before anyone understood the concept of subtlety and the fashion was to convey that anyone who needed glasses should not ever have a single date let alone romantic happiness. Listen fashion trend setters. If it was too ugly even for disco, it's too damned ugly to bring back.
This particular specialty optical place has another store with different frames available. It was on my way home. (Yelp only knew about one of the branches.) Anyway. I stopped in and the people there looked at my prescription and listened to my concerns. They agreed I wanted progressive lenses (not a surprise) and agreed that I need the high quality lenses. Then they talked about material.
Apparently there are different kinds of lens durability. Standard lenses have basic impact and scratch resistance. After that, the improvements are one or the other. So you can get a high-impact-resistance lens or you can get a lens that's moderately better at scratch resistance but which might actually shatter from a strong impact. I am not an idiot. I am aware that I am not very adult about my body consciousness. I hit myself in the face with a car door on vacation. (It was a rental car; I just expected it to have the same trajectory as my car's door.) I dropped a lamp on my glasses the second week I had them. There's absolutely no question that I need the impact resistance. If they get scratched, I could cope. I'd get a temporary pair from one of the 1 hour places, and thus I'd be out a thousand bucks or so. But it's not like being in the hospital and having your eye reconstructed is so much fun you wouldn't pay $1k to avoid it.
But what bothers me is that same store, different branch, they recommended different lens parameters. So clearly something isn't being conveyed.
But it's not like you can go in somewhere and say, "What's the sum?" No one ever gives you the total price until you pick out the features you want. And somehow they keep recommending features that are expensive. I want a matrix of prices. Black out the squares where options are incompatible. There should be a legend/coloration explaining which things are quality changes, which are feature changes within a category. But I should be able to see what it would cost me for the varying degrees of durability and the varying degrees of lens focal quality and what any and all extras would cost.
When I asked what this would cost with a specific set of frames, I was told: "Your frames are $300, with the lenses we talked about, that's $600/$700, if you went with the sunglasses clip ons, that's $250/$200, all our lenses come with polished edges, anti-scratch, anti-UV, and anti-glare." Of course all polycarbonate lenses come inherently with the anti-UV and anti-scratch and it's been my experience that anti-glare so easy to scratch that it's almost better not to bother. I don't really care about polished edges unless I were getting rimless glasses and honestly, I'm too abusive to my glasses to think that's a good idea. But when I looked at them and said, "So this is going to cost me $1150/$1200." The optician said, "It's $x and $y and $z all together." I said, "Yes, $x+y+z is $total." Them: "*blank stare*" I just don't like that kind of attitude. Then they asked if I'd donate my old glasses to the Lions Club. Let's see. It's going to take about 3 weeks to get my glasses, I'm going to a) not have any glasses for that entire time and not be able to drive to pick them up, or b) keep them myself until I'm actually done with them.
I went to the optical place recommended by my eye doctor and found really nice frames, but they couldn't explain anything about my lens options. Of course since their variant is half the price of the other place, maybe I'd rather not have the explanation as long as I'm getting something decent and suitable.
-------------------
When I bought my car, the salesman kept saying that he could add in ____ and my payments would remain the same. He would NOT give me the total the car was going to cost. I should have told him I was going to be buying the car directly and say "If that can be added without increasing the one single payment, then we can talk." Instead there was some funny business where they send you to a back room while some bruiser guy goes over your financial obligations and tries to sell you more shit that "won't increase your payment!" but only adds on 6 more payments where they don't actually tell you that up front. So you're thinking you have a 4 year car loan, you agree to payments of $400/month. They say you can have a fancy stereo added without increasing your payments, but suddenly it's not 48 months, but 50 months of payments and you leave thinking you got a deal but you just got bamboozled.
No one ever tells you what the total price of that car is with or without those options. In addition you're expected to bargain. And the salemen are more willing to bargain on less popular models or at certain points in their sales cycle/career. So there were three variants of my car, but I got a better price on the midlevel one than I would have ended up paying for the cheaper one. But there wasn't any way to have known that in advance. If when I was asked I'd settled on the supposedly cheaper car, I would have paid more. Overall, car buying was this exercise in frustration because you know the dealer is out to cheat you in any way he possibly can while staying inside the law. Part of that methodology is to never tell you the sum total price at the current state. Another part is to tell you a more expensive feature is better, whether you would find it so or not.
So I'm shopping for eyeglasses. Everyone tells me the more expensive features are better. No one is willing to give me a real price, and often times the mid-level option comes standard with something I'd have to pay extra for if I bought the cheaper-seeming variant.
At least when you're shopping at specialty stores, there aren't any coupons or sales or promotions. I hated trying to shop at Lenscrafters during a sale. They barely have enough staff to help people on a normal day. If there's a sale, your glasses will be made wrong and you will be rushed into a decision. They say they're happy to fix it, but you know that's not going to be true if the sale is still on. They already have your money and no amount of individual ill-will will change their market dominance.
--- The promised story about buying glasses ----
I need new glasses. It used to be when people's eyes got old they got bifocals, then trifocals to help with the disparate correction needed for near, mid, and far distance viewing. Now they have "progressive" lenses. This is better because it requires less training on the part of the user and inherently has that mid-range correction.
Now, progressive lenses are expensive. Better progressive lenses, which have significantly less distortion, are even more expensive. To keep in mind here, Lenscrafters and their ilk do not have lens-quality options. In order to get the lightweight polycarbonate lenses with the correction levels I need, one store is looking to charge me $600. Just for the lenses.
So I wasn't thrilled, but mostly I didn't particularly like the frames. They had only options that are flimsy and insubstantial or things that are straight out of the late 60s-early 70s. The time before anyone understood the concept of subtlety and the fashion was to convey that anyone who needed glasses should not ever have a single date let alone romantic happiness. Listen fashion trend setters. If it was too ugly even for disco, it's too damned ugly to bring back.
This particular specialty optical place has another store with different frames available. It was on my way home. (Yelp only knew about one of the branches.) Anyway. I stopped in and the people there looked at my prescription and listened to my concerns. They agreed I wanted progressive lenses (not a surprise) and agreed that I need the high quality lenses. Then they talked about material.
Apparently there are different kinds of lens durability. Standard lenses have basic impact and scratch resistance. After that, the improvements are one or the other. So you can get a high-impact-resistance lens or you can get a lens that's moderately better at scratch resistance but which might actually shatter from a strong impact. I am not an idiot. I am aware that I am not very adult about my body consciousness. I hit myself in the face with a car door on vacation. (It was a rental car; I just expected it to have the same trajectory as my car's door.) I dropped a lamp on my glasses the second week I had them. There's absolutely no question that I need the impact resistance. If they get scratched, I could cope. I'd get a temporary pair from one of the 1 hour places, and thus I'd be out a thousand bucks or so. But it's not like being in the hospital and having your eye reconstructed is so much fun you wouldn't pay $1k to avoid it.
But what bothers me is that same store, different branch, they recommended different lens parameters. So clearly something isn't being conveyed.
But it's not like you can go in somewhere and say, "What's the sum?" No one ever gives you the total price until you pick out the features you want. And somehow they keep recommending features that are expensive. I want a matrix of prices. Black out the squares where options are incompatible. There should be a legend/coloration explaining which things are quality changes, which are feature changes within a category. But I should be able to see what it would cost me for the varying degrees of durability and the varying degrees of lens focal quality and what any and all extras would cost.
When I asked what this would cost with a specific set of frames, I was told: "Your frames are $300, with the lenses we talked about, that's $600/$700, if you went with the sunglasses clip ons, that's $250/$200, all our lenses come with polished edges, anti-scratch, anti-UV, and anti-glare." Of course all polycarbonate lenses come inherently with the anti-UV and anti-scratch and it's been my experience that anti-glare so easy to scratch that it's almost better not to bother. I don't really care about polished edges unless I were getting rimless glasses and honestly, I'm too abusive to my glasses to think that's a good idea. But when I looked at them and said, "So this is going to cost me $1150/$1200." The optician said, "It's $x and $y and $z all together." I said, "Yes, $x+y+z is $total." Them: "*blank stare*" I just don't like that kind of attitude. Then they asked if I'd donate my old glasses to the Lions Club. Let's see. It's going to take about 3 weeks to get my glasses, I'm going to a) not have any glasses for that entire time and not be able to drive to pick them up, or b) keep them myself until I'm actually done with them.
I went to the optical place recommended by my eye doctor and found really nice frames, but they couldn't explain anything about my lens options. Of course since their variant is half the price of the other place, maybe I'd rather not have the explanation as long as I'm getting something decent and suitable.
-------------------
When I bought my car, the salesman kept saying that he could add in ____ and my payments would remain the same. He would NOT give me the total the car was going to cost. I should have told him I was going to be buying the car directly and say "If that can be added without increasing the one single payment, then we can talk." Instead there was some funny business where they send you to a back room while some bruiser guy goes over your financial obligations and tries to sell you more shit that "won't increase your payment!" but only adds on 6 more payments where they don't actually tell you that up front. So you're thinking you have a 4 year car loan, you agree to payments of $400/month. They say you can have a fancy stereo added without increasing your payments, but suddenly it's not 48 months, but 50 months of payments and you leave thinking you got a deal but you just got bamboozled.
No one ever tells you what the total price of that car is with or without those options. In addition you're expected to bargain. And the salemen are more willing to bargain on less popular models or at certain points in their sales cycle/career. So there were three variants of my car, but I got a better price on the midlevel one than I would have ended up paying for the cheaper one. But there wasn't any way to have known that in advance. If when I was asked I'd settled on the supposedly cheaper car, I would have paid more. Overall, car buying was this exercise in frustration because you know the dealer is out to cheat you in any way he possibly can while staying inside the law. Part of that methodology is to never tell you the sum total price at the current state. Another part is to tell you a more expensive feature is better, whether you would find it so or not.
So I'm shopping for eyeglasses. Everyone tells me the more expensive features are better. No one is willing to give me a real price, and often times the mid-level option comes standard with something I'd have to pay extra for if I bought the cheaper-seeming variant.
At least when you're shopping at specialty stores, there aren't any coupons or sales or promotions. I hated trying to shop at Lenscrafters during a sale. They barely have enough staff to help people on a normal day. If there's a sale, your glasses will be made wrong and you will be rushed into a decision. They say they're happy to fix it, but you know that's not going to be true if the sale is still on. They already have your money and no amount of individual ill-will will change their market dominance.
