Eye Glasses

So my wife and I went to milk some of the vision insurance I had at my previous employeer. We went to Lenscrafts and got an eye exam, contacts, frames and lenses. We had pretty a fair discount schedule with our insurance and we paid... I'll just say too much... a week's salary.

This struck me as just wrong... and I happened to take a trip over to life hacker and saw an article about buying eye glasses online. What I've come to realize is that people in the 3rd world wear glasses. They've got to be paying somewhere between $10-$20 a pair.

Interesting things to note:

• Lenscrafters, Pearl Vision, Sears and Target are all supplied by the same Italian eyeglasses manufacturer - Luxottica.
• Some optomitrists can buy their 'designer' frames and lenses wholesale for $6-$10 and then sell them for up to 1,000% markup.
• Lens coatings cost almost nothing to apply and charge clients up to $50 for the service.

Anyway, I think I'm going to do some shopping... Lens Crafters has a 30 day unconditional guarentee. We'll see what happens!