Quote from: PEANUTUT on Today at 03:04:27 AM

Quote from: KARSASA on Today at 02:57:21 AM

I was a certified optician and ran a lens lab for Pearle Vision in the early 2000's.

Our most expensive frames, excluding the weird Armani shit we carried, cost us $20-$30 per frame. They sold for $200-$400 depending. Our cheapest frames cost us $2-3 each, and none sold for less $50.

The lenses, that's a lot of markup. I started in a brand new store, and we had a brand new lab full of Essilor hardware. Latest and greatest at the time. Standard lenses, nothing special just the standard CR32 plastic in a typical prescription? They cost $2 or so and we charged $40 each. So a "basic" pair of glasses cost us $8 in materials and was sold for $130.

The worst markup was on the high end lenses. At Pearle (at that time) the top end were the MTPROA lenses. Micro-thin polycarbonate aspheric lenses with anti-scratch and anti-reflective coating.

Basically, if you have a strong prescription (+- ~3 or so) aspheric can make a much thinner and lighter lens that can give you the same vision a thicker traditional lens does. Add in anti-scratch ($) anti-reflective ($) and the cost of the lenses alone were around $400 for the customer. Pearle Vision's cost for the lense blanks? $23.

The entire cost of the Essilor equipment in the lens lab at my location was only ~$250000, and we regularly sold $800+ glasses.

And, the part that I really hate, Mainecare (Maine medicare) at the time wouldn't provide coverage for anti-scratch coating (it was technically an "upgrade"). We couldn't buy lense blanks that didn't have it. My instructions were to strip the anti-scratch coating when making lenses for Mainecare clients. I ran the lab. Guess what I never did.

I'm a -8.25 and at almost 40 years old, I've only now hit the place where I can pay for my glasses in one payment. I'm even more grateful that my parents could afford to pay for my glasses as a kid. I don't think I got plastic lenses until I was in high school. Glass all the way.

My eyes are even worse than yours and I’ve had really good luck with Zenni. Even with high index lenses, all the extra coatings, and transitions lenses my last pair only cost about $110.