EPTA few years later, as my old glasses had broken, I decided to look up that store again (zenni optical). I always used to be stuck going to our local glasses store where the prices for glasses are outrageous; I'd always ask what the cheap options are, and those still were over $100; it never made sense to me how something as simple as glasses couldn't be made more cheaply with modern technology.
I know online retailers are of variable quality, so I did some research first. Most importantly, they still existed; simply having been in existence for years is a useful sign. Then I checked the better business bureau, and they were rated there, and it looked like complaints got settled reasonably. I did a little more browsing on the web to check on people's experience with them, and everything checked out.
So I went to the site and looked around. There's a nice feature to upload a picture of your face to see how a frame would probably look. So over a couple weeks I would look over the frame options and see what I might like, I aimed for the cheap options, since most of them looked ok to me, and as I still wasn't sure about this company, I'd rather not risk a loss on anything big.
You do have to make some careful measurements of your facial features to make sure the frames are of the right size, and for some details of the lenses; as well as making sure you have the prescription and can transfer the info right. How to do those was well covered, though it took a bit before I was satisfied I'd gotten everything right and was willing to actually order.
There were some options on lenses that I was unsure about. There were some coating options for reducing UV, and for having the glasses better resist getting oil and fingerprints on them; one major question for the lenses was what refraction index to use: that index basically covers how thin the lenses are, and how much distortion there is around the edges. Higher index is better, but costs more. As these were test glasses, I opted for a lesser index, and none of the other options.
Without options, and using the less expensive frames, the glasses are remarkably cheap, being $7 for the most basic frames (which tend to look ugly) and $12 for some moderately better frames. Shipping cost is the same regardless of order size, and I had only narrowed down my frame options to 3, so I decided to give it a try and order all 3 and see how they worked when I got them.
In time they arrived, and I gave each of them a day to see how they were. I ultimately settled on one of the $12 ones as my glasses of choice. Since then they've been perfectly satisfactory as glasses.
They do get a bit dirty at times (as all glasses do); and the refraction index is very noticeable on them, since they're large frames. The other two the refraction issue is enough to really be quite a nuisance (at least until your eyes acclimate).
When I next buy glasses, I will probably get one main pair, that will use higher quality lenses with some of the options, one spare frame for those (spare frames are half the base price, and wouldn't include costs for high quality lenses, so that should be quite cheap; and it's usually the frames on my glasses that break rather than the lenses).
And one or two backup pairs that have minimal options and use cheap ugly frames; just so if I lose my glasses I have an immediate backup onhand (and at $7 each it's really affordable to just leave one in a suitcase and one in the car, that reminds me, I should put one of the others I bought into the car as a backup)
I'm quite satisfied and have told my friends and family about it.
Though I still wonder why so many eye shops charge such outrageous prices when it's possible to manufacture glasses so cheaply. It seems odd that the discrepancy is SO large in prices.
I've yet to encounter any problems with the online glasses that might explain it; so I simply can't account for it.
