Dr. Min has seen many instances of patients purchasing eyewear online, and will explain some of the issues he has seen with some of these purchases.
First of all I want to say that our patients are free to purchase their eyewear wherever they would like. They can do it in our office, they can do it in a retail optical store, and they can try to do it on the internet. One problem with the internet, that I don’t think people are aware of, is that glasses require many complexities, and different measurements are taken to provide a quality pair of lenses to fulfill someone’s prescription. Internet sites are often anonymous; you don’t know where they are located or the quality of the lenses and the materials being used. In fact, a recent Consumer Reports article reported that over 40% of online eyewear is actually made incorrectly. The other issue is finding frames to fit a person’s face. This can be difficult sometimes even in our office. Many times people try on 30, 40 or even 50 frames to find one that fits properly. So I think it’s very difficult to order frames and lenses sight-unseen from the internet. Another issue is, what if you have problems with this eyewear? How are you going to resolve those issues? in our office if you have a problem with eyewear that we have provided you can come in and have our opticians troubleshoot those problems. We can re-check measurements and we can recheck your prescription. With online eyewear a lot of that care and problem solving goes out the window.