Spectacles claim

48, what did you go dressed as then ?

I've never really liked that phrase. Much better would be "you never get more than you pay for."

Unfortunately, IME, all too often the quality of the workmanship etc bears little relationship to the amount you pay once you reach a threshold.

If you pay 20GBP for a pair of glasses then you expect them to be cheap materials, mass produced, and the optician probably isn't going to spend all that much time making sure they're adjusted precisely to your face.

Once you're up in the 100GBP range you expect them to be decent quality and you expect the optician to make any minor adjustments that might be needed.

But go even higher and things don't improve and often get worse again (I can't speak for specs in particular.) I don't exactly know why that is.

My partner gets all the "house" magazines. Occasionally you'll get an article where someone has paid an astronomical sum on say a kitchen (100K+ sort of money[1]) but even when you look at the picture you can see that things aren't quite right - e.g. worktop joins are visible, door handles aren't quite straight or aligned sort of thing.

Tim.

[1] Usually these are large kitchens so you expect them to be expensive but even so I reckon they're paying 3-5 times what a "good quality" kitchen should cost.

He is obviously buying the wrong mags....

I expect the lenses to be exactly the same for £20 frames as those used for £120 frames. The only difference is cosmetic.

You can also spend more money on lenses (coating, tint, material, etc) but even then they should be independent of the frames they're going into. The centering of the lenses and so on you would expect to be correct unless perhaps for a £20 frame they would just guess the inter-pupilar distance (or whatever it's called) instead of measuring it.

I understood spectacles all cost about the same (someone let slip once that each pair cost them about 50p), but they have a range of prices, with more attractive pairs costing more, so that they can have a viable business. (When you think about it, a spectacle frame costs about the same as bike, which is far more complex.)

The same is true of lots of things, such as kitchens. Worktops are all different kinds and prices but, unless you're to going do Morris dancing on them instead of just slicing bread, just about anything will do the job. With the cheaper product having the huge advantage of being to replace it for a brand-new one every year or so.

It`s the standard civil service allowance AIUI. Normally I buy 3-4 pairs of glasses from Hong Kong and have lots of spare pairs all over the place for less then the cost of a single pair from the UK, but that doesn`t seem to be an option for me if I want to claim for the glasses. Seems perverse that ther`s no room in the system to let someone claim less money for more pairs of glasses :-)

I paid £35 for a pair of the unbreakable flexible glasses a few years back. Ok they where delivered from Hong Kong, but it shows how many extra costs are loaded onto a pair of glasses.

Yes, there's an old joke about opticians and how they charge:

1st line: "These ones are £100" if the customer doesn't flinch ... 2nd line " ... for the frames" if they're still happy 3rd line " ... and £100 for the lenses" If they still accept the price" 4th line " .... each!"

8-) Good one, with some truth in it.

The vet is another bottomless pit of expense for those who are gullible. When our old dog was becoming crippled with arthritis and the vet was offering tablets which she would spit out with a sneer, and expensive regular injections, I quietly asked him to let me know when the cost of the course of treatment exceeded the cost of putting her out of her misery permanently. After two injections failed to give her relief, we came to an agreement.

Hong Kong may be cheap for On Line shopping but not in its shops. When there some years ago I priced glasses in opticians in Mon Kok well away from the tourist areas and they were as expensive as in the U.K. On the other hand in NYC I went to a shop in Delancy Street and got two pairs at an amazingly low price when the Pound was high. Derek

"Simon Finnigan" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net...

I went to Scrivens opticians. The eye test seemed quite thorough and like most opticians she tried to persuade me to have varifocals that I have always resisted before. I decided to go for the varifocal until the dispenser started running down the cheaper lenses and was pushing 350 ones plus whatever the frames cost. I then said that I would just have bifocals but could not find a frame that I liked from their stock. I then looked at frames in several opticians before ending up in Boots where a very bright and knowledgeable girl spent a lot of time advising me on reasons for various frame types that suited my thickish lenses and shape of face. She then said that I could join their over 60's club and get a discount on both the lenses and the frames. I even reduced the cost more by buying a frame on special offer. When I get the glasses I cannot see properly with them. Boots confirm that they have made them to the prescription and advise me to go back to Scrivens to have my eyes retested. Scrivens test my eyes again and adhere to their original prescription. I go back to Boots who test my eyes and come up with a very different prescription not much different to the one I had prior to going to Scrivens for my first eye test. Boots make lenses to their prescription and I can see perfectly. Boots then get the cost of their wasted lenses and the cost of my extra eye tests back from Scrivens.When I go into Scrivens to tell them that everything had been sorted to my satisfaction I have to wait until they finish dealing with another customer who they have supplied spectacles that he cannot see with:-). I will certainly go back to Boots again. Derek.

That is obviously your decision, but I`d still maintain that ANY company who actively damage a customers eyes, and then try to ignore the problem no matter how far up the management tree you climb, is one to avoid. Bad glasses give you a headache, bad contact lenses change the shape of your eyes and hurt a hell of a lot more.