Buying new glasses

My glasses broke…actually they were broken…by my one year old son. I wear contacts the majority of the time but I do like to have a pair of glasses to put on at night to give my eyes a break. 

My husband, during a shopping trip to LensCrafters in the mall, in which our one year old and four year old spent the majority of the time running through the store, screaming, taking every pair of glasses down to try on themselves and to sum it up, destroyed the place, suggested after looking at the $ 300.00 price tag attached to the pair of glasses that I “kind of liked”,  perhaps I look into one of those online glasses websites. His reasoning, besides the obvious wanting to end this horrible parenting experience and make everyone including the LensCrafters sales associates a lot happier, was they are all the same “made in China crap” anyway. 

Since attempting to focus on trying on glasses in the store was not going well (understatement) anyway I decided that it was an excellent idea. 

He and I both googled glasses sites and he stumbled across zennioptical.com. When I saw the prices I decided this was a scam. I proceeded to read many reviews and was pleasantly surprised to find that people loved them. 

I decided to give it a try. What did I have to lose? They had a pretty decent return policy. They would refund you a 100 percent store credit on your first pair of glasses.

At this season in my life picking out frames online is so much better then trying to choose them in the store. Honestly, I felt like this even before I had two kids destroying the place. In the store it’s so hard to really tell if something looks good and I always feel so awkward looking at myself in the store mirror or trying to take a selfie to get a good idea how it looks. 

Zenni has this cool thing where you can upload a photo of yourself and then virtually try on glasses. It was perfect, and hilarity ensued one Saturday evening for my husband and I as I “tried on” pretty much every pair they had. In the end I felt like I was able to pick out a pair that I was happy with using this tool. 

I had a few snafus here and there but when the final glasses came I was absolutely blown away. They were wonderful. The quality of the frames were just as good as the fancy Tiffany’s glasses I tried on at LensCrafters. The lens were perfect, crystal clear. The prescription was spot on. The fit was perfect. They were comfortable. They were so cute. I can honestly say these are the nicest glasses I’ve ever owned. I was sold. 

Some tips I have after completing the experience. 

1. The hardest part for me about ordering online glasses was measuring my pupillary distance. Zenni has a ruler online you can print off to do this. Make sure you follow the directions and change your printer settings. Measure yourself and then have someone else measure you. 

2. When picking out your frames my husband discovered that there are tons of YouTube videos of people wearing zennis glasses. They model them, tell you what they like and tell you the specific model number. This is how he found one of the pairs that I ended buying and loving. I hadn’t even considered it to begin with but it looked so great on the person in the video I decided to give it a try.  This can definitely be a good way to find a frame you like especially if you are super picky like me. 

3. When entering your glasses prescription check it 50 times. Then have someone else check it 50 times. Then check it one more time. I messed this up. I forgot to enter the – sign in front of my prescription. This wasn’t a problem because they were happy to exchange them for a new pair but I did have to end up paying shipping twice because They don’t reimburse shipping. Also shipping takes sometime, like two weeks to ship and in a world where we are all spoiled by Amazon prime free two day shipping this can feel like forever.  I ended up being without glasses for an extra month because of my error. 

3. Shipping is five bucks no matter how many pairs of glasses you buy. I ended up buying two pairs because depending on the frames you pick out it can cost almost as much for shipping as it does for the frames. 

So in the end the total cost for two pairs of glasses looked like this….

Glasses 1

Frame 6.99
Anti glare 5.00 (totally my preference, not a requirement)

Glasses 2
Frame 9.99
Anti glare 5.00

Shipping total 
5.00

Extra shipping cost because of my mistake
5.00 

Grand total for both glasses 36.98

I am so impressed. What is not to love? From the comfort of my home, while my children were asleep I got to carefully choose glasses, that were great quality, great price and have them mailed directly to my doorstep. I would highly recommend checking out zennioptical or one of the other online glasses stores the next time you are in need of glasses. I will never set foot into LensCrafters again and thankfully neither will  my children, which, lets be honest, I’m sure LensCrafters will appreciate.