[ElaineHN]

A post on RMC made me think to post this there ... and I thought it might be useful to someone here too.

In case you've never thought of it ... a frugal way to have prescription sunglasses (great if you absolutely have to have your prescription glasses to drive, or if you like to read at the beach or by the pool, or spend a lot of time on a boat, etc.) is to have your 'old' glasses tinted each time you buy new glasses.

As long as your prescription has only changed slightly (or not at all) and/or your glasses are not badly damaged (minor scratches don't seem to be a real problem) this works great for most poeple. My mom and aunts have done it for decades with no ill effects.

Usually optical places around here charge betweeen $8-$15 to put a sunglass tint on existing lenses. Not as cheap as cheap dollar-store sunglasses ... but much cheaper than brand new prescription sunglasses!

Elaine

[SavinMommy]

Great idea! Thanks OP!

[ElaineHN]

I've never personally ordered glasses on line, but my mother has been very happy with the glasses she ordered from http://www.39dollarglasses.com/ ... I'll have to send her a link to zennioptical.com so she can check them out too next time.

She was very skeptical of ordering glasses on-line at first especially since she needs a super strong prescription and has astigmatism and needs bifocals, etc. but she decided to order and see what she got. When the glasses arrived they were beautiful (frame-wise) and she took them to her eye doctor to have the prescription verified and they were correct. She's worn them for over a year now.

Of course feather-weight lens, no-line bifocals, etc. all cost extra and I think she wanted a particular frame, not one of the 'cheapy' ones ... so her's weren't $39... they ended up being well over $100. But that was still MUCH less than the $300+ she usually pends locally.

I guess if you have a very simple prescription, buying glasses anywhere is much less expensive than if you have a more complex one. I'm not quite ready to by my daughters glasses on line ... since she's so young and she has to have a strong prescription too. I'm worried that something wouldn't be right but she wouldn't realize it or know to tell us or that we wouldn't get the frame size/type quite right or some odd something ... but if I needed glasses myself, I wouldn't hesitate to order on-line.

[chamicha]

The address for Zenni is

27 Sunny Oaks Drive
San Rafael, Ca. 94903

so they're from California, not Canada.

39dollar glasses is from

Value Eyecare Network, Inc.
c/o 39DollarGlasses.com
P.O. Box 385
Holtsville, NY 11742

optical4less is from Hong Kong and goggles4u is from Hong Kong/India.

But the idea of tinting your old glasses is pretty good. I've been debating ordering from one of these places but I think I'll try op's idea first.