This weekend, we passed two busted water mains, in two different parts of town: Forest Hill Avenue, beyond Stratford Hills (of course), and East Broad near the I-95 on ramp.
Oddly enough, not in Church Hill. Lucky us.
For now, anyway.
The adventure with offshoring my eyeglass purchases continues. The process, it is not always perfect, but still a reasonable way to go.
I got a new prescription back in April and ordered up a couple pairs from Zenni. Zenni is maybe getting swamped with its own success, because it took almost a month for the glasses to arrive, not two weeks like before. The lenses had the antireflective coating on only one side, not both, and once you're used to the anti-reflective coating, there's no going back. So the glasses went back. I called Zenni and explained the problem, got a reference number to include with the eyeglasses, and shipped them off to their California address. They replaced the eyeglasses, but it took another month. I neglected to ask them to reimburse me for postage, so I don't know whether they would have. The replacement pairs are fine, though I don't think I'll bother with photochromic lenses again. Maybe higher-end lenses are better? These ones from Zenni only darken under direct sunlight and I keep my face out of direct sunlight, so these aren't much good as sunglasses. I think these lenses are of a different (probably cheaper) material from the photochromic lenses ordered by Oz and my mother last year.
While I was waiting for those glasses, I figured I'd try another retailer and did a little research online. Lots of other consumers are buying glasses online and reporting their (generally good) experiences: here (via), here, and here. One enterprising soul has even created a website just for this purpose: Eyeglass Retailer Reviews (Note: Coupon codes!)
I checked out a few different places. Most of the other retailers cost more than Zenni, but some have higher quality lens options and let you set up a customer profile with your prescription saved so you don't have to re-enter it every time and for every pair of glasses you order. You can also set up prescription profiles for multiple family members.
I ordered a pair of glasses from Optical4Less for about $129: progressive lenses, anti-reflective coating, gold-rimmed. These took two weeks to arrive. I love the frames and the higher quality lenses are nice, but the prescription seemed off. I carried them in to the eye doctor. The prescription was fine, but according to the magic eyeglass-reading machine, they had used a +2.0 additive power for the progressive part instead of +1.5 as prescribed.
I contacted Optical4Less through their trouble ticket system (associated with my customer profile). They offered to inspect the glasses and replace the lenses if they found that the additive power was wrong, but I had to send the glasses to them. In Hong Kong. They don't have a US presence.
I decided not to pursue it further, mostly because the glasses are fine for distance vision and I decided that I hate progressive lenses anyway. I'm using my old glasses for reading.
My eye doctor didn't look too thrilled when I told him that I got my glasses mail order. He said, "I'm surprised the mail order places don't have more trouble." I thought, but did not say, "Hey, people are just happy that they can buy glasses and groceries." He did point out that you don't get the vertical optical center measurement when you don't buy your glasses in the traditional way. (The pupillary distance measurement is used to determine the horizontal alignment of the optical centers of the lenses. The vertical OC measurement has to be taken with the actual frames on your face.) Thus far, I've found the vertical OCs to be close enough that a precise vertical OC measurement would not be worth the 1000% markup.
So, after all this, do I still think buying eyeglasses online is a good idea?
First of all, I am not inclined to drop a whole load of cash on optics unless the words "constant aperture zoom" figure strongly. (Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8, for example, or maybe the rumored Nikkor 24-85mm f/4. The rumored Nikkor 24-135mm f/3.5-5.6 sounds pretty cool too.)
Also, I like the luxury of having many pairs of glasses. I have my old glasses for reading glasses: a pair at work, a pair at the Alexandria apartment, a pair in Richmond. I have the nice gold-rimmed pair with the too-strong additive power (which, at the rate my eyes are wearing out thanks to my job, I will need the extra power in less than a year anyway). I have a super-cute pair of single-vision glasses I wear most of the time. (Really, I look like a cute mad scientist. More people smile at me when I wear those glasses. Maybe I just look funny?) Yes, a few pairs along the way didn't work out, but all these glasses total up to about the cost of one pair bought in the usual way.
So, yes, despite the quality control issues, I am still buying my glasses online. I've got yet another pair on order. (Okay, so I'm with glasses like some people are with shoes. But still!)