Eye Care

<Moved from the Walmart Eyeglasses thread>

Reading through these posts is a little shocking, I must say. I called around town looking for the best eye exam cost ($55 at JC Penney), and then waited until the places were having sales. Just today I bought a pair of Dolce & Gabbana glasses from LensCrafters (single vision, plastic lenses) for $227. I also decided to buy a pair of glasses at JCP and spent $190 on frames with polycarbonate lenses. I picked more expensive frames at both stores, but LC was having a 30% off frames sale and JCP was having a 60% off frames/lenses sale. I feel like Wal-Mart shouldn't be in the same price market as designer frames since their glasses aren't really THAT great.

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I appreciate that you mention JC Penney, as I haven't really explored that option. I've seen the ads and they do seem to have good prices. I'll need to explore what they have to offer more and share on this site.

I moved the thread from the Walmart thread, as your comments didn't really seem to fit so much there as much as deserving of its own thread. I also think that Walmart comes in at a lower price than what you bought at Lenscrafters and JC Penney, although you do mention getting nicer frames at JC Penney.

I find that overall, Lenscrafters is not that cheap. Even with their 30% discount, you can probably find better prices for similar frames elsewhere. The advantage that I find with Lenscrafters is that you can potentially get your glasses back in a short time, especially if you have a straight forward prescription, and they also have good customer service compared to many other places. The biggest downside of Lenscrafters is that I find them to be overpriced for what you are getting. Also, I find that getting the anti-reflective coatings can be very expensive at Lenscrafters, compared to the other discount places. While some people don't care for anti-reflective coatings, it has become a necessity for me, as I've gotten too used to them.

I'm guessing that JC Penney's prices are more similar to Wal-Mart or Target, but I'll have to explore that further. Walmart does have a slight range in the frames avaialble, but they do seem to cater more towards the lower prices. I would think overall, it would be similar at JC Penney.

I did post some comments in a thread a while back where someone was looking to buy designer frames online. I don't know which particular model of Dolce & Gabbana glasses you bought, but you can find them at a discount online.