GlassesUSA.com gave me the opportunity to see if they could satisfy by vision needs. I’ve been a customer of Visionworks since I was a kid so I figured, Why not see how they compare?
To do this review as honestly as I can, I will not be using discounts or promo codes of any kind. We are going with the “no sale” method here for a clear comparison.
Here is a breakdown of the cost and what you get using a set of frames that both sellers offer and their most comparable lenses.
WAIT! What if I have insurance?
Well here is where it gets slippery. GlassesUSA is considered an out of network provider for most insurance companies. Depending on your insurance agency though you could get reimbursed for the cost. GlassesUSA tries to make the process easy for you by providing the form you need for reimbursement on their website.
My insurance won’t pay for both contacts and glasses, so I worked the system and bought my contacts through Visionworks and I bought my glasses from GlassesUSA. Even if I didn’t wear contacts, due to my prescription and needing the super thin lens, GlassesUSA was still cheaper than using my insurance at Visionworks.
Quality testing
The only way I can tell my GlassesUSA pair apart from my Visionworks pair is the digital blocker (it has a slight tint when you hold it up to the light). In the image above you can see it (the pink glare). When getting my son’s glasses fitted at Visionworks, they offered to clean mine as well and the digital blocker in the light threw the gentleman helping us off. He thought it was pretty cool.
Customer Service
I wish I could say this is where GlassesUSA.com has a clean sweep over the competition, but that’s not the case.
When I set out on this review I didn’t plan on testing out the 14-day no questions asked return policy, but the frames I originally grabbed ended up being too tight on my head and hurt me after a few hours of wear.
Here’s a breakdown in the return policy procedure.
- Request the return slip.
- Return your glasses.
- Wait for replacement
The new glasses will not ship without them having received the return pair. I have a problem with this because what if the person doing the return has no other pair of glasses? They’re sending in the only pair they have only to wait for the replacement to come. This was my case and I ended up using my expensive daily contacts while I waited for my replacement glasses.
After contacting customer support via e-mail, I received my return label and sent them the name of the new frame I wanted. They accepted the change and sent me a confirmation e-mail that my glasses were in production.
Except they weren’t.
Long story short, I went without my glasses for close to 15 days because of a mix up in them wanting my prescription a second time. And because they are located on the other side of the globe, e-mail response times were less than spectacular. If you want a fast response, the only solution is to call.
VisionWorks has always had great customer service. They’re patient with my son who has severe focusing issues and can’t sit still for a glasses fitting to save his life. When I took him recently to get his glasses looked at, they were helpful in helping me get a better fit with mine, despite the fact that I didn’t buy them in store. Service like that I appreciate.
In the end, I had to weigh everything and see if online purchasing was worth it.
In my case, I have to say despite the minor setbacks of getting the glasses in a timely manner, it was still worth the price break to use GlassesUSA.com. I respect the customer service at my local Visionworks and for my son, who is a bit harder to fit for glasses, I’ll still be making my yearly visit up there. For my husband and me, I can’t justify going to Visionworks when the savings with GlassesUSA is so significant.
Disclaimer: GeekMom received review samples of these services.
Something doesn’t seem right about the “thickness” numbers – is this supposed to be index of refraction?
Hey Dakster Sullivan!
The stronger the prescription the higher the lens index needs to be for us to be able to craft the lens.
Meaning that if your RX is in that range, you need to select that package no matter what, as otherwise it would be impossible for us to produce those lenses.
That is kind of confusing. Both websites list their thickness the same way without any explanation as to what that actually means. When I look at GlassesUSA website on their lenses this is what it tells me in more depth on the thinnest lens they offer “Up to 35% thinner than the basic 1.5 index lenses; these are an optimal choice for moderate to high prescriptions ranging from -8.00 to +6.00.”
The index of a refraction is a measurement of how much a lens bends light. The higher the number is, the thinner the lenses will be. I wasn’t trying to be nitpicky, but your table seem to be implying that the higher numbers were thicker lenses, but the opposite is actually true. They are not going to list an actual thickness (in millimeters) for the lenses on these websites because it also depends on the power of the lens, the size and shape of the frames, etc.