Why buying prescription glasses online is a bad idea

Nowadays you can buy almost anything online and spectacles are no exception. Certainly, buying online may well seem cheaper, but is it a good idea?

When buying spectacles on the internet you are left to make choices without qualified advice regarding your purchase. Choices that will ultimately affect:

• Weight
• Performance
• Comfort
• Suitability for purpose

With more complex prescriptions and lenses it is vital they are fitted and measured accurately and recommended appropriately, if not they may even be dangerous.

A study conducted by Which even back in 2012 stated:

“Buying cheap glasses online could be dangerous for your eyes, a new Which? investigation has found.”

When you visit a traditional optician practice, they are governed by laws and professional bodies and have a duty of care to ensure that to the best of their ability the optical appliance supplied is fit for purpose for you.

All practicing opticians must be registered with the General Optical Council and it is a condition of registration that they undertake continual educational training, this ensures that the general public will receive consistently high standards of competence from a registered optician.

In fact, those optometrists that employ fully qualified Dispensing Opticians have experts to offer advice based on their qualified knowledge of optical products frames and lenses and clinical knowledge of how the eye works.