Eyeglass Blog

According to a comment on my "Connected Optometrist" post, Mellowknees (who is married to an optician), tells us they do the following: Opticians are specially trained (and required to be certified in many states, but not all) to measure distance between eyes, adjust fit of glasses, etc., so that when your glasses are ordered from the lab (or the optician actually makes the glasses for you) the prescription lines up properly between the lens and the eye. If you have any of the normal anamolies that most human faces have (i.e. one ear sits lower than the other, pupillary distance is shorter or longer than average), glasses you get online that are created by a lab that has never seen you, that does not have your specific facial measurements, are very likely not going to be as satisfying for you as glasses that you've actually been fitted for would be. I had my wife measure my PD (pupillary distance) with a ruler -- the method described on most of the sites. She nailed it and has never spent a day in the optical field, married to an optician, or even wearing glasses (granted, she does have a few months of specialized training in the fundamentals of the metric system in the late 70's at Lincoln Elementary in Alexandria, MN). I had this number validated a couple of weeks ago on a two-year old prescription that was in my top drawer. As for anomalies, I'm 37-year old guy. My ears and eyes have likely stopped moving all over my head. I'd gladly pay the very fair amount of ten U.S. dollars for someone to adjust my glasses for me (I think $60 an hour is a VERY fair rate). My PD (pupillary distance) isn't changing from pair to pair so that's locked in. The fact that I have one ear lower than the other is something I can adjust my frames to -- and if I wasn't comfortable doing it, I know someone at a store will take a few bucks to do it. I'm not a "rocket surgeon", and I don't have the most complicated prescription in the world, but even I could read and enter numbers correctly into a web form, get my credit card out and order a great fitting and functioning pair of eyeglasses online. And I didn't get hosed.