Vari focals and Desk Tops

[Retired]

Hi,

Thanks Paul; it confirms my view never to try contact lens.

When I do change my glasses again David I'll go for the vari-focals to give them a try; thank you. Bron and I buy glasses from Boots.

Another option that has gone very quiet recently is optical laser treatment and again this is something I would never ever try. I knew a guy a few years ago that went the laser route and he was struggling the last time I saw him. To make matters worse his car insurers were straight on his case because in their money grabbing opinion laser eye treatment affected peripheral vision.

I don't like wearing glasses but it is the lesser of the other evils on offer and I'll have to put up with them.

Kind regards, Col.

[Radio Fixer]

Boots may be OK for vari focals Colin. The other big Spec place wasnt for me. I went in for the eye test and its embarrasing walking out and saying you are going somewhere else for the glasses. But next time I wont hesitate... bad way the system is set up. The free test should be set up to be completely independent.

So I let them make me a pair of Vari's with the instruction that they had to be as good as the old pair from the Guys who really know how to make 'em. And Dont talk to you like your an idiot. They were hopeless and I had loads of "We will adjust the arms that will fix it". Of course it didnt...

So back to my old ones... they took 'em away into the back room. "Well these really are top of the range lenses Sir"
"Yeah! I told you they were good... no distortions at the sides... I can drive perfectly in them. And anything not as good was not acceptable".
"Well we can make you a pair like them"
"OK (in short) how much"
To you Sir, being as you have had a lot of trouble about £250"
Ugh! no thanks, I'll have a refund and go elsewhere".

That was 2 years ago and now back to the small man... told him the story. "They are good lenses but nothing extraordinary... we can do more expensive but only thinner and hence lighter. Optically they wont be any different"
"So (in short again) how much"
"£130"

And for a very versatlle pair of glasses they are great. Super for swap meets, exhibitions, museums, TV and short term reading. But as I said before for long tem reading, say an hour or more, to me you cant beat a pair of 'readers'. And for the PC, again for any time a pair of intermediates is best. You dont need to buy these from an opticians if you take the trouble to understand the eye test results. For eyes that are pretty normal, just dwindling, then cheapies off the supermarket work fine.

But do be very careful to stess that you dont want spherical distortions ... they have got to be good when you move your eyeballs to the sides.

BTW IMHO the eye test is better at S. Savers.

Wow! exercised my fingers there Gary

[Radio Fixer]

When I type these threads straight in I dont give my self time to insure that all is correct and in context. Here I have forgotten to say that the small man, Joe at Smart Vision, is not an optician but a maker of glasses. So he is not set up to do the eye test but can check magnifications etc with add on lenses.

I checked up on the latest vari focals he made me and they were £122.

I started like you Alan... a pair of driving and a pair of reading and it worked fine. To me a single lens must be the easiest to make with no distortions... Then from there must be Bi-focals.

Vari's are probably more difficult to get right and I doubt they could do it without computers, in desgin and manufacture. I think, how well they work for you, is also dependent on how 'strong' you need them. The more mag you need I reckon makes for more distortions. In cameras its always at the edges that defects show up, more so with lenses for wide angle and telephoto, and I think the same with glasses.

If each eye needs similar mag adjustment amd other parameters like 'spherical' come out the similar then low cost super market specs, for the computer and even reading, work quite well for me. Its certainly handy having a few pairs around in different places to save walking up stairs again.

I asked Joe about having incorrect glasses and he said for short period use it wont do your eyes any harm. It will make it more tiring though for any duration.

For me vari's are the workhorse glasses, the ones I carry with me all the time, they can do everything. But I need, either because I'm very particular (well I have been a keen photographer for many years) a separate pair of readers and intermediates for the PC.

I couldnt use the vari's for the PC, as David does or read with them for long periods (or I chose not to).

I had hoped that the new Desktops would combine intermediates and readers into one pair of glasses but that isnt going to be the case. Good though they are, and useful for holidays and the like they are not as aberation free as separates.

Gary

[Aerodyne]

Here's my few penn'orth for what it is worth: I've worn glasses since my mid-20s, originally partly due to an eye injury. I find that vari-focals - when made by a reputable company and to a prescription by someone who knows their subject - are OK, with the inevitable distortions of verticals, a problem that means I can no longer rely on my 'eye' for straight lines and have to check everything with tape measure, square and spirit level. I too am quite severely astigmatic in both eyes, but both are different. Without glasses the right eyes sees everything quite widely doubled, one thing above another in the vertical plane, with similar but less marked deviation in the horizontal. The left eye refuses to come to focus at all but is worse at around a 45 degree angle! Glasses correct most of these symptoms quite effectively though for the computer I have to use mid-range (2-2.5 feet) reading glasses. Varifocals for everything else except books, for which I have an essential pair of standard focal length reading glasses.

I get my glasses from Boots. I've tried Dollond and Aitcheson (now taken over by Boots) but didn't get on with the glasses they prescribed. As for Specsavers, I had the worst experience of my life with glasses there. Its a cattle market. Queue up to give them your money, pay through the nose for what they assure you is perfection in lenses. Utter rubbish. Eight visits, two full eye tests and then the glasses failed by the lenses dropping out, necessitating a further visit.
There's much more to the optical horror story but I won't test your patience except to say that the glasses were still useless. I went to Boots and paid quite a bit less for a far superior product that has given me absolutely no trouble whatsoever. Moral: don't believe all you see in TV adverts!
-Tony

[Radio Fixer]

Well that certainly substantites what I experienced at Spec Savers Tony . I will go there next time for the eye test but they will not make any more for me.

Seems I'm pretty lucky with my eyes... no astigmatism and both very similar. Identical in focus so both lenses can be identical in strength. Also, the other things on the prescription, "spherical" etc, from what I could make out from info on the Web, were not bad and again similar.

One defect I do have is that one eye is higher than the other and apparently I used to wear the specs at a tilt to accomodate this, without actually being aware that I was doing it. Spotted by Joe of course and he marked my old glasses with a red dot where my pupils are in the looking straight ahead position. Then made the new ones so one optical centre is higher than the other.

Gary

[Skywave]

Just for what it's worth, I too have experienced simply dreadful service at SpecSavers. It's a long story, so I shall desist from expanding. My wife once tried Dolland and Atchinson for her glasses: all marketing and sales bluster; quality of product was poor - especially considering the over-inflated price.

Al.

[AlanBeckett]

Is SpecSavers a Franchise?
Our local one seems to be fine, and all three of us have no problems with them.
Alan

[Radio Fixer]

I dont know about franchise Alan: my guess is not. However, your glasses are likely to be fine because your requirements are the simplest. A straight lens, that have been made since Galileo, in both you driving and reading glasses.

Did your other two buy Vari Focals? These are much harder to get right.

Gary

[Aerodyne]

Actually, I do believe that Specsavers is a franchise. What bearing that may or may not have on the quality of service is arguable but it does seem to be a variable, depending upon your location. Frankly, even the eye tests were not to my liking and I was under the distinct impression that there was a supermarket mentality at work in the branch I used (Peterborough). That's fine for buying tins of beans but probably not the best approach for optical prescriptions. Never saw the same person twice running, nobody seemed to know what was going on, was given the wrong cases for the frames I'd chosen, told me I had the beginnings of cataract and they blamed the lens makers for the problems I was experiencing (but they couldn't or wouldn't tell me the name of the maker).
Sadly both my wife and one of my daughters also attended Specsavers (ah! The power of TV advertising) and both have been dissatisfied with the quality of the glasses.
It is of note that the results of the subsequent eye test I took at Boots was quite close to the prescription created during Specsaver's second attempt. No cataract, by the way! I repeat: the Boots glasses are perfect.
-Tony

[Yorkie]

As with any service, I think there are two issues that affect the quality of service - firstly, the company ethos and secondly, the individual that serves you. As to this latter point, there are two facets - their training, experience and competence, and secondly, their approach to customers, (or in the case of an optician, as with a dentist or doctor, the 'patient'). We've gone to Dolland and Achieson for many years, simply because the optician we see is first class in every respect. On one occasion when she was on maternity leave I saw another optician and I couldn't get on with the lenses he prescribed, which were worse than my old specs that they were replacing. Shortly afterwards out regular optician had returned to work from leave so I asked her to check my eyes. To cut a long story short, I ended up with new free specs which were perfect.

Were it not for this particular optician I probably wouldn't go into D&A - all their shops look badly in need of refurbishment, both internally and externally - worn carpets, faded shop fronts, almost looking like a firm about to go out of business. I wasn't aware that Boots had taken them over. I get suspicious about firms that promote themselves aggressively as Specsavers do because the eye test is a 'sprat to catch a mackerel'. For health reasons I have an annual eye test in addition to retinal screening and when I went recently, my optician said 'your prescription is fine - you don't need new specs'. I wonder what the chances are of that happening at Specsavers, where I suspect that even the slightest change would result in a recommendation for new specs.

If the optician says you need new specs, they know they're on a winner because most 'patients' (customers really) will acquiesce and choose new specs there and then, and few will want the basic NHS specs, so they try to get you to 'trade up' to more expensive frames, coated lenses, etc. At D&A, (In Hull anyway) the opticians aren't involved in any aspect of selling - they just had you the prescription and it's up to you what you do with it.

Setting aside what we may think of Specsavers or perceive them to be, it seems to me that optical services are about the only part of the NHS that works really well and speedily. Consider this:

If I was in a shopping Mall one Sunday morning and was a bit concerned about an aspect of my health and felt I should have a free NHS health check, so I walked into an establishment without an appointment where I had a test that indicated that I needed some specialised equipment, and that if I chose the equipment then got on with my shopping and returned two hours later to collect the equipment, and that both the test and the equipment was free of charge on the NHS, I think that would seem pretty amazing.

I've just described a trip to Specsavers!