Jul/100
eyeglasses
Eyeglasses
I was shocked today after reading posts in a forum about the Opticians industry, the so called experts were debating how to respond to people who ask to have their pupillary disctance measured.
The debate focussed on some practitioners feeling threatened that consumers would want to know this information, others were looking for an easy way to fob them off but still take the money. The PD as it is called is an important factor when ordering eyeglasses but there is a distinct fear that allowing this information into consumer hands will enable them to get better deals.
Clearly many are worried about consumers price checking and getting information from eye checks and then going online to purchase. In a caveat to this you can also see that the manufacturers are now looking to compete with retailers as see by one recent takeover.
It seems as though the retail opticians are looking to act as a barrier to consumers who are looking for a price sensitive purchase and the forum supports this view, clearly many forum members are retail opticians and they are quite hostile to the concept of consumers heading for the Internet for their glasses. It was interesting to see them discussing ZenniOptical from the perspective of being a threat to their business.
At the end of the day the consumer has a right to get a quality product for a frugal price if that is indeed available, the practitioners will not be able to hold this back.