I promised I would write a follow-up review once I purchased and received a pair of $8 eyeglasses from Zenni Optical.  I actually received my pair a couple of months ago–the day my apartment and car flooded, to be exact–but since I was dealing with all of that stuff, then eventually it wasn’t fresh on my mind anymore, I kind of forgot about it.  I was reminded of that post earlier this week, however, so I thought I would take the opportunity to share my experience with the incredibly cheap glasses.

First of all, can I just say that I hate wearing glasses?  I love the way glasses look on other people, just not on me.  For one thing, I am blind as a bat.  So, no matter how stylish the frames are, the lenses themselves are going to shrink my eyes and make me feel like I look like a fish in a bowl.  A good chunk of my life has been spent as a fish in a bowl.  I didn’t even realize I had these huge deer eyes until junior year of high school, the glorious year that, after my glasses broke and my dad fixed them by soldering a coat hanger across the top and taping the middle (in high school! Can you imagine the terror?!), I got contacts.  And it was an instant change on my life.

After all, who could forget sophomore year:

I am pretty sure that, until I  can afford Lasik and can then wear glasses as an accessory and not a necessity, I am destined to look dorky in glasses.  Case in point:

Regardless, one cannot wear contacts all the time, and it is important to have a backup pair of glasses for those days where you lose a contact, are dealing with allergies, or are just too lazy to put in your contacts and eyeliner and all that stuff.  I went quite a few years where I didn’t have a backup pair of glasses, so if anything happened I was just SOL.  Lucky for me, nothing happened, but when RAM came into our area, I signed up and got my first backup pair.  My eye exam from them was great, and I wound up getting a pair of Armani eyeglasses, and it was all completely free.  They look like this:

I know. I am hard-pressed to find normal pictures of myself wearing glasses.  I usually won’t take one if I’m wearing them.  And if I am, I slide them down my nose so my eyes don’t look like coke bottles.  I digress!

The Armani pair has been a great pair, and it is impossible to beat free.  I still thought it would be nice to have a backup to the backup, just in case.  I wasn’t having any luck finding any bargains, even at the places that were supposed to have glasses for $24.95.  By the time you factored in my heinous prescription and reduced thickness lenses and all that jazz, I was looking at a minimum of $300, and that was for cheap frames.  So, when I heard about Zenni Optical, I was pretty excited.

By the time I actually had the money to order my pair, they no longer had the frames in the color I wanted: brown.  But they did have black ones with red arms and black flowers, so I opted for those.  The initial price for these frames with prescription is a flat $8.  Of course, they have extra charges for extra things, like bifocals and various tints, but they include anti-scratch coating, UV protection, and lens edge polishing and beveling, a lens cloth, and a case into the price.  My left eye surpassed their flat rate prescription threshold, so I had to pay an extra $9.  Shipping is a flat rate of $4.95, no matter how many pairs you buy, it is always $4.95.  So, my grand total?  $21.95.  Apart from the free RAM glasses, I’m pretty sure that is unbeatable.

When they came in, it was nice to see how durable they actually were.  I was afraid they would be so flimsy that they would arrive broken, but I haven’t had any problems out of them in that regard.  I wouldn’t say the free case is a big selling point or anything, because it is basically just a cheap plastic case. The prescription itself is pretty amazing–I can see better out of these than I can with both my Armani glasses and my contacts.  The design was cute enough.  The fit was good.  I did not have to wait especially long for them to ship–about 2 weeks.  The only real problem I had with these glasses was when I first got them, after awhile, the arms would start to really press into the space behind my ears and give me a headache.  A quick visit to my local eye doctor remedied that, though, because they adjusted them for free.  I’m pretty sure most places will do free adjustments.  Maybe they’re not Chanel or DKNY or anything fancy, but that is pretty much a non-issue for me.  I’m all about looking as good as possible for the least amount of money possible, and these have been a great pair of glasses at a great price.  Even if I do look goofy wearing them.

Overall: A+.  I would most definitely recommend them.

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