This post was meant to be done last week but sadly I never got around to it. To be honest I’m glad I’m not writing it until now as I’ve had my glasses just over a week and I can write about them properly!
I got my eyes tested at the start of the year after almost three years of going without a test. That’s a very long time to go without one and although my old glasses were working for me, I did find myself squinting a lot at little things, which is never good. If anything it can make your eyes worse than they already are… Especially mine which aren’t exactly good anyway.
I was lucky enough to get a free eye test from Boots due to where I work which was handy! The staff were great there and very thorough and precise before, during and after the eye test. BUT the prices for frames and lenses was a complete joke. I had said I wanted a designer pair for ages, even though I was happy with my old frames. I wear glasses all the time so I always make sure to get a good pair that will keep me looking good. 😛
The one designer I had in mind was Ray Ban. I have a pair of Ray Ban wayfarer sunglasses which I love (although I now need to get new lenses in those as well…) and I’ve previously owned a pair of Ray Ban glasses so I knew I wanted another pair.
Boots of course do Ray Ban glasses but they are fucking expensive, and I MEAN expensive. £250 for a pair of frames? Erm no thank you. Not only do they charge a fortune for the frames, but they also charge a bomb for the lenses too! As I have a strong prescription I’m always advised to have the lenses thinned so that they fit the thick frames I wear. The lowest price that they wanted to thin my lenses was £60. So altogether it would have worked out to £310. Erm nope.
SO as I had my prescription I decided to look online to see if I could pick up any Ray Ban glasses cheaper than what Boots was going to charge me for them.
It took a month for me to decide what to do when I finally ordered my glasses. Jeez who would think that eh?
After lots of research I discovered Glasses Direct, a UK company who specialise in their own brand of frames as well as their “boutique” designer collection. I of course opted for the boutique collection.
They have all sorts of designer brands to chose from, but of course I opted for Ray Ban. I have always wanted a pair of wayfarer style glasses from them and now I finally have them and they are perfect!
The price of my frames were extremely affordable at £98 and although that may sound like a lot to some people, to me considering Boots and Specsavers (just to name a few…) do their own brand frames for the same price if not more. So to me these were a bargain!
They’re in a wayfarer style and come in all sorts of colours. I opted for tortoiseshell as I find this colour frame suits my hair and eye colour the best. Yes I am that into what glasses I buy and wear that I look into these things. 😛
The other colours these come in are black, brown (although currently sold out), black and white, grey and brown fade.
Here is the Glasses Direct description of my frames:
With a slightly slimmer frame, Ray-Ban’s iconic Wayfarer gets a fresh lick of paint and attitude. Tone down the bad boy image with a bicycle or rev it up with a motorbike, the choice is yours…
Something that Glasses Direct do with their own frames is a home trail, where they send out four pairs that you would like to try on to see which one(s) you think suit you and would like to buy. Sadly they don’t do this with the boutique pairs as they would cost too much to do if people didn’t return them. Which is a shame to be honest. They do however do a virtual try-on which you can do on a laptop or desktop if you have a webcam… But who doesn’t have a webcam these days?!
What I did to make sure the frames were the right shape for my face was to check the size of my old frames alongside the Ray Ban ones. This is fairly simple to do. If you take off your glasses and look on the left arm you’ll see a set of numbers such as 53, 17 and 140. When looking at frames on the Glasses Direct website they’ll have this on the frame information so you can compare. This is what I did for my Ray Ban frames. As far as I know only plastic style frames have these numbers. I just checked Dane’s frames which are metal and he didn’t have it… So I don’t know for other types of frames sadly.
Sorting out the frames is the easy side to ordering glasses online, it’s the lenses that can be tricky. Saying this though, Glasses Direct made it really easy, although it can be daunting at first. All you need is your prescription handy and even if you aren’t 100% sure how you should input it into the website then you can always disclose that you’ll send it later, take a picture of it and then email it later. Glasses Direct even tell you how to email it to them which is great! I did input all the information in myself but I worried it might be wrong and ended up emailing it over anyway, which was fine. All I needed was the picture.
When ordering your lenses you get asked about your vision, lenses, tints and of course prescription. These are all easy to fill out!
There are three options for the lenses being silver, gold and platinum and the price increases and what you get on each package. I opted for the platinum as it had the maximum thinness and it was just the best priced too at just £59.00. Well worth it considering Boots wanted £60 for just the minimum thinning.
Then after that you pop in your prescription or disclose you send it over email and you’re all done! I paid on PayPal and as I have mine set up to pay 2 weeks from the order date I didn’t have to pay for my frames straightaway. Of course you don’t have to pay via PayPal and if you do you don’t have to wait 2 weeks for payment to go out. I just prefer using PayPal myself to be honest.
My first pair of glasses arrived damaged which was really annoying. On the front of the frame by the lens you could see where they had put the lens in as it had scratched all of the frame (as you can see in the above image). Now I know it isn’t THAT obvious BUT it was obvious enough for me to notice it straightaway and for how much I paid for the frames it was frustrating as hell! I ended up sending the glasses back and needed to wait nearly 2 weeks to get my current pair in the post. I made a complaint about this as I wasn’t offered any compensation, obviously until I wrote an angry email. I was given £10 as an apology. To be honest in my mind this still wasn’t good enough but I couldn’t be arsed to argue anymore.
That was my only real issue with Glasses Direct to be honest. Considering I paid over £140 for these I expected them to arrive perfect the first time, not the second after making a complaint. I was very tempted to just ask for my money back, but alas I never and I love my glasses so damn much!
When the second pair arrived I was very pleased with how they looked and looking back on the first time they arrived they were packaged really well too. They came in a box inside that was another box (haha :P) and inside that of course were my glasses. The Ray Ban case they came in is sturdy and is now home to my old glasses.
Something you WILL have to do with any glasses from Glasses Direct is adjust them yourself. Well you could probably be cheeky and pop into an opticians and ask if they can help you, but it’s pretty easy to do yourself. All you’ll need is a hairdryer. With mine I warmed up the arms and just bent them to fit on my head properly. I did pop into an opticians to see if they looked okay and they said yes. Woop! There’s a guide on the Glasses Direct website of how to adjust both plastic and metal frames.
One thing that really bugs me about these glasses is how awkward the lenses are to clean. I clean mine everyday with a glasses cleaning wipe and they never seem to be clean. Even when I go over it with a tissue or a my t-shirt they seem smeared. I don’t know if this is due to them being new or what, but I never had a problem with my old glasses. Dane is also having the same issue with his glasses, his are from Boots though. I know I’ve winged about Boots quite a bit on this post, but his glasses are lovely. 😛
It has taken well over a week for my eyes to adapt to the new lenses due to how strong they are in comparison to my old lenses, but now I’m used to them it’s amazing! I just love how they look on my face and as daft as it may sound they make me feel so confident, especially when I wear my signature side braid.
Of course I’ve taken loads of pictures of me wearing these and I can’t help but scatter them throughout this post. The one above is my favourite of the bunch. ^_^
One of the things that I loved about Glasses Direct the most was how many amazing offers they do! They have vouchers for their own brands such as 2 for 1, 50% off, etc. They also recently introduced 2 for 1 on boutique frames which is annoying to be honest, until I discovered the offer isn’t actually valid on Ray Ban glasses… So I’m not as annoyed about it now. This being said I had a voucher that got me 15% off of my glasses, which was great as although it doesn’t sound like much it did get me a lot off of my glasses.
Another thing I loved about Glasses Direct was how easy it was to contact customer service about anything. I had to contact them quite a few times with my glasses order. The first time to make sure my prescription could go into the frames I wanted and then the other times was due to the damaged glasses.
Has this put me off ordering with them again? Not really no, but it has made me wary for the future. I of course suggest that if you order from them that you check the glasses all over for any damage. At the end of the day you’re paying a lot of money for something that should be perfect on arrival. Not sent damaged because someone clearly couldn’t be arsed to redo the job they bodged up.
I know that sounds very harsh, but it’s true and of course when I raised the issue with Glasses Direct they were honest about it, which was great! They could have easily said, “How do we know you didn’t do that?!” I was really happy about how they dealt with it, although they could have offered me compensation in the first place instead of me pretty much asking for it…
Either way I love my Ray Ban’s so damn much and I couldn’t be happier with them! I just can’t wait to update my sunglasses prescription now ready for when summer comes… If it comes… 😛
If you think you’ll be ordering some glasses from Glasses Direct in the future then please feel free to use this £30 discount code before you order! You may as well save yourself some money. 😛
What do you think about my new glasses? Do you think you’ll use Glasses Direct in the future? Make sure to let me know all your thoughts in the comments below!
Until next time take care all and I hope you had a lovely weekend.
There Might Be Coffee 