To see or not to SEE

I'm getting ready to change health insurance coverage so before the new year hit, I made sure we all had our annual check ups, medical, dental and optical. So we're all set for the new year. As I consider the various plans that I need to sign up for, I realize that I have been paying about $28 a month for a visual plan for our family. I have been paying this amount for about two and a half years and this year is the first time that four of us, out of our family of five, went for a check up. Of the four of us, two of them got glasses. I don't need them yet :-P

Anyway, to make a long story short, even with the insurance, I ended up paying $35 per person for the check up and $185 out of pocket for the two prescription eye glasses. Total expense for four of us to get our eyes checked and get glasses: $997!

So I have been contemplating not renewing the visual plan and put the money in a savings account instead for when one of us needs glasses or eyes checked. Then I came upon a Great Discovery: www.ZenniOptical.com! I wish I had learned about them earlier. Can you believe you can get prescription eye glasses for as little as $8?

It's almost too good to be true! But at this point, I'm ready to believe anything. I just had to find out if they are for real. And they are! They can charge less for their glasses because they sell directly to you, the public. They don't have a middle man and they don't have a fancy showroom or sales men to pay. All you have to do is to go get your eyes checked by the doctor, get your prescription, send it to them and they will craft your lenses for you. Their selection of frames and lenses mirrors the selection we had to choose from when we bought our glasses and I am just amazed at the prize difference. It makes me want to take my daughter's glasses back where we got it from. Well, if only she hadn't sat on it, dropped it, and god know done what else to it in the couple of months since she got it.