Your prescription

After your eye test your optician is obliged to provide you with a written copy of your prescription, you should not have to ask for it but there is a fair chance it will be necessary. If you do have to ask for it please bear in mind that you have paid for the eye test, including the results, and they have no right to withold it from you.
You may sense reluctance from them so we will explain a few thing about eye / sight testing and the mark up on spectacles.

Firstly unlike some other sites we are not about to start calling your optician a rip off merchant, it would neither be grown up or true. However...

Independent research has shown that the cost of providing a sight test is between £30 and £40 pounds. How much did you pay for your last eye examination? Exactly, it probably did not cover the cost of providing the service.

So how do they recover the deficit of undercharging you for the sight test? By selling you some overpriced glasses, simple really, it all works out in the end, or at least it would, if you did not leave with your prescription.
So why do they not just charge enough for the eye test? Well often a cheap eye test fee is the lure that gets you in through the door. We hope that eventually eyesight test fees rise so that the opticians can earn their worth and the consumer will be free to buy from where they prefer.

The web also offers a variety of other benefits when it comes to selling you eyewear cheaper, most of which we imagine are obvious and as such need not be pointed out.

What the numbers mean.

We cannot do full justice to your prescription on a page of a web site so the following is very general, however it may be of interest and should help you when you come to fill in your details when ordering.

• Sphere, or Sph. This value represents the strength of the lens needed to correct your vision. A negative (-) value would suggest short sightedness while a plus or positive (+) value would suggest long sightedness. When entering your prescription please make sure you have selected + or - correctly, bear in mind that while normally to the left, sometimes the positive + or negative - symbol is often written above the number.
  
  
• Cylinder, or Cyl. Astigmatism (which sounds much worse than it is!) is corrected by this component of your prescription. When an image passes through the various structures in the eye, as well as not focussing in exactly the correct place, it may distort slightly in shape as if being stretched or shrunk in a certain direction. The image will be squared up if you like, by a lens with cyl. This value will also be + or -.
  
  
• Axis, astigmatism can occur in any direction, vertically, horizontally or at any angle in between. The cyl portion of your prescription (or lens) will be placed at the axis where the astigmatism occurs. This value will be between 0 and 180.
  
  
• Add, on your prescription the add is a value which needs to be added to your distance prescription in order to provide clear focus close up. Presbyopia occurs after a certain age (usually around 40) and the ability of the eye to naturally zoom in on near objects diminishes. The amount of add required depends on a variety of factors including age and what purpose the specs are intended to fill.
  An add will have a maximum working distance which users might need to take into account if they use a computer or other items we might consider as being intermediate
  
  
  • 1.00 add - Maximum working distance of 1.00m
  • 1.25 add - Maximum working distance of 80cm
  • 1.50 add - Maximum working distance of 66cm
  • 1.75 add - Maximum working distance of 57cm
  • 2.00 add - Maximum working distance of 50cm
  • 2.25 add - Maximum working distance of 44cm
  • 2.50 add - Maximum working distance of 40cm
  • 2.75 add - Maximum working distance of 36cm
  • 3.00 add - Maximum working distance of 33cm

The above table shows the maximum working distance, or the far point for specs with a given add. The near point will vary, again due to age etc.
This information is intended for reference, and for you to be clearer about what to expect from your specs before you place your order.
Remember to be clear during an eye examination about what you use your glasses for.