Eyewear brands are popping up all over the internet, allowing you to skip the optical shop to get a new pair of glasses. There’s only one problem: You need to have a current prescription on hand during the final stages of checkout, which you will need to send the company for them to create lenses to your specifications. Many customers stumble at this step, says Daniel Rothman, CEO of GlassesUSA, a website that sells a wide range of major eyewear brands.
“Either they don’t have the sheet of paper with the prescription just lying around at home, or the optician never gave it to them,” says Rothman. “Some opticians choose not to hand over the prescription so that the customer will buy glasses from their own shop.”
- You open the app on your phone, which will prompt you to open a page on the GlassesUSA website on a laptop or desktop computer.
- You will then hold your phone in one hand, and hold your glasses in between the phone and the computer.
- You’ll be asked to move your glasses up and down several times, but within less than 10 minutes, the system should capture your prescription and send it directly to your GlassesUSA account.
I tried it out and found it relatively easy to figure out once I got the hang of it.
The system is patented and FDA-listed, and the company says it has the same accuracy as the machines that opticians use to identify prescriptions in glasses. “Thousands of our customers beta-tested it,” Rothman says. “They said they found it easy to use and accurate.”
For GlassesUSA, this new technology increases the likelihood that the customer will lock down their purchase. And for the consumer, it means no more digging through piles of paper in the drawer looking for that prescription you got a year ago.
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