The good and bad of buying eyeglasses online

Want to spend less -- maybe lots less -- for good-quality prescription eyewear? A growing number of websites cater to people willing to make this most individual of purchases online.

New sites like Warby Parker (warbyparker.com) and the upcoming eyefly.com from clothing and accessories seller bluefly.com -- as well as more established players like framesdirect.com and 39dollarglasses .com -- are defying conventional wisdom that consumers want to touch before they buy certain products. And, for many shoppers, the move online is seamless.

Starting with technology that determines the shape of your face from a digital photo, the sites say they offer the same service and personal attention as a brick-and-mortar shop, but with better selections of frames and at lower overall prices.

So far, less than 3 percent of the estimated $25 billion that Americans spend annually on eyewear, including contact lenses and nonprescription sunglasses, goes to online purchases, however, according to The Vision Council, a trade group representing manufacturers and suppliers. For prescription glasses, which totaled $17.7 billion in sales last year, online sales accounted for about 1 percent.

Warby Parker, which has sold more than 50,000 pairs of glasses since its February 2010 launch, says its $95 prescription glasses are comparable to eyewear that would sell for $500 at a high-end boutique.

The difference is that Warby Parker's frames don't carry designer names, and it cuts the number of middlemen between manufacturers and consumers, says co-founder Neil Blumenthal.

He estimates manufacturers typically charge upscale retailers about $100 for the same designer frame a consumer ends up shelling out $300 for; likewise, he says, lenses that consumers pay $200 for at retail typically cost opticians about $65.

Buying prescription eyewear online also can let you check out hundreds of different frames -- by manipulating the photo you upload -- and it can mean spending a lot less time on the process.

But there are plenty of pitfalls.

Amy Klaris, a retail strategist at Kurt Salmon, says "there's still a lot of worry" about buying eyewear online. She also says shoppers want to be able to return glasses they don't like or find uncomfortable.

In fact, Sam Pierce, a board member of the American Optometric Association, which represents 36,000 doctors of optometry, says preliminary research has revealed some eyewear prescriptions are not being filled accurately online. Pierce's group and the Vision Council plan to release a joint report this summer examining the safety of buying prescription glasses on the Web.

Some states, including New York, mandate that customers give companies a copy of their prescription to verify its timeliness and specifics. But in many cases consumers can type in the prescriptions themselves, opening huge potential for errors.

Pierce also noted that photo technology can't predict whether glasses will feel comfortable, and shoppers lack a way to know whether the frames they like are appropriate for their prescription.

"This is very concerning," says Pierce. "Getting a pair of glasses is like walking through a maze."