After a fair few years of wear and tear, being scratched, dropped, sat on and so forth, I decided that it was finally time to replace my glasses with a new pair. It’s always a struggle for me to choose new glasses, it took me about an hour to pick the first pair that I owned, and I probably only slightly improved this time around because if you’re wearing them all the time then it definately has an impact on how you appear to others.

So anyway, we all know the first step is having your eyes testing thoroughly again. To me this is always a bit of an extended affair, better or worse? worse? better? They look the same! Stop twiddling bits of glass in front of me.

Your average eye test in the UK costs around £20, mine was a little more but that’s because I ignored all the adverts and didn’t go to Specsavers, where it’s a fair bit cheaper. That’s a reasonable cost considering the value added by actually being able to see properly and not suffer headaches!

My sight had changed slightly, with the left eye getting slightly better (never quite understood how they do that) and the right eye getting slightly worse, which means that it was reason enough for me to get new glasses.

I’m an avid Internet citizen, so at this point I probably should have had the common sense to walk out of the opticians and go and look online for a pair of frames that I liked, and save a considerable amount of money. That’s not what I did though, instead I picked my designer pair of frames, which weren’t the exact ones I wanted, and spent a whopping £277. I can understand the lenses themselves being expensive, especially with them being thin lenses and coated as well to prevent me seeing halos around absolutely everything thanks to my astigmatism.

So why didn’t I purchase online? I can only guess that it’s down to trust, or perhaps lack of blind faith. I can pick up a pair of frames in my opticians and try them on, make sure that they suit me, and have some option to have them tweaked when they are ready to be picked up.

If I were to buy online, I’d be relying on my imagination to try and picture the glasses on my own face, I wouldn’t be sure how well they fit, how comfortable they are, or have much come back for tweaking the fit if they fall off my face when they arrive.

It seems that the high street still has a place in a lot of consumers lives, even if it comes at a cost. Next time I’ll have to challenge myself and buy online from one of the many up and coming vendors such as:

• http://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/
• http://www.speckyfoureyes.com/
• http://www.eyeexperts.co.uk/

If you’ve bought glasses online, feel free to give me a shout and share your experiences.