Buying eyeglasses online, it's fun!

About 10 days back I attended a friend’s friend’s brother’s wedding reception in East Delhi and on my return home around 2 AM, I realized I had dropped my spectacles somewhere. They were supposed to be in my shirt pocket, but now they weren't! A frantic search returned no result and I got an excuse to go for another eye-test that I had been thinking was necessary since the past few months. The eye test revealed that my eyesight had not deteriorated and it was still at the negative 0.5, the same as two and half years ago when I initially got prescribed to wear glasses. The doctor had then said that if I put glasses on now, my eyesight would be restored to normal soon and I would no longer require the glasses! Huh! That hasn’t happened yet! Anyways, that’s not the point of this post.

 

I tend to go crazy sometimes when I have my semester exams starting in 4 days but I am waiting for another couple of days to start studying
and also yes, when I get a new pair of eyeglasses

The next important step was getting a new pair of glasses made. My father who has recently been overly-influenced by the internet for almost all his shopping needs, and my mother, who is highly influenced by my father’s over-influence of the internet shopping (or so it seems), recommended that I check lenskart.com and choose a frame I liked. I had my apprehensions. The site not only provides the first-frame-free to new customers, it also allows you to use your webcam to click your picture and try various frames virtually and choose the one that suits you best. This was fascinating and so I tried it!

I chose a particular frame, this time a full-rim, considering how roughly my glasses tend to get used by me (sometimes lying in my bag, on the table, in my jeans pocket and so on, but rarely on my nose) and then proceeded to the fun part- clicking my photo and trying the frames virtually. The site also allowed me to put a credit/debit card under my nose while clicking the photo and then it would determine the size of the frame I needed as per my face size. I did get a bit confused in this part. Anyways, I had chosen the frame and put my prescription details for the lenses. I informed my father and the glasses were ordered.

Yesterday late afternoon the glasses arrived. The delivery guy let me open the package before making the payment so as to check if everything was fine. Everything was fine or so it seemed at that moment. I made the payment and spread out the contents of the package on the dining table. There were quite a few things:

1. The outer plastic cover
2. The lenskart cardboard box
3. The glasses inside a plastic pouch along with a printed prescription of the lenses
4. A Vincent Chase eyeglass cover
5. The bill
6. The lens authenticity card with 1 year warranty
7. A return form and return address slip (in case I wish to return the product)

Some of the elements from the packaging

I remembered I had the top pic. So I thought I could have a similar pic from today. And so the contrast! :D

I then remembered that the lenses I ordered were photo-chromatic- they should turn dark when in sunlight. And so, I rushed out of the house and spotted just a single ray of sunlight pouring in. I held the glasses for a few seconds. No colour change! Perhaps a little more intense sunlight is required; I shall try it tomorrow, I thought. (The sun doesn’t seem to be out even today; winter is setting in!)

This was when I thought ek blog entry toh banta hai. I haven’t known even one person as of now who has ordered eyeglasses online!

PS: Now that I think about it, this looks like a complete promotion of lenskart.com. This was surely not my intention. But now that this has become like this, I hope some lenskart guy reads this and becomes happy and provides me another pair of glasses free! Hahaha…

PPS: I just googled ‘Vincent Chase’. Turns out he is a fictional character from the HBO TV series ‘Entourage’. He fashioned various eyeglasses throughout the series!

Update: The glasses are indeed photo-chromatic. I took them out when the sun was out and stood there for a couple of minutes. They did turn dark! :)