Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Free Glasses From Firmoo

Apparently I am an influential blogger.  This according to the fine people at Firmoo, who offered me, an influential blogger, free glasses if I would write about them on my influential blog.  Apparently they failed to mention my lack of blogging for all of 2013.  While this is certainly not how I planned to return to blogging, a deal is a deal.

So I ordered these glasses from a website, www.firmoo.com.  It's not easy trying on glasses over the internet.  The best I could do was see how they look on someone else's face.  Even that wasn't terribly helpful.  I've been wearing glasses half my life and seeing how they look and feel while actually on my face has always been a big help when selecting the frames I buy. 

From their I had to input all kinds of information I normally wouldn't have, or care to know.  A glasses prescription contains a variety of numbers -- scientific stuff you shouldn't have to care about.  However, among these is the distance between your eyeballs.  Apparently this is an important ingredient in getting your glasses just right.  I had to measure mine by holding a ruler up to my face in front of the mirror.

Then I was offered the chance to add things like UV protection, anti-glare, and whatever else normally goes into making glasses expensive.  Here's where I had trouble.  After making my selection, my free glasses suddenly had a price tag more than free.  Not knowing if this was a glitch or not, I tried to go back to change my order only to end up on the Firmoo homepage.  There was no way to get back into my order, so I had to start all over.  This caused further problems because the code I was given for being an influential blogger had already been used (by me.)  Now I had to contact the person who originally named me influential and get a new code.  This took a day.  I was told to ignore the price at the end, that I would get everything I wanted at no cost.

I did.  I expect someone actually buying glasses instead of getting them free would not have had these setbacks, but it really lessened the experience for me.

About two weeks later I had my glasses and I must say, I wasn't terribly impressed.  My choices of free frames were quite limited to begin with, but what I got was not what I would have paid for, even though price that showed up at checkout was less than $70.

They are lightweight, and feel like they could easily break if they fall into the wrong hands (read, my almost 2 year old.)  Beyond the cheap feel, My vision just wasn't right.  In the past, whenever I've gotten new glasses they've always needed little tweaks to make them fit right. This was done by experts at the optometrist office.  But I got these online, so I had to tweak them myself.  But even before I got to that, I wasn't sure I'd keep them.

The lenses are a lot larger than I'm used to and quite curved, causing my peripheral vision to be distorted.  It's quite disorienting, each time you move your head to see the world stretch.  It's not unlike seeing a TV show, not originally broadcast in high definition, stretched to fit an HD screen.  The edges seem to pull.  Same thing on my face.

Another problem is that these frames stick out pretty far on the sides of my head.  Every time I take off my t-shirt with the glasses on, they come off with it.

Alas, these glasses were free, and I just spent a buttload on new contact lenses that actually have me seeing right for the first time in years.  In reality, I only wear my glasses to watch TV in bed, so I'm keeping them, but only because they were free.

I do not recommend ordering eyeglasses over the internet.

Here are two pictures of me in glasses I would not have picked had I been able to see them on this face first.