Last month, I was settled into my favorite armchair, trying to read an important email on my laptop. I kept leaning forward, then back again. My neck ached, and my eyes felt gritty and dry. It was a miserable experience.
My husband walked by and laughed. “You look like a bobblehead trying to focus,” he said.
I didn’t find it funny. This constant struggle with blurriness had been my reality for months. Finding the right glasses for screen work felt like an optometrist’s cruel practical joke.
We all know how it goes. Our vision starts to change, and we need help reading, especially at that awkward middle distance of a computer monitor. My quest for the best reading glasses for computer use led me into a spiral of frustration and wasted money.
First, I visited a high-end brick-and-mortar store. The frames looked great, and the salesperson was friendly. But the price? Staggering. Even with insurance, the quote for progressive computer lenses was enormous. I felt pressured into buying upgrades I didn’t understand and left feeling stressed and empty-handed.
Verdict: High prices combined with high pressure are a terrible mix. I needed a simpler approach.
So, like many people, I turned to the major online retailers. They’re supposed to save you money, right? That’s where my real troubles began.
I ordered my first pair. They arrived quickly, but when I put them on, everything was blurry—not just a little, but completely unusable. I called customer service. They apologized and offered me a "better deal."
Here’s the trap I fell into:
I’d spent days trying to resolve the issue, wasted nearly $200, and had three pairs of unwearable glasses. They were utterly useless! When I finally demanded a refund, the company said, “Sorry, store credit is non-refundable,” and, “Each item may only be returned once.” It didn’t matter that they had botched the prescription three times in a row.
In the end, I took the frames I liked to a local optometrist. The technician checked the lenses I’d received online and shook her head. “The prescription isn’t even close to what you need,” she said. I paid another $200 just to get the correct lenses put into the frames I already owned.
Action Step: If a company messes up your prescription, always insist on a full cash refund, not store credit. Store credit can trap you indefinitely.