Review: Warby Parker
I am dedicating this latest post to a review! Warby Parker, if you haven't already heard of it, is an innovative way to shop for new glasses online. The process is fairly easy... and, dare I say, exciting!
Here are the steps:
- Browse the collections. Whether you are in the market for male or female optical frames (most of them are unisex!) or for their sunglasses. You can get either with a current Rx or you can get the lenses for those who see 20/20 ;) They have tons of great frames, more on that later.
- The next part is what makes Warby Parker so awesome: pick the five you like most. Add those five to the "home try on" option on the right. That's right, home try on! You can now have up to five frames shipped to YOU... for free!... and you try them on at home. Walk around in the frames (they are dummy lenses w/o any prescription), test their selfie potential, ask friends and family what they think. Trust me, it is so awesome to have these five to test drive in the comfort of your own home and you can try them on for a longer amount of time than you could in a store or what have you. You have up to five days to keep those bad boys to decide, but take my word for it, you won't need that long! You just pack them up and bring them to either the post office or UPS store (free return shipping too, obvi). Easy as pie! (Why is that an idiom?)
- Once you've decided on a pair or two or three (guilty! I have two!), you order them online. You need a current prescription, and make sure it's not a contacts prescription, and you enter it online or they can call the doc's office for you (that takes some longer processing time though). You need your pupilary distance too, but they have a function on the site to help or it's written on your prescription.
- Then, viola! your frames are shipped to your door, often times very quickly. I never waited more than a week for them to be shipped, regardless if I ordered on a weekend or even when I ordered on Dec. 23rd!
Pros:
- They follow the new charitable business plan! For every pair sold, they donate a pair to someone in need. Always an awesome asset to a purchase!
- Something I haven't mentioned yet... cost! Most frames start at $95. For frames and lenses and shipping (tax is separate). Try getting an awesome prescription pair of glasses, stylish, and well made for around $100. It just doesn't happen. They cut out the middle man and are able to offer such an amazing price.
- Turn around time for home try ons (shipped to and from) and actually receiving your prescription pair is around 2-3 weeks. Not bad! The faster you ship the try ons back and if you order quickly and have that prescription ready, the faster they come.
- The styles are just on point! It's so hard to choose! I love them allllllllll. And the color choices for each style are awesome! Again, so many perfect options, hard to choose :)
- Quality is top notch. For the price, you just can't beat it. These are easily the quality of a pair double or triple the price. The acetate frames are sturdy and stylish! And the lenses are the tops too, I have a pair of pricier Kate Spade specs and the lenses are comparable, maybe even better in my opinion.
- Customer service has been great, too!
- There are showrooms throughout the country in big cities. I went to the one in Wicker Park (Chicago) when I was home for the holidays. It was in a larger store, but I loved it! They gave me a coupon for when I ordered, even! They carried their ENTIRE collection and in every color. Obviously better than a home try on in that way, but the home try on option is still great for the majority of the country.
Cons:
- There aren't many, but one is that you sometimes cannot have the exact pair (style & color combo) in the home try on. They only have so many of each frame for the try on process, so sometimes a popular option will be out of stock for the home try on. You can easily just order a different color of the same style to still get the feel for the frame, but if you had your heart set on a color, this could be a con. If you can wait a week or two, try again, but obviously that is not the most desirable outcome.
- The virtual try on option stinks. It is so unrealistic and buggy. Do the home try on.
- They need more locations! Now that I'm relocated to Ohio, I wish there was an easier way to go to their showrooms. Oh well.
- For the males, if you have a larger/wider face, you do have more limited options. My boyfriend has a larger head, and he did not have so many options to choose from. He ended up doing two home try ons because nothing in his first five fit! Ladies with wider faces may have the same problem, but the frames are unisex so it might not be as common in ladies then.
- You can't home try on their limited edition frames! There have been guest designer collections and whatnot, with some really cool frames, and you can't order them as a home try on :(
So, overall, you can see that I am a big proponent of Warby. Try em! :)
