You probably know how hard it is to find an optometrist to work with you, on healthy lens prescription choices.

So many of us have to resort to a bit of guessing, centimeter measurements, and eye charts.  They are all great tools and I highly recommend learning about them.  Still, it’s nice to have the option to stop in at the optometrist, and double check your results.

If you like open minded optometrists and happen to be near Bern, Switzerland (or perhaps fancy a future visit) this is for you.

Reto posts in the forum:

Hi Jake

Thanks for the video that I’ve just seen about this topic!
Now I can add some more information: I went to my optometrist two days ago. I told him what I wanted, and he had absolutely no problem with it. There was just one thing that I didn’t thought of: my actual prescription from June is not a prescription to see 100% – but theoretically for 60% (but we have tested the new glasses: with the snellen chart at the optometrist I see about 90%…).
The “full prescription” (100 or 110%) ist R: -6.5, cyl -1.25 and L: -8.75, cyl -2.0. We ended up like this:
We added on both sides + 1.5 sph. And then we added half a diopter cyl on both sides (instead of halving the astigmatism on both sides), and compensated this with – 0.25 sph on both sides.
Result for the differential prescription: R: -5.25, -0.75 and L: -7.50, -1.50. We tested that with the test lens kit, and added again + 0.25 on both sides. When I then asked the optometrist to measure my “old in-house glasses”, the result was: R: -5.00, -0.75 and L= -7.25, -1.00. Because this is nearly what we found out before, I use now my old glasses for close-up (what I did anyway already before).
The optometrist has been working a hour for me for free – I’ll send him a bunch of flowers next week!

That’s great service.

Of course you can accomplish a lot at home.  It’s not a must-have, Reto’s experience.  But if you end up buying lenses locally anyway, and enjoy supporting a great customer oriented business, these guys may be worth a visit.

Here’s the contact info and details, per Reto’s post:

It is a independent, but quite a big shop. I don’t know, whether the other optometrist there are as open mindend as “my one”, so if anyone is interested, he or she better ask directly for

Patrik Rieser at
Baertschi Optik AG
Zeitglockenlaube 6
CH-3000 Bern
http://www.baertschi.ch[email protected]

It’s not a cheap shop, but the service is worth it!

And as usual there are other interesting progress updates, suggestions on my part, and various stories new in the forum.  Stop over for a quick look, leave your own observations and comments.

Cheers,

-Jake