With the growing eye strain among the public, the number of people with myopia continues to rise, making eyewear fitting a rigid consumer demand. As a service with both medical and consumer attributes, accurate optometry and transparent pricing lie at the core of qualified eyewear fitting. However, the domestic optical industry is plagued by prevalent irregular refraction procedures and opaque pricing practices. These problems not only cause economic losses for consumers but also bring potential risks to eye health, making standardized industry regulation imperative.
Simplified Refraction Procedures Undermine Professional Standards
Optometry and eyewear fitting is a rigorous medical service. A standard optometry process includes computer preliminary screening, subjective trial wear, axis calibration, pupillary distance measurement and eye condition examination, which takes about half an hour in total. Nevertheless, most ordinary optical stores greatly simplify the procedures, reducing optometry to a mere formality. Surveys show that over 30% of stores complete optometry in less than 10 minutes, relying solely on basic computer optometry data while skipping crucial steps such as manual review and visual function testing. This leads to substantial data errors that fail to match individual eye conditions.
Uneven qualifications of practitioners are a common industry problem. Many optometrists work without formal professional certifications, having only received short-term training. To promote high-priced lenses, some merchants deliberately falsify optometry data, especially over-prescribing for teenagers and falsely advertising the myopia control effects of their products, which instead accelerates the progression of myopia. Moreover, most street-side optical stores do not provide professional cycloplegic refraction to distinguish true myopia from pseudomyopia, easily resulting in excessive lens fitting, misleading vision correction and causing long-term harm to teenagers’ eye health.
Opaque Pricing and Excessive Profit Hidden in Industry Practices
While substandard optometry erodes industry credibility, opaque pricing and exorbitant mark-ups stand out as the most prominent consumer-related malpractices. The optical industry has long been characterized by low costs and high premiums, with selling prices seriously disconnected from actual costs. Industry investigations reveal that some eyewear sets priced at thousands of yuan only cost about one hundred yuan in wholesale. Functional lenses for juvenile myopia control are the most overpriced. Exploiting parents’ anxiety about myopia prevention and control, merchants arbitrarily raise prices, leading to several-fold price differences for the same product across different stores and leaving consumers vulnerable to excessive charges.
Information asymmetry lies at the root of pricing chaos. Most consumers lack professional knowledge about lens parameters such as refractive index and coating technology. Merchants take advantage of this by concealing product information, including origin and warranty standards, and exaggerating product efficacy verbally. In addition, low-cost fitting packages are designed with hidden traps, covering only basic lenses while charging extra fees for essential services like coating, astigmatism correction and fine tuning. Optometry fees are also unregulated: many stores charge high prices yet cut core testing items, resulting in severe mismatches between service quality and pricing.
Causes of Industry Chaos: Loose Supervision and Insufficient Consumer Awareness
The persistent industry chaos stems mainly from lax supervision and low market entry thresholds. Compared with formal medical institutions, ordinary optical stores face lenient regulatory standards. Authorities lack regular inspections on optometrist qualifications, periodic equipment calibration and standardized operating procedures, allowing uncertified practice, overdue equipment and simplified procedures to persist. Furthermore, the absence of unified pricing and public disclosure standards, coupled with the wide variety of professional and specialized eyewear products, creates regulatory loopholes for arbitrary and ambiguous pricing.
Inadequate consumer cognition further fuels industry irregularities. Most consumers regard eyewear fitting as a common purchase rather than a medical service, prioritizing style and price over optometry accuracy. Lacking awareness of industry qualifications and product parameters, they are easily misled by marketing tactics. Many parents blindly believe high-priced lenses deliver better myopia control effects and fail to identify false promotions, making them the primary victims of industry profiteering.
Joint Efforts to Build a Standardized Industry Ecosystem
Rectifying optical industry malpractices and protecting consumers’ rights and eye health require coordinated efforts from regulators, enterprises and consumers. Regulatory authorities should strengthen routine inspections and special rectifications, strictly verify practitioner qualifications, enforce regular equipment calibration, and severely penalize violations including fraudulent optometry, inflated pricing and hidden charges. Stores must be ordered to clearly mark prices and fully disclose product parameters and service charges.
The industry needs unified service specifications and pricing benchmarks for optometry and eyewear fitting, urging merchants to fulfill their primary responsibilities, eliminate false promotion and deceptive marketing, and realize standardized services and transparent pricing. Consumers should improve their awareness of eye care and rights protection, abandon the misconception that higher prices mean better quality, choose formal institutions for fitting, verify qualifications and fee details proactively, and safeguard their legitimate rights when infringed upon. Only through comprehensive and coordinated governance can the industry eliminate irregular practices and return to its essence of professionalism, transparency and public benefit.
