When Is Enough Actually Enough?

[the piper]

5 years out of college -old????I am 25 years out and still broke after teaching for 22 years...Bills .the coming depression and lackluster product has kind of led me away from Oakley. I am one of those people that will never own a new car, house,hometheatre and, lucky we dont like kids!....and people wonder why I dont own a camera or dvd player..the well has dried up and if I could take back 70% of what I bought I would. I was irresponsible

 

[HDOakley]

She double-majored. Elementary education and childhood development. She now has a masters in each discipline, which makes her one of the top paid teachers in her district. She develops new curriculum for the schools in addition to everyday teaching duties. So her pay very generously offsets the cost of her schooling. Still it's impossible to overlook what we COULD be doing with an extra $750 a month. That's a car payment on a VERY nice car.

that's awesome man congrats. thats a nice career.

 

[mtedenajimenez]

i don't know how you guys do it, i'm already frustrated trying to pickup the few vintage pairs i'm after. trying to get used sunglasses is like trying to get a used car. you don't want to do it unless you have to because you don't know what people aren't telling you until they arrive. as much as i like Oakley, they've had various quality control issues in the past that continue to today and will continue into the future i'm sure, so when people say "nib" or "display only" that doesn't mean anything to me except that the chances of getting what i want increase a little. i always say, that's nice, but i'm going to need a little more description than "it looks good to me." all it takes is one bad cleaning wipe down while on display to spider web scratch the lens. very few people actually know how to inspect these things.

trying to get mint sunglasses new direct from Oakley is a chore in itself as well, especially if it's through online or phone. i've put in 4 online/phone orders this year and all of them required me to do something other than take them out of the box and put them in a case. ocustom plaintiffs had a scratch on one lens, had to get new lenses. matte white flaks had damaged white ear socks, luckily i was already planning to change them to red. deviations arrived with scratches on lens and frame, needed to get them replaced. ocustom smoke grey flaks had a messed up frame, needed to go get the frame swapped. all of this is direct from Oakley too!

you guys that have tons of glasses (if i could pick up every vintage frame on my list today, i would have a little less than 20 total in my collection) have to be somewhat comfortable with the random game of trying to get Oakley's in mint condition. i can justify spending a lot of money on some truly mint glasses, but not for "near mint" stuff or below. i can't wait to finish my list so i can just concentrate on buying only new things that i really like from Oakley. they may not be perfect the first time, but atleast they let you exchange if you catch things right away and there's more stock or just refund, although sometimes i've had to muscle them around a bit to get them to do it. that's my rant. i've got 6 "nib" pairs (pre-owned) arriving this week, so far i'm 1 for 2.

 

[the piper]

I hear u abt getting stuff from oakley i never had a problem for 9 years and the last 6 months were terrible and probably led to my disenchantment with the company No one has been able to tell me why their recent +Red look like Ice..I went thru 2 til they agreed to refund my OCP order...theres was not a hint of purple or red in them...another OCP MD order was lost in the mail and a stock pair of black Flaks came with lens chipped....

 

[The Raven]

i don't know how you guys do it, i'm already frustrated trying to pickup the few vintage pairs i'm after. trying to get used sunglasses is like trying to get a used car. you don't want to do it unless you have to because you don't know what people aren't telling you until they arrive. as much as i like Oakley, they've had various quality control issues in the past that continue to today and will continue into the future i'm sure, so when people say "nib" or "display only" that doesn't mean anything to me except that the chances of getting what i want increase a little. i always say, that's nice, but i'm going to need a little more description than "it looks good to me." all it takes is one bad cleaning wipe down while on display to spider web scratch the lens. very few people actually know how to inspect these things.

trying to get mint sunglasses new direct from Oakley is a chore in itself as well, especially if it's through online or phone. i've put in 4 online/phone orders this year and all of them required me to do something other than take them out of the box and put them in a case. ocustom plaintiffs had a scratch on one lens, had to get new lenses. matte white flaks had damaged white ear socks, luckily i was already planning to change them to red. deviations arrived with scratches on lens and frame, needed to get them replaced. ocustom smoke grey flaks had a messed up frame, needed to go get the frame swapped. all of this is direct from Oakley too!

you guys that have tons of glasses (if i could pick up every vintage frame on my list today, i would have a little less than 20 total in my collection) have to be somewhat comfortable with the random game of trying to get Oakley's in mint condition. i can justify spending a lot of money on some truly mint glasses, but not for "near mint" stuff or below. i can't wait to finish my list so i can just concentrate on buying only new things that i really like from Oakley. they may not be perfect the first time, but atleast they let you exchange if you catch things right away and there's more stock or just refund, although sometimes i've had to muscle them around a bit to get them to do it. that's my rant. i've got 6 "nib" pairs (pre-owned) arriving this week, so far i'm 1 for 2.

I've ordered lots of stuff from Oakley, and all items have been 100% perfect condition on arrival, until last week. I ordered a OO Polarized Red Iridium Pitch lens for my Radar frame two weeks ago. It arrived with a flaw in the Iridium coating. I called Oakley immediately and the rep conversed with me to ascertain what exactly the problem was (tough to describe something that's not a scratch really, but still an important flaw in the lens), and he then set up a cross-ship replacement for me, and gave me a 20% discount on top of it all. I'm very happy with Oakley's quality control and support thus far.

I hear u abt getting stuff from oakley i never had a problem for 9 years and the last 6 months were terrible and probably led to my disenchantment with the company No one has been able to tell me why their recent +Red look like Ice..I went thru 2 til they agreed to refund my OCP order...theres was not a hint of purple or red in them...another OCP MD order was lost in the mail and a stock pair of black Flaks came with lens chipped....

+Red Iridium is a very angle-dependent coating. As you certainly know, the color changes greatly depending on both the viewing angle and the brightness of the ambient light hitting the lens at that moment. Thus, +Red Iridium's appearance is very dependent on the shape of the lens to which it is applied. I have three different pairs with +Red Iridium lenses, and the average person would never guess that all three have the same lens coating. My Scalpel's +Red lenses are completely, uniformly blue from head-on, and completely red from a 90-degree side viewing angle. However the +Red lenses on my Straight Jackets (who's lense profile is much wider, and as a result, has much more net curvature), always have a hint of gold in them, no matter what angle I view them from. From head on they are blue-red-gold, and from the side they are red-orange-gold. My Radar's pitch lens is blue-red-gold from any angle other than the 90-degree side angle, at that angle it is orange-gold. If you take the Scalpel lens and lay it over the Radar lens at a spot where the curve of both lenses is similar, you will see that the color transition in that spot is identical.

 

[the piper]

Well i found a Red/Purple pair locally and popped em in my SI frame but both that I got from O were blue from every angle..it was only after seeing my pics they set up a return on the Flaks

 

[mtedenajimenez]

i would like to inspect your guys glasses, haha. i do quality control for a living, so i admit that i'm much more harsh than the average person. when i talk about quality control, i not only mean Oakley getting them to us brand new without immediate visual defects, but i also mean about the quality control concerns when the glasses actually get used in real life or deterioration over time. take the fmj paint for example. how long has that coating been flaking off? ever since it's been in use. what is one of the main problems i hear about the fmj goldbrooks? it's the fmj coating flaking off over a decade after fmj was introduced. quality control is usually the department that does the investigation about in house and out in the field issues so they can be sourced down to the root cause and then eliminated. sure most people probably bought the goldbrooks to store them in a case, but it's up to QC engineering to verify and have data backing up that the product can hold up to its intended purpose. from what i hear about the goldbrooks, they don't do such a good job of that and they are less than a year old from their release. there are various other issues, like the mars clamps breaking simply due to time, not even being used, or the romeo 1's cracking their lenses, or the old omatter weakening over time and snapping at the arms (which is a problem that actually was fixed with an omatter formula change) etc. those are all QC issues that should have been recognized by QC engineering over time and solved when in production or atleast in the future for a different model. i bet the romeo 1 cracking the lens is one of the reasons for the drastic design change of the romeo 2's which don't look much like the romeo 1's.

you wouldn't get a brand new car, have it work good for a little while, then suddenly break down and say: well it was perfect at the beginning, so QC was doing their job. no, you would start cursing QC for whatever company it was and demand the issue get fixed. those are the exact issues that may not come into play when buying these glasses new, but they are definitely the ones that add frustration when trying to get those old glasses now. there's no other sunglass company like them, though, and that's why we all love their glasses no matter what. i realize all those issues are just part of the game when trying to get vintage glasses. i'm just saying it's a frustrating game and i give hi-fives to the collectors with the patience to build their grand collections.

 

[Herbsley]

Back to the OP's original question, I think I am at the point now when I'm happy enough with what I have - which is around 50 pairs - and therefore "enough is enough".

I'm very selective about the frames/models/styles that I like - and pretty much think that all the latest styles are rubbish. Plus I have already bought all my must-have 'holy grail' pairs.

So, unless Oakley suddenly release something new that I think is worth buying (quite unlikely, judging by recent output), then that's me done.

 

[BriP]

Back to the OP's original question, I think I am at the point now when I'm happy enough with what I have - which is around 50 pairs - and therefore "enough is enough".

I'm very selective about the frames/models/styles that I like - and pretty much think that all the latest styles are rubbish. Plus I have already bought all my must-have 'holy grail' pairs.

So, unless Oakley suddenly release something new that I think is worth buying (quite unlikely, judging by recent output), then that's me done.

im with the herbsmachine on this one, im pretty happy with what i have. Ive sort of completed my
xmetal collection, and have plenty of sport specific ones that are functional to me. im currently grabbing a final
few lifestyle ones (frogs and crosshairs if you must know) for just casual wear, and im a sucker for vintage zeros and Mframes so those are on the opportunities list. other than that, nada..

well, lets see what replaces the xmetal line..