[_delirium]

I've found that, oddly enough, both the high-end and the low-end tend not to hassle you much, and instead it's sort of the middle-range optometry shops that are trying to make a bunch of money on in-house lens/frames sales.

Just about the cheapest place to get an eye exam is in the Wal-Mart vision department, and they're happy to hand over the prescription. Of course, they run the vision dept in part to try to sell you lenses/frames (or contacts), but it's a very corporate/streamlined place, and the actual employee working there doesn't mind if you want the prescription to take elsewhere.

On the other end of the scale, places that look more like a doctor's office than a frames showroom tend to be pretty professional about it. Since I have very strong myopia with some risk of retinal problems as a result, I've been going to a place that's a partnership between an optometrist and an ophthalmologist (M.D.) who do a more thorough eye-health exam, and there it's basically expected that I'll want to take the prescription with me.

[pavel_lishin]

In my experience, the actual optometrist at Walmart is basically running his own business, he just happens to be renting the space from the chain, and doesn't really interact with them all that much.