Ordering discount contacts online — some words
of caution.
Ordering discounted contact lenses online is convenient
and safe, when you buy from reputable contact lens
retailers. However, the thing to remember about ordering
anything over the Internet is that not all online
stores are the same.
It is very easy to set up an e-commerce website, and
every man and his dog are selling online now. So along
with top-quality, famous discount lens retailers,
like Coastal Contacts or 1-800 Contacts, there are companies
operated out of someone's garage.
There is nothing wrong with buying from a small
company. However, it might happen that they only keep
the most popular contacts in stock. So if you are prescribed
lenses that are less common, they would have to order
them for you, and that will cause a delay in shipping.
Can't find your prescribed contacts at any
online store? It might very well be that your eye
care provider played a low trick on you.
Are your prescribed lenses from the Ultraflex, Medflex,
Polysoft , Proflex, Softmed , Target , Aqualens, Flextique,
or Versaflex series, or some other name manufactured
by Ocular Sciences, Inc.? Those are all the same contacts
called by different names. And the manufacturer distributes
their contacts mostly through eye care practitioners.
This way doctors can be sure that you will buy your
contact lenses from them (you don't have
any other options) and the manufacturer gets the opportunity
to distribute their product at higher prices. It's a win–win
situation for everybody — except you, the patient.
The best advice, here, is to request a prescription for lenses
made by another manufacturer. The same prescription should
be available from reputable brands such as Acuvue
(by Johnson & Johnson), Focus (by CIBA Vision Corp.)
of Soflens (by Bausch & Lomb). With any of these
lens groups, you can do a fair comparison-shopping
and find the best discount price.
I would also switch to another eye care practitioner, because I
don't like to be cheated!
Discounted lenses for non-US residents
We are often asked where non-US residents can get
cheap lenses. After evaluating online lens stores
in the UK and Australia, we found that it is generally
cheaper to order your lenses from a US-based retailer.
Even though international shipping adds to the cost,
the lowest prices we could find in the UK and AU sites
were about 40–80% higher than from US-based companies
like 1-800 contacts.
Canadians are lucky — big US-based companies
charge the same shipping for orders from Canada as
from the US. Also, if you feel more comfortable ordering
your contact lenses from a Canadian company, then
Coastal Contacts is a good choice. Not only do they offer
the lowest prices on all contacts, but they are based in Canada.
5 things to consider when deciding where to order
your discounted contacts.
