The world of the contact lens has three legs. The first leg is the manufacturer, the second and third legs are the two distribution systems for contact lenses. Most people think of ophthalmologists and optometrists when they consider purchasing their eyeglasses or contact lenses.
Ophthalmologists and optometrists
For many years, these doctors were the only options. While there were retail stores devoted to low cost glasses and contacts and often offering discounts for purchasing two pair or deeply discounted lenses, they still had a staff optometrist, even though some of their business comes from filling orders from their traditional and often more expense counterparts. Today, online businesses offer a viable and often far more inexpensive option, particularly to those who wear contact lenses.
Purchasing your contact lenses online can be worrisome. You often don’t know whether the site is reputable, a total scam or offers the same quality of lenses the local optometrist or ophthalmologist offers. Unless you know that you’re dealing with a reputable online company, you might end up not just losing your money but also facing potential problems caused by the contacts you receive.
Menicon Co., LTD
There are a number of large manufacturers and distributers. While some may be the largest of their country, they may not be the largest in the world. One of the larger manufacturers of contact lenses is Menicon Co., LTD.
This company’s home base is in Japan. In 1951, Mr. Kyoichi Tanaka founded the company with the development of Japan’s first corneal contact lens. Since then, the company achieved various milestones through R&D and acquisition. One of them was the creation of Menicon Z. This Hyper DK gas permeable rigid contact lens is the only one approved for 30 days of continuous wear by the FDA.
Menicon goes by many different names, depending on the country of the subsidiary. In Australia, Menicon’s subsidiary is Menicon GmbH. The company does not sell any of the products from the website but offers information on all company products available to the consumer and contact information to the company for all the countries that sell their products.
If you’ve considered using some of the Menicon products such as the soft lenses and Menicon Z night lens that corrects your vision while you sleep so you don’t have to wear glasses or contacts during the day.
1-800-CONTACTS
One of the major transactions made by Menicon was the purchase of ClearLab’s flat pack technology and other intellectual property. ClearLab was a wholly owned subsidiary of 1-800 CONTACTS . Mi Gwang Contact Lens Co., Ltd. from Korea purchased the manufacturing, distribution and customer support portion of ClearLab. However, the online site of 1-800 CONTACTS remains the world’s largest contact lens store, online or brick and mortar.
The company dedicates itself to offering consumer a hassle-free method of purchasing their contact lenses. Since they have over 10 million contact lenses in stock, they can offer consumers quicker service because of the likelihood of already having your prescription available.
Since their inception, 11 years ago, they’ve given service to over five million customers and filled more than fifteen million prescriptions. Their daily business matches the combined daily business of over 2,500 retail shops. This vast amount of volume is the key to the lower cost lenses at the site.
1-800 CONTACTS is so assured that their prices are the best anywhere; they offer a guarantee of the lowest price available. They also have a satisfaction guarantee. If you’re not satisfied with the order, they’ll make it right. If you’ve purchased additional contact lenses to keep on hand, but your prescription changes before you open the boxes, they’ll exchange the lenses for the new prescription. If you find a lower price online, provide them with the link to the lower price and they’ll match it.
Of course, there are considerations when receiving the guarantee. The product must be the exact match to your 1-800 CONTACT lens order, be available at the price advertised, and include handling fees, shipping, other types of charges and minimum purchase quantities. If the offer is a promo or you fail to contact 1-800 CONTACTS within 7 days of purchase, you also lose the guarantee.
1-800 CONTACTS offer a variety of types of lenses. It has toric contact lenses used for astigmatism, vial lenses, colored contacts, bifocal lenses, daily, weekly and monthly disposables. In fact, if you want Wild Eye contact lenses, you can call their customer support to see if the style you want is available.
Another large online retailer of contact lenses is CoastalContacts.com has over 2.3 million in-stock lenses, which makes them the second largest inventory of contact lenses. They carry vial lenses, toric lenses, color contacts, rigid gas permeables, multifocal lenses and even the spooky special effect lenses perfect for Halloween costumes and special effects.
Just as 1-800 CONTACTS do, they offer daily lenses, monthly and weekly contacts. They also carry a variety of companies that include Acuvue, Biofinity, Biometrics, Proclear, Air Optix, Dailies and FreshLook, to name just a few. The company also carries scleral lenses in addition to the popular special effects contacts. Scleral lenses cover the entire eye as opposed to the regular contacts that only cover the cornea of the eye.
1-800-get-lens
1-800-Get-Lens is another large and reputable company that offers an expensive alternative to your optometrist’s office as a source of contact lenses. While they offer great prices compared to the brick and mortar sources, they often are more expensive than some of the alternative online shops are, but are still a trustworthy source of contact lenses. 1-800-Get-Lens offers well-known name brands such as Freshlook, Bausch & Lomb, Acuvue, Focus and Biomedics.
Guarantee of satisfaction. Their guarantee is the following, taken from their website:
“You will receive the exact type and brand of contact lenses specified in your order, sealed in the manufacturers’ sterile packaging at 50% lower than your local opticians and 15% lower than the other reputable online vendors.”
While the guarantee is explicit, unfortunately there is no information available on the site that tells you what to do if you find another company’s price lower, whether this the final price the guarantee discusses and includes shipping price or other charges or how they’ll reimburse you if you do find a lower price.