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you read this fabulous Contact Lens eBook ?
Should Contact Lenses be purchased online?.....or at your eye doctor's office?....or at the major local superstore near you?
Read on!Soft Contact Lenses
Soft lenses are made by a manufacturer. The manufacturers will then sell the contact lens (at wholesale) to either an eye doctor or alternative distributor. The contact lens inside the bottle, with identical parameters, is the same no matter who buys it.
Will you get the best deal from an online supplier? Maybe. It depends what you are looking for. If you are looking for the cheapest price, many times an online retailer or retail superstore is the answer. Sometimes they are the same price at your eye doctor's office, or close.
Purchasing online or at a retailers:
First of all, you need an up to date contact lens prescription from your eye doctor to purchase lenses online or at a local retail store. Contact Lenses are medical devices. Contact Lens prescriptions are for one year, generally. Establish a patient/doctor relationship with an experienced fitter. Eye doctors usually recommend yearly or bi-yearly checkups. As the one year mark approaches, return to your eye doctor for a contact lens check, to make sure nothing has changed.
Someone who is wearing contact lenses should not assume that just because a lens feels ok on their eye, that everything is always fine. (Read the book, "How to be a Smarter/More Comfortable Contact Lens Wearer".) Do not skimp and think, especially if contacted by the online supplier, that it's OK to reorder 3 weeks before your lenses and CL prescription run out for another year and not see your eye doctor.
You only have one pair of eyes. Don't mess with their health.
You need to understand the terms of the return policies, in advance, from the retail and online suppliers, if there is a problem. There are times when your eye doctor has written a prescription for a certain contact lens and the wrong one is sent. Always check to make sure what you receive is what you're suppose to be wearing.
If you order and the supplier says, "Well, we don't carry this one, but we'll send you something else. It's the same." STOP! Call your eye doctor. You would not allow a pharmacist to arbitrarily change your blood pressure medicine if you had high blood pressure.
Purchasing directly from your eye doctor:
Your eye doctor most likely will offer a service of some sort that goes along with a possibly higher cost. It may not be written down, but they are more flexible if something is not right. They strive to keep their patients happy as well as healthy.
If you wear contact lenses, you should always have a few spares. However, on that rare occasion if you do run out, you might find obtaining a spare from a diagnostic set is part of the perks.
Mind you...these lenses don't come "exactly free" to the doctor. The major companies will place diagnostic lenses in a doctor office, but they expect the doctor to move their lenses.
Many times the doctor's office has some sort of recall system to remind you, in a timely manner, to come in for a contact lens check.
So....where you actually purchase your soft lenses is up to you. Be sure to have your eyes checked regularly and always check the boxes to make sure you what you received what was prescribed.
Gas Permeable Lenses:
Gas permeable lenses are different than soft lenses in many different ways other than the fact that they are rigid. These lenses have many more parameters and are usually custom designed for the patient.
Although the basic parameters (Base Curve, Diameter, Power, color) can be easily duplicated by the different rigid lens laboratories, there are other parameters that aren't necessarily ordered by the CL fitter and could vary from lab to lab. (Optic zone and peripheral curves (both radii and width).
It would certainly make sense for all of them to be specified but many times the fitter doesn't do this and the lab just puts on their standards. Sometimes it makes a difference in the fit, and sometimes it doesn't. Because of this, it makes the most sense to reorder rigid lenses from the person who fit them. If this isn't possible, at least have the prescription and the lab who made them and have them duplicated from the same lab.
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