Guide For Buying Contact Lenses Online

By Kate Musgrove

The merits of shopping online, such as convenience, selection, and lower prices, have made online purchasing items of like electronics, DVDs, books, and even food routine. One area of online shopping you may not have explored yet is shopping for contact lenses. The idea of buying items online that are medical in nature may make you a little nervous at first, but this article will present some compelling reasons you might want to buy your contact lenses online and how to ensure a smooth transaction.

The best selling point of buying contact lenses online is clear – they’re usually cheaper than buying them from your optometrist, and oftentimes significantly so. You will also have access to a much wider selection of brands and types of contact lenses than most optometrists can offer. Other reasons to shop online are the wealth of tools at your fingerprints. Here at RedFlagDeals.com, we have Store Ratings for stores of every stripe, including a good number of contact lens retailers. Get a sense for which companies are the most reliable before you purchase. (You might also search the RedFlagDeals.com forums for user feedback, praise, and complaints.) Our Coupon Section will also be of interest to you as there are almost always contact lens coupons, sometimes as much as 10 or 15% off the total purchase price.

If you’re ready to try buying your contact lenses online, here is how to proceed -- you’ll need to know your latest lens prescription and which brand you use. After you choose which retailer you’d like to work with, just:

• Enter the prescription strength and base curve for each side.
• Select the number of boxes you want. Remember, there are often discounts and free shipping incentives thrown in for bulk purchases, so it might make sense to buy a year’s worth at once.

For the table below, we created a contact user -- let’s call him Red F. Deals -- with a common prescription (-3.00 Power, 8.5 Base Curve, 14.2 Diameter) and priced out a year’s worth of Acuvue 1 Day Disposable Lenses at a variety of online retailers as well as average prices from randomly selected Optometrist’s offices in a sample of cities around Canada. This information was gathered on October 22, 2009. None of the prices include the use of coupons, so your totals could be even lower. How did we do? Have a look:

*Some customers reported additional duties

Obviously, the savings of buying online can be considerable. With reasonable free shipping offers from many online retailers, you’re pretty much saving the cost of gas (or its equivalent) when you purchase online as well. The convenient thing about contact lenses is that when you’re buying a specific brand and prescription, the quality is the same across the board – whether you’re paying $20 a box from an online retailer or $55 a box from a Toronto Optometrist. We can’t help but do the math: lower prices, uniform quality, and shop-from-home convenience? Sounds like a pretty good idea. Is there any downside? If you’re new to wearing contacts, you might find the in-person service to be helpful. But if you’re a seasoned contact lens user, there is clearly a strong case for buying contact lens online.