Welcome to part two of my rundown of what to expect from what we pay at the opticians. This time I’m digging into how to judge value for money when comparing contact lenses online versus the high street.
I hope you find below useful whether you want to save on existing lenses, or you’re considering adding contact lenses to your spending. My opinion on the industry is not a substitute for clinical advice from an optician.
Here’s what I’ve covered below:
The Difference Between Branded And Own-brand-sort-of
Lens Tech
Toric Lenses
Daily Contact Lenses Versus Monthly Contact Lenses
When Paying More Doesn’t Get You More
How To Buy Contact Lenses Discounted
Direct Debit Schemes With Free Perks
The Health Risks Of Cheap Contact Lenses Online
The Cost of Appointments
Why Coloured Contact Lenses Usually Cost More
Why Halloween Lenses Terrify Me
Why Contact Lenses Save Us Nothing On Glasses
The Cost of Eye Drops
I wasn’t expecting my vision to deteriorate as an adult. I had to make space in my budget for glasses. Later I added contact lenses into my spending priorities. I was fairly clueless though at first about why I was paying what I was for any of my eyecare.
Then I joined an opticians and didn’t have to pay for glasses anymore. I learned a lot about eyewear and contact lenses that made me dubious of the emerging competition online. It also gave me knowledge for life about how to save on eyecare. I don’t work in optics anymore. However, I like to think I can make savvy decisions going forward about how to take care of my eyes without bankrupting myself.
What are your spending priorities?
Think contact lenses are expensive? A whole range of factors affect their price, and also what we pay in addition to wear contact lenses. Here’s a list of things that will affect whether you find lenses affordable or not:
- The brand
- Advanced technology
- Your prescription (can be related to the above)
- The type e.g. daily/monthly/coloured
- High street discounts
- Online offers or online-only lenses
- How often you need a checkup
- Your attitude to glasses
Seems like a long list of variables, huh? It’s amazing that any of us bother!
The benefits of contact lenses
Non-contact lens wearers tend to assume that it’s just about vanity. However, contact lenses can be much more convenient to wear if you have an active job or play a lot of sport. Or if you get through pairs of glasses quicker than pairs of underwear.
Ultimately wearing frames will always get in the way to an extent, so contact lenses give a wider view. Some patients with a complicated prescription might even achieve better corrected vision with contact lenses then they can with glasses. I’m not an optician, so I am not trying to give clinical advice in this post.
It’s also easy to put on sunglasses when needed instead of switching between clear prescription glasses and prescription sunglasses when the sun plays hide and seek.
Value for money to me means paying the least for the most features that benefit my individual situation. It doesn’t mean full-time shopping bans, or buying the cheapest option every time. If we’re struggling to save for big goals, we need to narrow our spending priorities to what we absolutely won’t quit. Then if we can spend as little as possible on those priorities while getting the minimum features we need, we should find it easier to build a stack of cash.
In this post I go into detail about all the contact lens variables so you can see how these affect the cost and our concept of value.
This post is over 6000 words. Join the mailing list at the bottom of the page if you want a weekly reminder of what’s on the blog. Then you can return to it when you’ve got more time.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
The Difference Between Branded And Own-brand-sort-of
How much a lens costs depends on the lens features and what type of branded box we buy. While it’s impossible to buy Chanel or Dior contact lenses, brands like Johnson and Johnson’s Acuvue definitely charge more than some others.
Then there’s the “own brands”. The funny thing about these is that we can actually buy these from the majority of high street opticians. It’s just that each optician will have slapped their own name on it in a different box.
The customer might never know the name behind the one they buy that the industry uses to identify the lens across the board. For instance, let’s say I manufacture a lens, call it Dave, and sell it to Boots, Specsavers, and Vision Express. Boots can have it sent out in a box to sell to customers labelled Mariah. Specsavers can sell Dave in a box that says Shirley on it, and Vision Express might sell Dave in a box named Penelope.
Private labels
The advantage for everyone in the latter is that private label lenses are usually priced lower than Acuvue and co. It’s the same principle as private label products on Amazon. If I want to sell vegetable peelers named Bear Loves Sweet Potato for £10 a pop, I can source my peelers from a third party who shoulders the production costs.
My next door neighbour can buy the same peelers wholesale, and ask for different packaging. They then sell them for £12 under the name Royalty Loves Super Food. (See what they did there to make you wanna pay more while not breaking the law? It’s common with food also, especially “superfoods”). It’s the same product, just dressed up differently for different sellers.
I’ve written about the tricks businesses use when selling private labels in the recent Supershoppers recap.
Lens Tech
This includes things like oxygen permeability (how much oxygen gets through the lens to your eye) and innovation in materials.
As a general rule, you do get what you pay for with contact lenses. A designer frame might just look good and not be any more hard wearing than a cheaper option sometimes. However, contact lenses need to deliver features to the wearer for their price. This is because otherwise they have nothing to offer. Part of the point of discreet clear lenses is that no one else knows you’re wearing them nine times out of ten.
The more you spend, the newer the lens most likely. Or it might be a long-running name the manufacturer has updated with the latest technology. At the other end of the scale, it’s worth researching how long a lens has been available. There are new lenses that are competitively priced in the budget and mid ranges too. For instance, I can buy a daily lens today for £11 a box that has a much better specification than a lens invented years ago that is higher priced per box.
Our eyes need oxygen
As another general rule, I’d expect more oxygen to my eye wearing the most expensive contact lenses. I’d expect a longer wear time. Again evolving tech is challenging this. There are new lenses every few years with competitive features. It’s really 50/50 whether those lenses end up priced like a Rolls Royce to reflect that, or whether their sweet price is closer to the £10 mark.
At the end of the day it’s in the manufacturers interests to provide a range of price points. As time goes on, eventually the “worst” lens will be better than what was available 20 years ago. A bit like all other technology in that respect…
Different lenses also come in different materials though. Besides your prescription they also have other measurements that affect the diameter and the curvature of the lens. These make a lens more comfortable to some wearers than others. Sometimes we might really dislike top of the range lenses because they’re just not right for us. You’ll likely drop down a price band in that case in consultation with your optician.
How long do you wear your contact lenses?
Contact lenses wearers are also notoriously naughty. They sleep in their lenses (terrible idea). They forget to clean them, or handle them with dirty hands, or wear them for 22 hours straight.
When the optician asks how long you wear your contact lenses for on average, I suspect they mentally do what doctors do when they ask how many units of alcohol you drink per week…They double it! (Of course, the optom can only record your answer, whether it’s true or not). With this in mind, the majority of contact lens wearers should probably invest in a longer wear lens because they likely wear the lenses for longer than they should.
Toric Lenses
These are prescription dependent and sometimes custom-made. The choice of brands and features otherwise are more limited than with non-toric
lenses.
Lots of us have an astigmatism, but some of us will need to wear “toric” lenses for this reason. Some of us have an astigmatism and this is part of our glasses prescription. When we wear contact lenses though, some of us can wear “sphere only”. This means they give the power to see better without correcting the astigmatism.
However, another person might have a severe astigmatism that needs correcting in contact lenses and glasses otherwise their vision is compromised. Toric lenses are always priced higher than their sphere only equivalent so in my hypothetical expect to pay more for Dave Toric versus Dave.
The optician decides whether you need a toric lens or not. Or more, your prescription decides for you, your optician doesn’t have much wiggle room beyond this! So you can’t go shopping for sphere only lenses after a fitting with torics only.
An optician won’t refit you with sphere only lenses unless you can achieve a certain level of vision. Them’s the breaks. Similar to needing to pay a premium for glasses lenses because of awkward eyes rather than because you wanted diamonds on your lenses, an astigmatism narrows your shopping choices and value for money potential.(I don’t think you can buy specs lenses with diamonds on, but you get my drift).
Custom made toric lenses
Opticians often don’t stock toric lenses on the shelf, so they take longer to order too. Again, like paying more for designer glasses, paying more for a toric lens only gets you a specific product. It doesn’t get you a quicker service. (See part one of this post for more on that).
In fact, suppliers often don’t stock some toric lenses either. The manufacturer custom makes the lens then the shipping takes weeks.
Yes, my favourite times at work were when someone wanted to order their lenses after 5pm on a Saturday when the manufacturer has closed for the weekend. They need the lenses on Monday. Their order wouldn’t be processed until Monday at the supplier. Then it could be three or four weeks before the postman rocked up with their newly born lenses. No bending of space or time will get anyone these lenses overnight.
We would then go through the same merry dance a few weeks later after losing a lens, or the lenses running out before reordering. To get value from wearing a toric lens, apart from being able to see better(!), you need to be a bit organised. Order your next batch ahead of your current pack running out. Otherwise it’s just a hassle. You’ll be paying for contact lens check ups but wearing your glasses most of the time instead.
If life is something that happens to you rather than something you control, then you might not get on well with custom made toric lenses…
Brand choice and other lens features are limited
The other cost consideration with torics is a different choice of toric prescriptions in dailies versus monthlies. Daily lenses are higher priced to begin with as I explain in the next section. Regardless of lifestyle and whether you’d rather wear monthlies, sometimes only a daily toric will accommodate a toric prescription (at more expense).
Vice versa someone who would prefer dailies might have no choice but to pay for a custom made monthly toric. Not every sphere only lens has a toric equivalent either. If a prescription change makes sphere only lenses not ideal anymore, you’ll acquaint yourself with a totally new lens altogether.
Daily Contact Lenses Versus Monthly Contact Lenses
If we don’t need to worry about torics, then it’s generally just a choice between daily and monthly lenses.
Per box, daily lenses are usually more expensive than monthly lenses. This makes sense because the manufacturer makes 30 lenses per box versus three lenses in a batch of monthlies. However, if you wear monthly contacts, you also have to factor in the cost of solution and cases.
If you wear lenses neary every day then monthlies might be better value for you because you’ll use the solution regularly. It’s less likely therefore that you’ll have to throw away an unused bottle before it expires.
Crucially we should throw away lenses around the 28 day mark regardless of how many times we wore them. You don’t want to keep the same pair of monthlies for two years because you only wore them 15 times. Those lenses are going to be more minging than a battle scene in Vikings. (Apparently Travis Fimmel’s eyes really are that blue and he doesn’t wear coloured contacts).
When daily lenses are better value
Daily lenses can really add up if you’re a swimmer or gymgoer who likes a fresh pair afterwards. (If you wear more than one pair of dailies per day for comfort, then you should probably ask the optician for a longer wear lens. Or there might be something else wrong).
If you easily lose or tear your lenses (cut your nails!), then dailies are probably a better idea. Not much point in monthlies if a monthly lens never survives 28 days with you anyway.
Typical price ranges
I’ve seen the high street advertise contact lenses as low as £5. I’ve never seen an optom fit anyone with these because such a short wear time betrays the effort.
The majority of lenses have an overall monthly cost between £10 and £15 for monthlies and between £25 and £40 for dailies. Then there’s a few outliers that are very cheap or priced well above everything else.
If you’re wondering what are the most expensive contact lenses, those will probably be multifocals. These can be useful later in life when our near sight deteriorates but we already have a distance prescription. Often they are the most expensive contact lenses because of their capability.
It seems like there’s not much flexibility in price in the middle. I think this is because opticians rely on only a few manufacturers for the majority of their lenses. While it’s not a monopoly because there’s more than one supplier, each supplier will be the ONLY supplier for a particular lens.
If I make a lens and call it Dave, no one else will be making that same lens. That means when Dave is out of stock at the supplier, it will be out of stock everywhere. Unless someone’s got dead stock on a shelf because all of the competing opticians will have the same supply issue. They’re handcuffed because they can’t turn around and say they’re going to get the lens made elsewhere!
When Paying More Doesn’t Get You More
On the whole paying more will get you more with contact lenses. That’s so long as we are just talking about technology. Paying more doesn’t make the machines that churn them out go any quicker. The order times are dependent on the lens, rather than how well you lined the till at the optician.
Express delivery charges
I had several customers who were spending almost as much on postage as on their lenses. This was because they regularly wanted their lenses ASAP and either wore a lens they knew wasn’t stocked in store, or just always seemed to time their desperation with when we’d sold out on the shelf.
Some high street opticians let you pay express delivery if you need lenses urgently that they don’t stock. They might offer the same if the supplier has stock but they’re sold out in store. (Keep in mind what I said above that they can only go to one supplier per lens in a hurry. There is no “We’ll call Factory X because their turnaround is quicker”). This is still not fail-proof even though you’ll have paid extra.
In theory with urgent shipments, if the opticians place the order before a cutoff time, the supplier will ship them so that they reach the store within the next day or two. It’s the “or two” that causes problems.
We could never guarantee this. I had more than one patient fly abroad without their lenses because they ordered last minute and express delivery just wasn’t express enough.
If you’re so strapped for time you can’t even collect your lenses, then you might also pay for the privilege of the optician shipping the lenses from the store to your house. Especially since the supplier can’t ship direct to the customer. Obviously if the supplier doesn’t get the order out next day, this screws the whole timeline.
Just be aware that if you persuade an optician to order on this basis, or it’s suggested to you, that you might still not get the lenses in time. Some online retailers have been very competitive in this area, even advertising same day delivery. This must be because they have bigger stockholdings. The high street has too many other overheads to stock enough lenses to compete in this way.
How to never pay your optician postage again
There are three ways to decrease the likelihood of paying extortionate shipping on or offline if you find yourself doing this regularly.
- Join a direct debit delivery scheme so you don’t have to remember to order your lenses or suffer stock shortages in store
- Get fitted with the lens that the store stocks as standard if suitable
- Order your lenses sooner than you think you need them
I’m not even sure why I included the last one because it’s a well-known fact that contact lens wearers like to wait until it is very URGENT before placing their order. (I jest. Remember I am a contact lens wearer myself).
I’ve written about the direct debit schemes below, but obviously you have to balance the rest of the scheme offer with how much you’d save on your current postage spend or the time and travel costs of collecting lenses.
Regards adopting the store’s preferred lens, this might mean wearing a more expensive lens than your current ones. If it means you can stock up on the fly and stop paying express delivery then this might work out cheaper overall for you.
How To Buy Contact Lenses Discounted
There is a chance you can get a discount on a year or two year’s supply on the high street. If you don’t, it will be because the supplier didn’t offer a bulk discount to whoever’s selling it to you, so there’s no saving for them to pass on.
Also this can backfire spectacularly if you decide to stop wearing lenses for any reason, or your prescription changes so that they become unwearable. You could end up sat on a massive stockpile of non-returnable lenses, even if they haven’t been opened.
If you graduated recently, you might be better off buying a smaller supply with a student discount using Totum’s alumni discount card. Mature students and anyone taking online courses should also be able to nab a student card.
Direct Debit Schemes With Free Perks
Pretty much all the major opticians offer direct debit plans where you pay monthly from your bank account and they deliver lenses automatically to your home. These usually have some benefits besides free delivery. These might include things like free appointments, so many pairs of free glasses every two years, a few spare contact lenses if something goes wrong, or discounts on solution.
If you wear contact lenses nearly all year round, then this might be better value for you because of the freebies and the convenience. Just be aware that like trying to buy in bulk, if your prescription or lens type changes, it’s usually nigh impossible to get returns or exchanges on any backlog of lenses outside of the Distance Selling Regulations.
By the same token, if you change your habits and let your post pile up in a corner, expect to set fire to the pile and your wallet when you decide you don’t want the unused lenses anymore.
The Health Risks Of Cheap Contact Lenses Online
There are two types of contact lenses available online. The first type are lenses also sold in shops, so your Acuvues, your private labels, etc. The second type are lenses which are not available to buy on the high street like daysoft (that’s not a typo, they don’t use a capital letter).
Because no one fits daysoft on the high street, daysoft accepts prescriptions based on the vision specified and ignores the lens type specified. This implies that every contact lens is basically the same when as I mentioned before they can have unique diameters and base curves, different levels of oxygen transfer, different wear times, different materials etc. This is perfectly legal, it’s just unorthodox for my background because no high street optician works on this basis.
Remember Dave? Let’s say I stroll into an optician with a prescription for Dave and the closest thing they sell is a lens named Malcolm. The optician needs to fit me with Malcolm if suitable, and give me a new prescription specifically for Malcolm. Then I’ll be able to buy Malcolm to my heart’s content. (At this point I’m slightly regretting choosing this naming system, but oh well…)
This is because contact lens fittings are performed specific to your individual needs and lifestyle. daysoft are cheap because they don’t have that personal touch.
Otherwise if you find your brand of contact lenses online for less, this will likely just be because as with online glasses retailers, they don’t have the same overheads as stores. The last time I checked online, all of the lenses I would happily wear again out of five or six different types were actually cheaper on the high street. This might be because they were all newer lenses.
So what’s the problem?
Where cheap contact lenses online become problematic is if wearers order lenses they’ve never been fitted with just because they’re cheaper. In the past Which? found online sellers illegally providing contacts without valid prescriptions. Similarly, this means that someone might try and buy contact lenses when they’ve never worn them before.
Have you ever tried to buy a lens close to your prescription in a store because your prescription was sold out? It’s very likely the business told you that an optician needed to amend the prescription first, probably via a full appointment. Same if you’ve ever asked to buy a different lens altogether.
They’ll recommend a fitting because the optician’s reputation is attached to your prescription, and they need to make sure the lens is suitable for you. No one is looking after your eyes online if they let you order something only sort of similar. What if they supply you with a lens in a material you don’t even know you’re allergic to until it’s too late?
It’s not safe to teach yourself how to wear contact lenses
For newbies, you shouldn’t try and fit yourself with contact lenses. Only certain qualifications allow someone to fit you with lenses. It’s not just about the vision. You need to learn how to insert and remove them and how to handle them without damaging the lenses or exposing yourself to infection.
At an optician’s they won’t even let you take a trial of lenses home until you demonstrate that you can remove them safely. I’ve heard “I’ll get a friend to take them out” and “I tried on my friend’s lenses, so I’ll just buy the same ones online.” This ain’t like trying on a dress in Primark. We only have one set of eyeballs. Look after them.
If an online retailer is willing to sell you lenses without a valid prescription, is this really to your benefit?
The Cost Of Appointments
Another thing to factor into contact lenses is the cost of maintaining wear. Rather like driving, you need to be able to buy the car as well as pay for the petrol, tax, insurance, MOT etc…
If you wear contact lenses or want to, your contact lens prescription and glasses prescription will rarely match and they are separate tests. You shouldn’t try and buy yourself contact lenses off the back of a sight test. Vice versa, don’t treat a contact lens test like a sight test.
A lot of opticians offer a free assessment and trial of contact lenses if you haven’t had them before, or haven’t worn them for many years. After that expect to pay to update that prescription and at the same appointment they’ll check the health of your eye specific to wearing contact lenses.
The same assumptions that apply to a sight test apply to contact lens appointments too:
- There’s no obligation to buy contact lens where you get your test
- As with dispensing glasses though, it can be more convenient to get your lenses dispensed where they were fitted and there’s less margin for error
When it costs to have a valid prescription
There are similar assumptions that apply to sight tests and prescriptions that apply to completing a contact lens prescription too:
- You’re legally entitled to a copy of your prescription so long as the prescription was completed
- If you’re given a trial of contact lenses and you don’t return for follow up appointments, don’t expect a copy of your non-existent prescription
- You might need to pay for any appointments to resume the trial
- The optician can only supply copies of lost prescriptions in writing, so allow time to receive the replacement
- If you want to buy contact lenses from elsewhere, it’s important to take your most up to date and valid prescription with you
- Whether an optician can obtain your last prescription by requesting it with your permission depends on how contactable your last optician is, and how accurate the information is that you give them
- If you don’t know where you had your last test or can’t evidence your prescription, then expect to need another contact lens check up before buying again
- Expect to need a sight test if you don’t have that information either as valid contact lens check ups are dependent on a valid sight test
Other times you’ll have to pay
- Don’t expect an emergency appointment to be free if you normally have to pay for contact lens appointments
- If you’re eligible for help with glasses on the NHS, don’t expect any help towards the cost of contact lens appointments
The NHS considers contact lenses largely cosmetic, so their high street provision is towards sight tests and spectacles.
A free contact lens check up included with a direct debit scheme will still be compliant i.e. it’s not free in exchange for an incomplete test. If this seems obvious to you, it’s because you weren’t there when I was asked a hundred times if a free check up is a scam check up. You don’t get a different checkup by passing the optician an extra fiver under the table…
If you do sign up for a direct debit for the free check ups, read the small print with your shiny new vision to understand what you’re getting. It might only include a certain number of check ups within a time period, or it might exclude any ad hoc appointments for spontaneous health problems. If you’re in and out of the optician like a yo-yo, there might be little gained.
Why Coloured Contact Lenses Usually Cost More
I’m talking about lenses that make blue eyes look brown or vice versa. There’s a few things that make wearing coloured lenses pricier than clear lenses for the majority of patients:
- They’re not sold in great quantities. Dailies might only come in a box of five. While clear monthly lenses tend to come in batches of three months at a minimum, a monthly coloured lens might be sold as only one or two per box.
- The price per lens might simply be higher than what you’re used to paying anyway.
- They’re less likely to be included in free check up offers or supplied as part of direct debit schemes if that’s where you’re used to drawing value.
- If you’ve already paid for your most recent contact lens appointment for free lenses and then want to switch to colours or get fitted in addition, you’ll usually pay all over again for the appointment as it’s a separate fit.
In terms of value, you also have to weigh up the vision you can achieve with them versus how badly you want the colour also. They don’t tend to have as broad a choice of prescriptions as clear lenses and the range of toric coloured lenses is tiny.
This means that besides contending with seeing the colour of the lens if the fit isn’t 100%, the vision might not be as good with clear lenses if your ideal prescription is in between what’s available.
Why Halloween Lenses Terrify Me
These often get bundled in with coloured lenses, but they can be cheap as chips. I assume this is because the makers design them for a casual buyer and because they don’t come with any features. Both of these combine to cause problems if we buy Halloween lenses as our first ever contact lenses, or instead of our usual lenses without running them past an optician.
You might have seen before stories of Halloween partiers ripping their corneas and other luvverly injuries. This will be down to things like the lenses having a very short wear time (so that wearing them for too long dries out the eye and makes them difficult to remove). Or they might have slept in lenses without realising how dangerous this is, or they’ve simply never been taught how to wear contact lenses because the wearer hasn’t gone via an optician first.
It’s very hard to buy Halloween lenses through high street opticians though. There’s not much incentive for them to sell something only once a year that has next to no clinical benefit. I wouldn’t wear Halloween lenses if you paid me.
Here’s a fun anecdote from Henry Cavill about nearly blinding himself with funky contact lenses for The Witcher. (The same article mentions his tendency to dehydrate while filming to look more muscly. I wrote about that and his lack of self-preservation in my recap of How To Lose Weight Well).
Like certain cheap lenses online, if you can buy something to stick on your eyeball without the intervention of a professional and no one checking whether you should be wearing them at all, I really question whether that’s of any value to you…I can’t and won’t recommend where to get the cheapest Halloween lenses therefore.
Why Contact Lenses Save Us Nothing On Glasses
Wearing contact lenses is not a way to save money on glasses. It’s just not.
The word on the optical street (I’m not qualified remember, I’m just repeating the clinical wisdom of most of the opticians I knew)is that it’s not ideal to wear contact lenses 365 days a year.
We need specs to wear on our days off from contact lenses, or if we run out of lenses, or if we must stop wearing them for health reasons.
It’s not an either/or scenario, so if you want to add the cost of contact lenses to your current spend, don’t subtract what you usually spend on specs. If you normally wear designer frames, you might be happy buying cheaper glasses going forward if you’re going to wear them less. There’s any number of reasons why you might end up back in glasses full time though.
If you’re strongly considering a direct debit plan, then I’ve seen some nice discounts on designer specs in the past as part of those schemes. Obviously there are terms and conditions, so there’ll probably charge you for extra lens options still and it might only be for one pair every two years.
If you’re really not fussed about the frames and don’t usually pay for lens options, then you might even get a pair of glasses completely free. I wouldn’t join a scheme just for this reason though; the contact lens side of it needs to be worth it too.
The Cost Of Eye Drops
I definitely ended up spending more on eye drops when I started wearing contact lenses. This was either because of overwearing them when working on screens and ending up a bit dry, or just out of habit. Once you start using drops, it’s easy to feel like you’ll never go without them again.
It’s not a given that you will have to factor in the cost of drops if you start wearing lenses, but it’s a possibility. These can vary wildy in cost. Because they’re available to buy over the counter, they can be hard to get on prescription even if your optician diagnoses dry eye. (Any prescribed drops likely won’t match what the optician recommended anyway if the GP/pharmacist doesn’t have a supply chain for the same type).
If your optom specifically recommends eye drops and you shop around, try to stick to the same active ingredient at least. Savers sell eye drops for something silly like 99p. That’s a bit different to paying £5 in a pharmacy or £15 in an opticians.
They won’t be the same brand though, and they also likely won’t be the same strength as higher priced drops. Again, they’re higher priced at independent opticians and in franchises partly because they won’t be able to afford the stock levels of a major drugstore chain where all the buying is done centrally. There aren’t any wholesale discounts for a shop that only buys a few boxes at a time.
ONE LAST THING
One more thing that I won’t explain too much because I’m not clinically qualified:
You can’t lose a contact lens behind the back of your eye because it’s physically impossible.
Knowing the latter might save you an unnecessary trip to the optician to retrieve the lens that isn’t there…Or if you’re unsure about contact lenses, just worry about how to pay for it and maintaining basic hygiene. No one needs to worry about having contact lenses swimming around their brain. It ain’t ever gonna happen.
The End Is In Sight
I’m tired. Are you tired? (When was your last eye test?) Here’s a quick summary before we all take a nap.
Types of lenses
- Private labels are cheaper than obvious brands in lots of places on and offline
- Private labels are sold under different names in different high street stores, making it hard to price compare
- Generally the more you pay, the better the lens technology
- Toric lenses tend to cost more than sphere only, and some prescriptions are only suitable for torics
- Daily contacts can cost more per box than monthlies
- There’s limited value in monthlies if they’re worn little before throwing away
- Monthlies also need solution and cases
Paying extra to order versus discounts
- Paying more doesn’t make order times shorter on the high street except for some cases when paying express postage
- We can avoid paying postage altogether
- It’s not easy to get bulk discounts on lenses, but there are student and alumni discounts
- Direct debit schemes come with other benefits that might save you money overall
The cost of appointments
- Cheap contact lenses online carry risks if we buy prescription products without a fitting, or prescription products different from our valid specification
- It’s not worth risking your sight to dodge paying for an appointment
- Expect coloured contact lenses to cost more, but the vision might not be what you’re used to in clear lenses
- Halloween lenses are notorious for causing injuries, and not just because Halloween makes Sambuca seem like a good idea
Lastly…
- Contact lenses save us nothing on glasses because we still need glasses for downtime from contact lenses
- If you start wearing lenses, you might buy eye drops regularly too, but there are ways to get these cheaper
Just remember, contact lens appointments carry a fee more often than sight tests. However, they are essential for wearers to maintain eye health and reputable outlets won’t let you buy without a prescription. I’m happy to suggest all kinds of shortcuts on the blog to save money. I’m not going to recommend anything that risks your health though.
Unlike my 100+ Best Value Food Ingredients page, I haven’t listed anywhere above where to get which lens cheapest therefore. Just in case it’s not clear by now (no pun this time, promise), I think our eyes are important.
If you’re determined to wear contacts despite the cost on top of glasses, then talk to your optician. Ask them about the best lens type for your prescription and lifestyle. There might be cheaper lenses available, but this is one time where I don’t fancy a race to the bottom. Otherwise Google keratitis, or acanthamoeba, or neovascularization of the eye. That will give some fun reading material on the consequences of abusing contact lenses.
Let me help you see where to go next…
Here’s the first part of this post about saving on glasses if you missed it or want to go back. In that post I covered:
- Why glasses seem expensive on the high street
- When to pay for a sight test
- Whether designer glasses and expensive lenses are worth it
- NHS schemes
- The pros and cons of buying specs online
Read more about savings on the blog.
I think that’s everything…Let me know in the comments if you have any (non-clinical) questions, or anything you think should be added. Also if any information changes and you notice it before me, give me a heads up and I will update the post.
Just a final reminder: I am not an optician. It wasn’t my intention with this post to damage anyone’s reputation online or offline. (I can’t damage the reputation of anyone selling illegally either because they’re doing that all by themselves!) I haven’t tried to reveal the specific details of one particular business or brand. Basically, don’t sue me. If you have a problem with the way I’ve worded anything, let’s have a polite chat about it in the comments.
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