No more spending twenty minutes trying to find a parking space closer than two football fields away from the mall entrance. No more concerns about bad hair days or worse yet ugly blemishes erupting on your face. Shopping for your contact lenses online can eliminate all those concerns. 

Is shopping for contact lenses online a disadvantage because you can't touch them?

Perhaps with certain products it is, but not with shopping for contact lenses online. Online contact lens products are quite standardized by brand and design and even further by your particular prescription. That should alleviate any concerns as to whether your online contact lenses would meet your expectations. Frankly, you will soon grow accustomed to purchasing your contact lenses online and it will feel just as comfortable as walking into a regular physical store with your prescription in hand.

People have also said that the shipping costs you pay when purchasing contact lenses online is greater than the discount you get from buying online. That sounded like a legitimate concern to me, but was it true?

The comment made me curious, so I decided to go online to conduct some research to dig up the real truth. What I found is that the typical shipping cost for a purchase of contact lenses online ranges somewhere between 3 to 5 U.S. dollars on average.

My most recent purchase of contact lenses online was for a 3-month supply (4 boxes) of Acuvue Advance with Hydraclear. What was the result? I saved almost $36. One box could have cost me as much as $28.95 if I had bought it offline from a retail store. Yet, it only cost me $19.95 per box online. I saved about $9 per box. The shipping cost was free at that time. Even if the shipping had cost me $5, I still would have saved over $30 on my purchase.

Although you can save significant money by shopping for your contact lenses online, please bear in mind the following caution before purchasing contact lenses online or from anywhere else for that matter.

Make sure that your contact lens prescription is current. If you have not had a check-up in the last one or two years, you may not be aware of new problems that may have developed with your vision or even your eyes. In that case, your contact lenses may not correct your vision as well as they did before.

The expiration date for your prescription is currently set by your state. Some states require a renewal each year; some every two years. Other states leave it to your eye professional to decide. Never order contact lenses online with a prescription that has expired.

You might be thinking to yourself “Oh come on now, what real harm can possibly come to me from my failure to have regular eye checkups or from ordering contact lenses online with a prescription that may have already expired?”

Well, how about persistent eye irritation or possibly a corneal infection that may lead to a corneal ulcer? Problems like these can result in some loss of vision or even blindness.
Understand that anyone wearing contact lenses runs at least a small risk of eye infection. Regular check-ups will materially reduce your chances of having such a problem. At your check-up, your eye professional may find something that requires refitting you with a new lens or requires modifying your wearing schedule. So, if your prescription is about to expire, please see your eye professional and have your eyes re-examined prior to purchasing contact lenses online.