High street opticians - robbing us blind?

With the New Year’s VAT rise, many consumers will be looking to cut costs. The good news for contact lens wearers is that they could save huge amounts on their contacts – almost 90% in some cases* - by buying online instead of on the high street.

Brits are currently losing up to £77 million per year by not going online for their lenses.

“It’s partly habit, but mainly ignorance”, says Brendan O’Brien, the in-house optometrist at GetLenses.co.uk. “People need re-assurance that cutting costs in eye care doesn’t need to involve cutting corners.”

In spite of the obvious and clear cost benefits of switching to online, people are slow to move across. They don’t necessarily understand their prescription and are scared of making mistakes.

“It’s easy, when you go for your next after-care visit, make sure you get a copy of your contact lens prescription. Your optician is obliged to give this as part of the service. And don’t feel embarrassed. Your optometrist is not embarrassed about having a nicer car than you do! Just take the prescription home and it gives all the information you need to enter your order online. And the lenses you will get will be exactly the same ones your high street optician would have provided.”

The cost differences are striking: a three month supply of Focus Dailies contact lenses from a well known high street retailer is 86% more expensive than buying the same brand at an online shop. A year’s supply of Focus Dailies costs £200 more when bought on the high street rather than ordering online.

Brendan concludes: “Consumers need to realise that they own their prescription and that they can shop around. Given the huge mark-ups applied by many retailers, consumers should ask themselves why they feel so loyal to their high-street optician – are they being loyal to you?”

*Survey conducted in Q4 2010 by OnePoll, questioning 4,000 consumers.