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Contact Lens Startup Hubble Sold Lenses With a Fake Prescription From a Made-up Doctor (qz.com)
Alison Griswold, reporting for Quartz: The Hubble contacts sitting in front of me are everything the ads promised: two weeks' worth of soft, daily lenses in robin's-egg-blue packaging. They arrived promptly, one week after I placed an order on Hubble's website, and three days after the company notified me the contacts had shipped. The lenses were packed in cream-colored boxes and came with a five-step guide, illustrated in different shades of pastel. There's only one problem: I don't wear contacts, and I ordered these using a fake prescription from a made-up doctor. Hubble was founded in May 2016 as a direct-to-consumer contact lens brand -- the Warby Parker of contacts, if you will. The company aims to make buying contact lenses as cheap and easy as shopping on Amazon. It has fast become a star of New York's startup scene, raising more than $30 million from investors that include Founders Fund and Greycroft Partners. Its valuation tops $200 million. Since the service officially launched in November 2016, Hubble claims to have sold $20 million worth of lens subscriptions, and says it's growing 20% month over month. Hubble expanded to Canada in August and plans to be in the UK as early as January. Quick service, cheap contacts, and whimsical branding have made Hubble a speedy success. But in its rush to disrupt the consumer experience, Hubble also appears to be playing fast and loose with some basic consumer protections.
This is exactly how we wind up with a flood of fake-prescription contact lenses showing up on the dead bodies of young people who've overdosed on astigmatism correction at night clubs.
... so what? Now, if this was a story about someone pretending to be an optometrist or ophthalmologist messing with other people's vision, that would be different. But this? Stop it. Really.
Or maybe the tone of outrage here, is a bit absurd? If you want to deliberately falsify the documentation needed to purchase something you're going to wear in your own eyes to correct your own vision
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
That's not all. I went to Publix the other day and bought a five pound bag of flour... while wearing a fake chef hat! They didn't take even a moment to check that I was a real chef! This is the kind of sloppy taking short cuts thing I wouldn't expect from a respected retailer.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
No. Underage drinking has consequences.
Not getting an updated prescription also has consequences: An optometrist fails to earn $100 for doing unnecessary busy work, he gets mad and calls the AMA, and then they call the politicians and threaten to withhold their millions in campaign donations, mostly to Republican candidates. The Republicans then set aside their claim to represent small government, and pass even more draconian laws to clamp down on terrorist optical products.
We can't just have people buying whatever eyewear they want. For all we know, they could be nearsighted from watching kiddie porn on the cellphones.