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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.
Don't all online contact places do this?
I've definitely changed the date on an RX once, and a few times I've ordered using random eye doctors as mine but not providing an RX (they're allowed to ship if there's no response).
I have about a 3/4 success rate.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Seriously? It's not like someone is going to get high on contact lenses and go commit crimes.
In "nanny-state" Europe, no perscription are needed for contact lenses... Only in "free" America is that kind of corporate-welfare needed to keep doctors feed.
This is one case where I don't want them verifying the prescription.
I buy glasses from Zenni Optical. I enter the numbers from the prescription into their web form, and two weeks later I get glasses. Cheap.
I want computer glasses? Add 0.50 to my correction figure. I want reading glasses? Add 1.50 to my correction figure. I want to make strong reading glasses for my mom, who doesn't normally need glasses at all? Just get her some glasses with "+3.00 0.00 0.00" prescriptions.
This isn't rocket science and there's no room to "abuse" this. Worse, if there's any sort of crackdown on this or change in the law to require that these prescriptions be vetted -- it's going to hit me with either increased costs or decreased flexibility, and probably both.
"Prescription" in this context means the optical characteristics of the lenses needed to correct your vision. Not a doctor's authorization to purchase, like a drug prescription.
If you don't have your latest prescription from your eye doctor, most eyeglass shops will be happy to measure your current glasses to determine your old prescription, then grind duplicate lenses.
The bigger issue IMHO is Luxottica. Ever wonder why a few pieces of plastic and metal you place on your face cost $200+ before you even buy lenses for them? And why those Taiwanese mail-order glasses places can sell you frames for only $15? It's because one company owns or has controlling interest in most of the popular eyeglass brands and a large fraction of stores worldwide, and they rig the prices.