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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.
Seriously? It's not like someone is going to get high on contact lenses and go commit crimes.
You did something under false pretenses and your an idiot trying to blame them.
The next contacts you get might be from the feds.
Why the fuck is this on Slashdot? Come on editors, news for nerds.
Why ( or even is) it required by law that glasses / lenses only be sold to those who are prescribed them by a Eye DR? What if I just want 10 pairs of different magnification to demo in my science class? I don't see where there should be some kind of problem with getting them even if you don't have a prescription. I suppose their could be a down side of mistyping a prescription but I'm not sure how you would fix that unless you called every DR and verified the persecution , which sounds expensive.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Contact and eyeglass prescriptions aren't routinely verified like drugs are. Usually only in the case that something looks inaccurate on the prescription. The point of the prescription is to keep ophthalmologists in business when you come in for your yearly checkup.
Disclaimer - I work for an large national optical chain in the US and prescriptions are almost never verified.
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.
Contact lenses aren't classified as a medical device in Europe, you can get them over the counter in any drugstore. I don't see how this is a problem.
The real problem is some dumb journalist drumming up tension by inventing a doctor.
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The only reason you need a Dr prescription is that they were able to lobby to make it a requirement because they were losing so much contact business from 1800 contacts. Now they've managed to require contacts have a 1 year expiration to make you go toss $100 each year to get a new prescription.
Here in Canada there's been a popular website called Clearly where you enter your prescription and can order glasses or contacts. No 'doctors note' required.
So long as the contacts and glasses are up to spec (like the actual prescription, sterile, etc) I don't see what the big deal is? If I need a new set of contacts after 6mos, why should I have to go and visit an optometrist? Same if my glasses break? My prescription didn't change for nearly 30 years.
What happened to all the 'anti-regulation' attitude that we expect from the US? Why are you letting Big Optometrist tell you what prescription you can order?
Just because there is a prescription involved, that doesn't mean there is a problem.
in this case a prescription is simply a lens specification. What it DOES mean is that one may order contact lenses made to any particular specification from this vendor.
Take a chill pill
Amazon let me order size 6 shoes even though I'm a size 10 wide! Don't they know I could injure my toes? Do they know they are stealing money from the poor shoe salespeople who are specially trained to measure my feet and make sure I get exactly the right size?
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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.
I'm not worried about them not vetting prescriptions. There is no real path for serious abuse, at most, cheapskates poorly guesstimating their vision, and with a few months of playing "better or worse" with them, they can find something that works well enough anyway.
I am concerned about them being safe. If these contacts are sitting in bleach or will otherwise harm eyes, that's a problem. But this doesn't seem to discuss that.
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Can't this guy be put in jail for impersonating a Dr? Pretty sure writing fake prescriptions is pretty illegal.
The actual 'reason' is that you'll typically have a follow up a week or so after your new contacts are being used and they can evaluate if you're having any issues that may cause infection or worse later down the road.
Contacts really are different than eye glasses which if you can see are pretty harmless and tend not to bind to your eyeball if they dry out and rip your cornea off.
The "prescription" requirement for contacts is a racket. A mature person can go a decade or more without their eyesight changing significantly, and is perfectly capable of deciding for themselves whether they need a new prescription or not. No other country has this stupid nanny government requirement.
I live in America, and buy my contacts from the UK. They take a few extra days to arrive, and cost an extra $2 in shipping, but I save $100 in doctor fees and 2 hours of my time commuting to a doctor and sitting in a waiting room.
There are also good online sources of contacts that ship from Mexico and Canada.
Who cares if the person uses a fake prescription. If they want to do this, then they take their chances. This article sounds like propaganda for the Luxottica monopoly, the one that owns 90% or more of the optics industry, including the optics clinics. These guys are so evil, that when Oakley tried to protest/fight them, the Luxottica monopoly removed Oakley sunglasses from all their stores (which means basically ALL of the glasses stores). Oakley's stock tanked, and Luxottica swooped in and bought Oakley at a bargain basement price. The reason why glasses are so expensive is entirely the fault of Luxottica.
Seriously, this should not be on Slashdot. It is entirely corporate propaganda.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
This. I mean, there are good reasons to get a regular eye exam, like determining what your prescription should be, watching for signs of cataracts and glaucoma, etc., but it's absolutely baffling that if I have been more than a year since getting an eye exam and accidentally drop my glasses and break them, I can't get replacements for those glasses that were obviously still working fine up to that point (or else I would have gone for an eye exam to get a new prescription).
There's absolutely no sane reason why a current, valid prescription should be required when getting glasses or contacts manufactured. None. The worst-case scenario is you waste a lot of money and buy something that doesn't work or causes eyestrain, and you stop using them.
Worse, the prescription-required policy isn't even consistently applied. I can walk into Wal-Mart and pick up a set of pre-made glasses that have various levels of farsightedness correction (positive values) for reading, but correction for nearsightedness requires a prescription, as does correction for astigmatism. I understand the reluctance to have arbitrary formulations available off the shelf, because there are a near-infinite possible number of them, but when it comes to refusing to fabricate them on demand, that distinction seems completely arbitrary, and expecting a lens manufacturer to investigate every optometrist to make sure they're legitimate... well, that's just absurd.
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Lenses can do serious damage to your eyes longer term. Glasses can just give you a headache. The main problem is that the lens in the eye gets its oxygen from the tear-fluid that wets the eye. With a lens in between, that is less and if the oxygen drops below a certain level, blood vessels start to grow into the lens. That causes permanent damage unless caught early. So have a check-up every 6-9 months to be on the safe side. It is not expensive. For me, it is about 20% of what the lenses cost. And my optician actually gives me slightly better prices on the lenses as the cheapest online offer in addition.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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You forged a doctor's prescription, had it filled, and are now writing about it? Have you talked to a lawyer about this?
And you blame a company for falling for your forgery?
Either you don't really think that it is a big deal that you should require a doctor's permission to buy contacts, or you don't think that forging such a prescription is a big deal. Either way, you probably should not be writing about it.
Hell, they sell contacts that don't alter vision without prescriptions (for halloween, etc)....what's the big deal if someone gets some that are prescription?
Hell, who would actually WANT prescription contact lenses that aren't in a prescription that would help their vision in the first place?
I mean, this isn't gonna get them high or harm them, just will make their vision blurry....
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