Optician's latest mystery shopping exercise has found that one in five websites selling contact lenses are supplying patients without a specification.
Six months after Optician performed a similar exercise (News, April 28) among contact lens suppliers, we repeated the exercise, the full results of which are published on page 14.
Of the 19 online suppliers surveyed, mystery shoppers managed to order lenses from four sites without a valid specification.
On four occasions, Bristol-based contactlenses.co.uk agreed to supply lenses from details read out from a lens box. One set of lenses was ordered and arrived from Bristol the next day.
A spokesman from contactlenses.co.uk, describing himself as general manager but not giving his name, told Optician: 'We're just a distribution company now. There's actually a Seychelles-owned company now that deals with all the order processing.'
This change happened in 'about July', he said.
Nevertheless, when the lenses arrived, contactlenses.co.uk's invoice gave an address in Cribbs Causeway, Bristol. It also said that Contactlenses (UK) Ltd was registered in England and gave a VAT number.
Contactsuniverse.co.uk, which also supplied lenses without a valid specification, states on its site that it is run by Lens and More GmbH, a German company. Lenses were posted to our mystery shopper by first-class Royal Mail from within the UK, with a return address in Bedford.
When Optician called Lens and More's offices in Germany, a spokeswoman suggested that the company was operating under German, not UK, law. An additional statement said that a link detailing the need for a prescription was currently not working on the site.
Mark Wakefield is a partner at Worcester-based thecontactlensshop.com. Customer services operatives from his company refused to supply four callers but agreed to supply one.
'Usually we are very insistent in asking for a contact lens specification,' he said. 'It's usually because customers tell us that the opticians refuse to supply [the specification]. We know they're wearing lenses. They often send us photocopies of their boxes and say that they've had a check within the last 12 months, but if we absolutely can't get a copy then we don't have much alternative.'
One supplier, secondsightonline.co.uk, arranged to have lenses sent directly from CIBA Vision in Germany (see panel, right). When received, the return address was for Points of View, an optical practice in Bromley, Kent.
Pankha Bhinda from Second Sight said he was very surprised and there had clearly been 'a wrongdoing'. He was keen to look into the matter further. 'It's not standard practice, I'm very annoyed. We do not just supply lenses willy-nilly and if we did we'd be doing a roaring trade.'
Optician showed the results of our mystery shop to the General Optical Council, which provided the following response: 'The GOC will consider any alleged criminal offence in line with our criminal prosecutions protocol. Where it is in the public interest and there is a reasonable chance of success, we will take formal action.'