Simon Jones: Missed opportunities

How refreshing it was to see a contact lens retailer being held to account for breaking the law. It’s just a shame the retailer was in the US. Maybe one day we’ll have a way of taking meaningful action against the retailers that sell illegally in the UK, but are able to hide behind overseas operations.

The allegations made against Hubble Contact lenses in the US will sound familiar to many practitioners – lack of prescription and age verification and substitution for its own products. In this particular case, the extent of the failures was alarming. Hubble failed to ask patients for copies of their contact lens prescriptions, and would not typically allow customers to upload, email, or otherwise provide their prescriptions – even when consumers offered to do so. This, said the Federal Trade Commission, ensured Hubble could not receive customers’ prescriptions, and thus could act as though it was unaware that these consumers had prescriptions for non-Hubble lenses.