One year on from the Section 60 changes to the Opticians Act, the availability of contact lenses on the internet is now greater than ever.
Now in its third year, the Internet Contact Lens Pricing (ICLP) survey has again been broadened to include major new players in the UK such as Sainsbury’s and Asda.
Last year, the ICLP survey increased the number of websites from 12 to 15. This year, we increased that number to 20. Two extra lens products were included in the research: 1-Day Acuvue Moist and Acuvue Oasys.
From April 24 to May 21, Optician researchers logged on to 20 websites (Table 1) to record the prices of four daily disposable brands (Johnson & Johnson’s 1-Day Acuvue and 1-Day Acuvue Moist, CIBA Vision’s Focus Dailies and Bausch & Lomb’s SofLens One Day).
The new websites for this year’s survey were chosen according to their prominence in the UK (Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco) and their prominence in Google UK search results (contactsdirect.co.uk, contactsuniverse.co.uk and thecontactlensshop.com).
The introduction of 1-Day Acuvue Moist to the market presented a complication for the ICLP survey in that the web sites treated the new product differently. Thirteen sites did not offer Moist, six offered both 1-Day Acuvue and 1-Day Acuvue Moist, and one site would only provide Moist, treating it as a replacement for 1-Day Acuvue. We therefore decided to include 1-Day Acuvue Moist in the research, increasing the number of daily disposables surveyed to four.
Focus Dailies were not treated any differently to previous years, despite now being Focus Dailies with AquaComfort. No site distinguished between the two, so the survey regarded them the same.
The prices of five silicone hydrogel lens products (J&J’s Acuvue Advance and its Acuvue Oasys, CIBA’s Focus Night & Day and its O2 Optix - since renamed Air Optix - and B&L’s PureVision) were also recorded.
For the daily disposables we noted down the price of purchasing 90, 180 and 360 pairs of contact lenses corresponding to three, six and 12 months’ supply, assuming daily wear. For the silicone hydrogels we recorded the price of three, six and 12 pairs of lenses for all but Acuvue Advance and Acuvue Oasys, for which we noted the price of six, 12 and 24 pairs. These amounts also correspond to three, six and 12 months’ supply, assuming the products are worn to their recommended schedule.
When looking at the prices of daily disposable lenses we looked at the best rate available for 30 pairs of lenses. This was usually achieved when purchasing one year’s supply, although some sites offered the same price regardless of whether 90, 180 or 360 pairs of lenses were purchased.
For silicone hydrogels, we calculated the best rate for a single pair of lenses, usually achieved by purchasing one year’s supply.
No contact lenses were actually purchased, but for every price recorded the researcher went to the final stage of the order process to ensure all delivery charges, ‘administration fees’ and any other hidden costs were included in the total charge.
Most of the 20 sites surveyed were UK-based but six were based in the US. Of these, five charged the customer in US dollars. On May 21, the final day of the research, anyone making a purchase using a Barclaycard would have been charged at a rate of £1= $1.8252, so this was taken as a representative exchange rate.
Daily disposables
For all 20 sites surveyed this year, Table 2 shows the maximum, minimum and average price for 30 pairs of each daily disposable contact lens brand.
Like last year, it was American sites that provided the cheapest product. Justlenses.com offered the best rate for 30 pairs of Focus Dailies (FD) at £13.74, while visiondirect.com offered SofLens One Day (SL) at a 30 pair rate of £15.18. Meanwhile aclens.com offered 1-Day Acuvue (1DA) at a rate of £24.14. For 1-Day Acuvue Moist, however, it was a British site, postoptics.co.uk, that proved least expensive at £33.25.
At the upper end of the scale, lensesbymail.com continued to offer the highest prices surveyed on the web, despite offering ‘up to 80 per cent off retail prices’, with its best rates for 30 pairs of 1DA and FD being £42.40 and £24.07 respectively. James Murray Wells’ www.contactsdirect.com, however, was the most expensive of the 20 sites when purchasing SofLens One Day, at £25.21, while www.contactlenses.co.uk was the most expensive provider of 1DA Moist at £38.00.
Average prices of two daily disposables brands are decreasing. Comparing like-for-like across 14 sites surveyed both this year and last, the price of 1DA fell 2.3 per cent, FD fell 3.3 per cent. Meanwhile SL increased slightly by 0.1 per cent.
When comparing like-for-like averages this year with the original 12 sites surveyed in the first year, prices fell for all three brands (1DA, -2.9 per cent; FD -4.2 per cent, SL -0.7 per cent).
Restricting the analysis to only UK sites (or those sites charging in sterling and making no mention of overseas delivery), the averages were £30.52 (1DA), £19.25 (FD) and £19.60 (SL). These represented decreases in price of 1.2, 3.3 and 0.7 per cent respectively.
Two of the 14 sites surveyed again offered the three daily disposable contact lenses at identical prices to one year ago. The others had changed at least one price.
Table 3 shows the largest increases and the largest decreases in price found across the 12 websites surveyed both years. It also shows the average price difference from last year to this year for each brand. A second mean value represents the average change across 14 sites, but assigns the same exchange rate (ER) as last year to strip out the effect of the slightly stronger US dollar against the pound. Last year’s exchange rate was £1 = $1.85421, so was not significantly different to this year’s rate.
The most extreme example of a price increase occurred on www.coastalcontacts.co.uk, which also had the largest increases last year. Its 1DA price rose 16.2 per cent; FD, 4.6 per cent; and SL, 12.2 per cent. Postoptics.co.uk’s prices fell the most: 1DA, -5.6 per cent; FD, -12.6 per cent; SL -4.6 per cent.
Silicome hydrogels
Prices of the five silicone hydrogel contact lens brands varied from as little as £3.57 for a pair of Acuvue Advance to £17.54 for a pair of Focus Night & Day.
Table 4 shows the maximum, minimum and average online retail prices for each lens. The US website www.lensdirect.com was the cheapest place to buy Acuvue Advance at £3.51 per pair, and Focus Night & Day at £9.21 per pair. Aclens.com was the cheapest for O2Optix at £3.87 per pair, PureVision at £7.22 per pair and Acuvue Oasys at £4.96.
Average prices of silicone hydrogels are falling, except for Acuvue Advance, which increased 1.9 per cent. Focus Night & Day fell 3.3 per cent; O2Optix 14.2 per cent; and PureVision fell 22.0 per cent (Table 5).
Restricting the analysis to only those sites surveyed this year and last, saw Acuvue Advance price increase 4.3 per cent and Focus Night & Day, O2Optix and PureVision fall 3.7, 14.9 and 22.0 per cent respectively.
At the upper end of the scale, www.lensesbymail.com offered the most expensive price for Acuvue Advance at £7.87 per pair. www.contactsdirect.co.uk provided Focus Night & Day for £17.54 per pair. www.contactlenses.co.uk offered the most expensive O2Optix at £11.67 per pair. www.secondsightonline.co.uk sold PureVision at £16.50 per pair, while contactsuniverse.co.uk offered Acuvue Oasys at £7.65 per pair.
Conclusions
The third year of the Optician ICLP survey has shown that contact lens prices online have continued to fall over the past 12 months. Our research unearthed some of the largest price decreases yet. Silicone hydrogels have decreased the most with prices falling by as much as 42 per cent in some instances. This contributed to average decreases of between 5 and 22 per cent for three brands, although Acuvue Advance bucked the trend increasing in price by 1.9 per cent.
Daily disposables from Johnson & Johnson and CIBA Vision fell on average by 2.3 and 3.3 per cent respectively, while Bausch and Lomb’s SofLens One Day remained static (+0.1 per cent).
Practitioners are able to compare their own prices with those presented here, but it is useful to remember that the cheapest rates often come from bulk purchase, where the patient buys product to last six months or one year.
Related websites
www.1800contacts.com
www.aclens.com
www.asda-contactlenses.co.uk
www.cluboptique.com
www.coastalcontacts.co.uk
www.contactlenses.co.uk
www.contactlenssupplies.co.uk
www.contactsdirect.co.uk
www.contactsuniverse.co.uk
www.getlenses.com
www.justlenses.com
www.lensdirect.com
www.lensesbymail.com
www.postoptics.co.uk
www.sainsburys.co.uk
www.secondsightonline.co.uk
www.specsaversdirect.co.uk
www.tescoopticians.com
www.thecontactlensshop.com
www.visiondirect.com