ClearlyContacts.ca

Introduction

Clearly Contacts is based in Canada. Pricing in Canadian Dollars. They accept Credit Card (Visa, MC, Amex, Disc), Cheque and Money Order as methods of payment. They ship within Canada only. They have phone, fax, and email as methods of contact listed in their FAQ.

Impressions

Clearly Contacts is very unique. They're the only Canadian retailer I've found that will actually send you your order before you've paid for it. This is in fact how they operate. You place an order - when it ships, they email you a tracking number. When you recieve the product you find an invoice enclosed which must be paid within 15 days (I don't recall if it's 15 days after you recieve the product or 15 days after the invoice date). You can either pay online or over the phone with a credit card, or mail in your payment.

Clearly Contacts is one of the places I've ordered from, although my order was actually something of an accident. I was price shopping around for contacts from various online sites, and to compare total prices, I'd typically go through the order process on each site right up to the payment section to see what the final total would be, which usually involves going through a multitude of pages to complete the order. I'd jot down the total, and move on to the next site. I didn't realize that the Clearly Contacts order process was any different until I inadvertantly placed the order and found that they were about to ship to me even though I hadn't put in any payment info. The pricing was reasonable, so rather than phone in and cancel I decided to wait and see if I received the contacts, which I did a few days later, and then sent payment for. It actually turned out to be a pretty good experience.

There are a few things to note about Clearly Contacts. First of all, they're a subsidiary of Coastal Contacts, with the same payment style and web-site layout (Coastal ships internationally however). Pricing on most lenses seems competative, with some being slightly higher. They do however offer a 110% price match guarantee. From their FAQ, the customer care representatives are "available to serve you in English, French, Farsi, Punjabi, Spanish, Hindi, Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay, Arabic, Afrikaans and Japanese." They offer free shipping on orders over $99.

The website itself is set up quite well. When you change quantities of a lens or the shipping method, it dynamically updates the total price, which is actually quite necessary since you're 1 click away from having placed the order (all your address info gets added on the same page). The FAQ section is fairly detailed and also contains some basic contact lens care and info.

A couple issues with the site. First of all, it's way too easy to accidently place your order (I've read about quite a few others accidently placing orders as well). A final confirmation page would be nice, although I suspect they way they have it set up is intentional. Second, there's a hidden processing fee (appears to be percentage based - was only a couple of dollars on a single box of Night & Days), which is included in the total. Again, like the other sites that do this, I'd really prefer that they either make a separate subcategory called "handling", or simply include it in with the shipping or overall price of the lenses.

A small bit of searching around showed that most people seemed pretty happy with the orders from their site, with the major issue usually being that it was easy to accidently place an order. Depending on the exchange rate, it was also recommended to check out Coastal Contacts in the US and consider ordering from them if it'ss cheaper. A BBB search showed Clearly Contacts as having a "satisfactory" record, with 2 complaints, both of which were resolved.

Pricing

To compare online stores, I use the pricing for a *single* box of daily, 1-2 week, and monthly lenses made by CIBA. If you get 2 boxes (1 for each eye, only necessary if your eyes have different prescriptions), you can double the expected supply listed below.

Granted, you may be looking for other lenses, but this should give a general idea of what to expect when comparing prices.

Prices current as of Jan 29, 2008. Fed-Ex Overnight and Canada Post Priority (2-5 days) are currently the same price.