LensWorld.com

Introduction

Lens World is based in the US. Pricing in USD. They accept Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Discover. They offer international shipping. Contact methods include email, a toll free phone number, fax, and mail.

Impressions

The LensWorld.com website is fairly basic and well laid out. Selection is good, and you can choose from their entire product list, sort by manufacturer, or sort by lens type.

The FAQ section is fairly small, but the second portion of it contains good information relating to actual contact lens usage.

A nice thing about their shipping specials (for example at the time of this writing they have free shipping for orders over $89) is that international customers aren't completely excluded. Shipping is basically reduced by the amount of standard US shipping, so if you live in the US it's free, and if you live elsewhere or would like faster shipping, you'll simply have that portion taken off of your shipping fees.

When you go to complete your order, they ask for your credit card information before asking for optometrist info or giving you the grand total, which is a little backwards in my opinion. I wasn't willing to put in any credit card information so early in the order process (since I have no intention of ordering just yet), so I wasn't able to get to go through the entire checkout. They claim to ask for your doctor's name and phone number, so I assume that's done at some point after getting your credit card details. While this could simply be a good business tactic (once the customer's put in their CC info, they'll be less likely to change their mind once they're asked for optometrist details, etc), I wouldn't be surprised if it also scares away some business. It would be like walking into a store and having the cashier ask for your credit card as soon as you put an item into your basket. Just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and is really my only issue with the site.

From what I could find about them, there seemed to be a lot of complaints about their service. Most complaints seemed to be about Lens World charging credit cards immediately, and taking a long time to ship.

The BBB gives Lens World an "unsatisfactory" rating. They show 136 resolved complaints, and 6 that were not ("unresolved" and "no response").

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 as of Jan 20, 2008. I did not get to the page with the grand total, therefore I was unable to verify the final price.