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mconfoy

March 5, 2007 12:42 AM

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Why I have no doubts this is a good company, let's be clear -- they have to be a good company in this business. These are prescriptions we are talking about and opticians and optometrists across the country don't like them for undercutting them in price. Any kind of negative publicity would have the local providers sharpening their knives all after 1-800-CONTACTS since they did not validate the order form versus the prescription.

I do know that they have cause contact lens prices to drop with my optometrists though, so I love them even if I don't use them.

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March 5, 2007 3:10 AM

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Another fantastic company -- celadongifts.com. My very, very sick friend bought a microwaveable Sonoma Lavender spa pad from them which she burnt in her microwave. It was her fault, not theirs, it turned out. When I called and talked to the owner, she, I think, got how sick my friend was (I told her I was calling because she was sick, plus she was sleeping in the other room) and she thought for a moment and said she'd Fedex a new one free. And she did. Arrived the next day.

I had been thinking of ordering one, and I did, on the spot. The woman, Kari, said, \"You don't have to do that.\" But it's just so great when people are so completely decent, it makes me pull out my credit card and charge things. And I also e-mailed a bunch of my friend's friends to suggest they do the same.

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tombot64

March 5, 2007 3:15 AM

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I recently ordered my annual refill from them, and didn't change my shipping address that was on record. I called them up as soon as I realized my mistake, and the CSR shipped me a new order immediately with no charge.

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Scazza

March 5, 2007 3:21 AM

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Anytime a company offers to ship something for free, or upgrade shipping is an awesome \"above and beyond\". Sure a company can replace an item or what have you with little cost to themselves, but shipping is something most companies get nothing back from. Congrats 1-800 CONTACTS.

Btw, Kudos to this kotaku feature, makes my day to find the great companies in the sea of shit out there.

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soulbarn

March 5, 2007 3:26 AM

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I've been using them for years. I know opticians don't like them - but opticians charge double, or even triple. I've got a very unusual lens presecription - and 800 Contacts came through on that, as well: I'd recently ordered my lenses - eight boxes - when I found out that a new \"size\" lens was issued that was much better fitting in my eye. When I called 800-C, they noticed that I'd recently ordered a different type of lens, and checked to see if I was making an error in ordering the new ones. I explained the situation, and they did exactly what the poster of the above story described: they took back all the old lenses, shipping me replacements with a return box.

awesome.

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r81984

March 5, 2007 3:29 AM

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I love 1-800 contacts. I overnighted a years worth, 2 years ago and it was at a great price. Now I use my insurance through my eye doctor and they are so slow and they will not have them shipped directly to my house, I either have to go to the eye doctor again to get them or pay them extra so they can reship them to my house.
1-800-contacts has done contact wearers a great service by lowering price through competition. Before 1-800-contacts contacts were so high if you did not have insurance you had to wear glasses.

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March 5, 2007 3:37 AM

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I have had similar issues with 1-800-CONTACTS. They screwed up a few of my orders and sent me replacements without issues, and I got two $5 gift certificates (no expiration date as far as I am aware; it was a handwritten letter!) from their CSRs apologizing for the error.

Interestingly, while one of the problems was the wrong prescription, the second time was simply a fault of mine (I moved and didn't update my address). They still apologized despite my admittance that it was my own oversight. I'm very impressed with them.

Too bad I don't really wear contact lenses anymore though.

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Rachel

March 5, 2007 4:27 AM

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The exact same thing happened to me.

FYI: 1-800 contacts now price matches and takes 2% off the price. Froogle a price from another retailer and you'll most likely find a better price (I did with visiondirect.com) and you'll get the 2% discount.

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OnoSideboard

March 5, 2007 4:49 AM

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I, too, have used 1-800-CONTACTS with pleasing results (although I never had any problems requiring customer service). What bugs me, though, about the whole industry, is the law against selling contacts without a prescription. Thanks to the 1955 Supreme Court case Williamson v. Lee Optical (348 U.S. 483), one of the most blatent examples of special interest groups influencing public policy, I have to pay $200 every year to get an updated prescription from my optometrist, despite the fact that my prescription has not changed in over a decade. Stupid.

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March 5, 2007 5:02 AM

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I've never used this company but after reading this, I think I may have to try them once my current supply runs out.

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VA_White

March 5, 2007 5:09 AM

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I am also a big fan of 1800Contacts. I wear a toric lens in one eye only (for astigmatism) and the first time I ordered online, they called me to be sure I meant to order toric for only one side. Because their call delayed my order, they upgraded me to overnight shipping when I confirmed that yes, I only need a toric lens in my left eye.

Also they ship to APO which is a godsend for military families overseas. Contact lenses at a European doctor are outrageously expensive and if you order your lenses through AAFES, you'll pay too much and wait two months.

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clbarrientos

March 5, 2007 5:19 AM

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@OnoSideboard: My prescription for my lens exp 2 years ago, and 1800 contact will still sell me the same prescriptions today...since I have I no longer have vision insurance 1800 understands and ships the contacts to me...cheers to this company!

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Blind But Now I See

March 5, 2007 5:37 AM

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Hi - this is Kim - the girl that wrote the letter. First off, I wanted to add that I work on the corporate side of my company's customer service division and I understand how difficult it is to staff a call center. I think that ours is one of the better ones since our hourly wage is higher than most, we offer excellent benefits from day one, there is a fairly liberal bonus plan that is paid monthly, college tuition reimbursement and a clear and attainable career track. Yet with all that, we still struggle to keep people that are bright, cheerful and have a customer-service attitude.

Probably what blew me away the most today was the consistency between my 2 interactions with the 1-800-C agents. Both of them had the opportunity to kick me while I was down. But instead they picked me up, brushed me off, and sent me along my way with no worries.

I think we often fail to recognize excellent customer service when, in actuality, it happens to us all the time - the guy at the body shop that fixes our car on the first try, the waitress that keeps our water glass filled throughout the entire meal - we expect this but are rarely aware of the complexity needed for everything to go \"right.\"

Today started out wrong and it was all my fault. But 1-800-Contacts went out of their way to make everything right without bothering to assign blame. Then they topped it off with a little bit of magic.

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mad_oak

March 5, 2007 10:01 AM

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1-800-C Added $30 worth of lense cleaning solution to my wife's order of disposable lenses. We assumed it was a case where they deceitfully added it in the hopes we wouldn't return it. Given the CSR accolades, perhaps it truly was an error. Returning the cleaning solution was very quick and easy. They credited us immediately and sent us a prepaid shipping label for the box we had received.

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March 5, 2007 1:25 PM

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If I remember correctly from one of my textbooks, 1-800-Contacts gives it's CSRs so many hundreds of dollars per customer that they can spend to ensure satisfaction.

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shiny

March 5, 2007 1:50 PM

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I can't vouch for 1-800-CONTACTS because I've never used them.

I do, however, use another online lens retailer called \"ACLens.\" When I started wearing lenses again back in 2002, I checked prices and found ACLens to be slightly cheaper than anything else out there at that time selling my particular brand and prescription. I've stuck with them for the past four years simply because of consistency and accuracy. They've done the job right, they haven't raised their prices (and often will email me discount coupons), and deliver quickly.

It appears that in the contact lens game there isn't much of a difference between retailers selling a sealed third-party product. I guess the only edge one can get is through pricing and superior customer service. I've read that 1-800-CONTACTS will price-match any competitors and edge them out by 2%. But do I really need to change a system which performs as expected for less than $10 worth of savings per year?

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sam

March 5, 2007 3:07 PM

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Heh. I made the exact same mistake last year, and 1800contacts came through in the exact same way.

As an extra added bonus, now I actually pay attention to the +/- signs when filling out my reorder forms! (Little hint - the \"+\" is the default sign on the web form, but the \"-\" is for nearsightedness, which is much more common - I'd be surprised if this isn't such a common mistake that the company just has this exchange policy set up as the automatic response).

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yalej

March 5, 2007 3:10 PM

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Yeah, I use them as well. Never had any problem with them. Opticians are nuts if they think we're gonna buy their over priced contacts.

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March 5, 2007 6:50 PM

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@OnoSideboard:
There's a good reason to have your eyes checked regularly, even if you don't think the contact Rx has changed in years. I'm an optometrist, and I've seen what can happen when people go five or ten years without coming in. Contact lens overwear isn't all that uncommon. Seeing a cornea that looks like hamburger because someone decided that spending $100 was too much is hard to take. I've had several cases of neovascularization in my office that were so severe I've pulled people out of contacts permanently.

There's also just the simple matter of contact lenses changing from year to year. I don't prescribe the same lenses that I did when I started practicing in 2000 because the industry and materials have changed. We're even seeing now that some solutions don't work as well with some lenses. If you don't go in, then you don't get updated.

I personally don't sell contact lenses, I work in a commercial location that does that so if people want to take the Rx elsewhere then I don't care. I do know that a few years back 1-800 contacts was telling patients that I didn't have their best interests at heart because I prescribed Biomedics 55 contacts. I prescribed them because I thought they were the best choice for many patients, but because they wouldn't sell to 1-800, suddenly I was a bad doctor. To top it off, at the time, they were charging the same or more for some lenses than the store I work with.

BTW, I had to interrupt this reply because of a patient, who I hadn't seen in 2 years, had come in. At the time, he needed a special order lens that cost about $300 a year. Now? I can try him in a new, high oxygen silicon lens that just came out in his Rx in the last few months. I don't know yet if it'll fit, but if it does, it should save him about $100 a year and allow about 5 times the oxygen to his eye. His exam co-pay was $20. I think he'll be happy with that.

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March 5, 2007 7:41 PM

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Is it possible to get the management of 1-800-CONTACTS to start a cell phone company?

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Kaix

March 6, 2007 12:10 AM

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Don't forget Walgreens.com. They've recently started selling contact lenses.

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March 6, 2007 4:58 AM

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My only complaint with 1-800-contacts is that they refuse to sell some of the \"Special Effects\" contacts, 'cause they say that it \"Encourages Sharing...\"

Personally, if I wanna put weird contacts in my eyes, and I've got a perscription for 'em, you should be willing to sell 'em.

And I get my contacts from Sam's Club anyway, since they're actually cheaper than 1-800 contacts.

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sam-i-am

March 7, 2007 12:11 AM

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I live in Utah where 1800Contacts is, and have been to their building and have had friends who worked there. Despite being a call center, they really value their employees. They have a chef on staff and provide everyone with a free meal every day (and I even got one free as a guest) as well as all you can eat cereal, snacks, and drinks.

They have relaxation rooms that are dark where you can go sit in a massage chair and hang out for a while, as well as an on-site gym complete with excersize equipment, a basketball shooting game, and dance dance revolution.

Happy employees comes through in their interactions with customers. Always.

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March 7, 2007 5:22 AM

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I had the EXACT problem with an order mistake. It may have even been my fault, choosing - instead of +. In any event, they overnighted me the proper ones and included a pre-paid label to send the other set back.

And I save so much compared to paying for them at the doctor!

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javguy

June 23, 2007 3:04 PM

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Here's what 1800 really seems top have done. They possibly violated federal law by not confirming the prescription from the doctor's office before filling the order, unless they tried to verify the prescription and the doctor's office didn't respond within 8 business hours. In that case, although it's ridiculous, the contacts are allowed to be sold by assuming the prescription is correct (passive verification), which it did not appear to be in the original article. Even if 1800 did try to verify the prescription and didnt' receive a response within the allotted time, 1800 is basically indicating by their actions that they're willing to risk problems like this and possibly have their customers experience physical harm or danger because 1800 is evidently not willing or able to take the time to actually verify every prescription. My understanding of the law is that unfortunately they don't have to get actual verification of every prescription, but morally I think they should.
As you can also see from previous posts, they're evidently also filling prescriptions for medical devices without valid prescriptions. Seems that they're more interested in selling something than in preserving the health of the consumer. I feel that contact lens prescriptions should be held to the same standard as pharmaceutical prescriptions.

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