Does Hubble = Trouble for Contact Lens Companies?
Hubble contact lenses are part of the new trend of direct-to-consumer businesses. Its business model is very much like that of Warby Parker’s or Zenni Optical’s in eye care. Is Hubble cheaper in price compared to others? Well it sure seems so, but is cheaper always better? For some people it is, but for many, I think it’s all about the cost to quality ratio.
Now many of you may be thinking, well this post is just an optometrist being sour about not being able to make a contact lens sale. While this may be true for some eye care practices, it does not apply to our practice because we only want to fit the best contact lenses, not the cheapest.
Comparison Shopping
Let’s look at the comparison here. Contact lenses are often judged by how much oxygen is able to transmit to the eye. The higher the DK number, the better. Here are a few examples
High End 1-Day Lenses:
Alcon Dailies Total One: 140 DK
Acuvue Oasys 1 Day: 103 DK
Mid Level 1-Day Lenses that are popular:
Acuvue 1-Day Moist: 28 DK
Biotrue Dailes: 42 DK
Hubble contact lens: 18 DK
Conclusion
Hubble contact lens DK value of 18 is one of the lowest out there, but then again, it is one of the cheapest in price. It is, however, not some state-of-the-art lens material like they claim. In fact, the material they use has been out for a long time and IS definitely passed its prime. So do yourself a favor, as great as their advertising is about $1 a day for contact lenses, don’t compromise your eye health to save maybe up to a dollar per day, if not just a few cents. Hubble contact lenses really aren’t that cheap. For example, $2 dollars a day you can get the high end lenses such as Dailies Total One if you wanted to, and for even less, you could get BioTrue, Acuvue 1-day Moist, or any other brand name lenses. The difference is so small, that you could easily make that up by ordering a small instead of a med/large coffee the next time you’re at your favorite coffee shop :-). Just a thought.
Yes, I am very late in responding to this post. Felt compelled to do so because I am also in the eyecare field and we receive a decent amount of patients call & ask how to “change” their contact lens script to the hubble brand. The answer is we can’t! Hubble doesn’t send fit kit’s out so we have no trials for patients to pop in, check the vision, & look at proper lens placement & movement. Except for checking corneal health every year(unfortunetly patients believe that to be “fake news”, which is a whole other story for another time) making sure the lens moves properly is very important & Hubble has left Eye docs in a tough spot. I know the Optom’s I work don’t want their patients to pay “an arm & a leg” for contacts, however safety, eye health & vision preservation is their number one priority. Hubble ONLY sells spherical lenses, so if you have an astigmatism & are used to the clarity that toric lenses provide……you will be giving that up period! I have had a couple very creative patient’s actually order the spherical equivalent(a fairly common thing eye docs will do IF the astigmatism is MILD enough. Again, I stress MILD! Not sure how they (the crafty patients) knew how to do this UNLESS they had an undercover operative working in a eye doc office or maybe they just used googled (I’m voting Google)! The moral of the story is that if its too good to be true ($1 for a 30 day supply of contact lenses) well, IT IS!
DO talk about your concerns about pricing during your visit W/your eye health provider. Discuss If you are on a budget (like almost every American today), let us know!! Their are plenty of cost effective, safe, reliable contact lenses out there. DON’T try & “wing” things on your own…..perhaps you should Google images of the horrible cornea issues you can get from wearing ill fitted contact lenses or lens overwear/sleeping in lenses(very bad)…the pics ain’t pretty! However, maybe its time for us eyecare folk to DROP the kid gloves. Shame on Hubble for misleading our patients……