* I've tried to buy contacts online in the US with an expired prescription, the retailers say their hands are tied, they need a current dated one.
I now just buy contacts online from Europe or New Zealand. No BS, same price, the EU company I buy from includes a mini bag of haribo gummies :)
I've used Coastal and Zenni for glasses. No problems.
edit thinking about it a little bit i could see it being harmful to not have someone go through the "you don't want to do this or else you could potentially lose your eyesight" talk at least once.
I would love to do that, could you share which vendors you use?
Looking through my email receipts, I've used:
lenstore.co.uk
visiondirect.co.uk
contactsexpress.ca
specsavers.co.nz
You can be 1 year and 11 months into your prescription and buy 4 years worth of lenses, but at the two year mark, you can't purchase them at all without another visit to the doctor and explicit approval for a specific prescription.
My particular annoyance is that I usually buy a year or two worth of lenses at a time - one set usually lasts a month, but I don't wear them every day. So I can stretch out the time a bit further. By the time I'm down to my last set and want to resupply, I'm required to visit an optometrist. Spending money on another eye exam that tells me nothing new. It's even more frustrating if I completely run out and have to use a set longer than is ideal while waiting for an opportunity to visit a doctor.
I get that wearing the wrong prescription lenses isn't ideal, but I don't understand why prescription lenses are gatekept like narcotics. If you can't see well or have the wrong prescription, there's a natural incentive to visit an optometrist and figure out exactly what you need.
Unfortunately, the answer is regulatory capture. Optometrists in the US make the majority of their income [1] from selling glasses and contact lenses, which of course they also prescribe. There's been a lot of lobbying, collusion, and non-compliance in the industry which the (admittedly biased) link below outlines well.
And an eye exam for specialty contact lenses is way more than $100. Really, more than $100 in many places just for a simple reading glasses RX. And many docs won't just do your Rx. They require you do a full exam.