Contact Lens King Review – Best Online Contact Lens Retailer?

Today I will be doing a Contact Lens King review. I’m sure by now everybody knows about ContactLensKing.com. Their ad plays incessantly on the internet and even on TV. I’ve heard it so many times I can recite the entire thing from memory:

So you need contact lenses, got a prescription? OK.

You can go to an optometrist, or somewhere else,

or you can save up to 70% at ContactLensKing.com.

It’s like buying wholesale.

Get brand name contact lenses 100% guarantee,

prescription perfect, sent directly to you.

How good is that?

Order your new contact lenses online today at contactlensking.com and save big!

Contactlensking.com it’s so easy, contactlensking.com.

ContactLensKing.com makes themselves seem pretty great in this ad, but are they really?

In this Contact Lens King review, I’d like to dissect this ad a little bit and tell you how ContactLensKing.com actually compares up to other online contact lens retailers.

Dissecting the Ad

I’m going to go through the sales copy for this ad line by line and explain to you what they’re talking about, where they’re telling the truth, and where they’re being misleading.

“So you need contact lenses, got a prescription? Ok.”

The first part of this line is pretty self-explanatory. They are trying to grab the attention of anyone who may be watching that needs to purchase contact lenses soon.

The more interesting part is the second half, where they mention “got a prescription? Ok.” The reason they decided to use up time from their ad to ask if you have a prescription, is because they want to make sure that they’re not seen as encouraging people to purchase contact lenses without a prescription.

Although I’m sure they would love it if they could sell contact lenses to people without a prescription, they have to include that line because the law in the United States is that you are not allowed to sell contact lenses to anyone without a valid prescription.

“You can go to an optometrist, or somewhere else”

Why would an ad by an online contact lens retail mention that you could go to their competitors in their own ad? They included this line because they know that the perception that most people have about their optometrist is that they overcharge for things like glasses and contact lenses. Reminding you that you could go to your optometrist is actually to remind you of how expensive contact lenses are at your optometrist’s.

They also mention ‘or somewhere else’ while showing a drawing of a little store with the name Eye-Mart. Of course, ‘Eye-Mart’ is not the name of a real store. Here they are referring to the dozens of chain optical stores and the hundreds/thousands of independent optical stores that also sell contact lenses. Here what they are doing (and this will be reinforced later on in the ad as well) is they’re contrasting themselves, an online contact lens retailer, with actual physical stores.

The idea behind doing this is that they want you to think that going to a brick and mortar store to buy your contact lenses is like getting your contact lenses from a middle-man, which increases the price since the middle-men needs to pay themselves.

Of course, ContactLensKing.com are also middle-men between you and the contact lens manufacturers, but it is true that is requires a lot less overhead capital to run an online store compared to a brick and motor store. As a result, online stores don’t have to charge as much in order to make the same amount of profit as a physical store.

Note: Just because online contact lens stores likes ContactLensKing.com don’t HAVE TO charge as much for contact lenses in order to make a profit doesn’t mean that they do. Some online contact lens stores charge just as much or even more as physical stores, so it’s important to know where to shop when you shop online.

“or you can save up to 70% at ContactLensKing.com”

This is a misleading line that I hate. It means absolutely nothing. Save 70% compared to what? For this line to have any meaning, you have to know the item is and what the reference price is. So what are they comparing their prices with?

Are they saying that any contact lenses you buy at ContactLensKing.com will be 70% less expensive than the ones you would get from your optometrist ‘or somewhere else’? If so, that is just an absurd bold-faced lie for so many reasons that I can’t even.

Are they saying that they slash their own prices by 70%? If so which brands? You will probably never know because it’s just not true. ContactLensKing.com is not the only one guilty of using this transparent retail tactic. If you go to the mall you might see some stores with signs saying “Up to 70% Off!”. But when you go inside, there’s nothing that’s actually 70% off.

It’s just a hook, and for the sake of your wallet, you’d be wise not to bite.

“It’s like buying wholesale.”

Nope, sorry. Again, this line makes little sense. In the contact lens industry, there aren’t any wholesalers. It’s not like other industries where you have manufacturers who sell to wholesalers who then sell to retailers. In the contact lens industry, you only have the manufacturers and the retailers.

Now of course, the line is ‘It’s like buying wholesale”, so I know they’re not exactly claiming to be a wholesaler, but rather that their prices are so low that it’s analogous to buying wholesale in other industries.

However, I am in a very qualified position to inform you that ContactLensKing.com’s prices are not as low as they claim. I have been doing contact lens price comparison at ContactLensKing.com and many of online contact lens retailers for years, and depending on your brand, there are many places that you can get your contact lenses for cheaper than ContactLensKing.com.

“Get brand name contact lenses 100% guarantee”

This is where the ad goes from being misleading to downright strange.

Your guess as to what ‘get brand name contact lenses 100% guarantee’ means is as good as mine. They 100% guarantee that they have brand name contact lenses? Okay, thanks ContactLensKing.com… I guess. Every single contact lens retailer ever, whether online or physical sells brand name contact lenses. Every contact lens has a brand, so I’m not really sure what they’re boasting here.

“prescription perfect, sent directly to you”

Again, nothing out of the ordinary here. When you order contact lenses online you expect them to have the prescription that you ordered. That’s pretty much their only job. And of course they’re sent directly to you, where else would they be sent?

“How good is that?”

Sure, ordering contact lenses online is cheap and convenient. But there’s really nothing about simply receiving the correct prescription and having them shipped to your door that make ContactLensKing.com any different than all the other contact lens websites.

“Order your new contact lenses online today at contactlensking.com and save big!”

Not necessarily. Yes, for CERTAIN brands the price that you get at ContactLensKing.com is the lowest price you will find on the internet. For those brands, it’s not going to be 70% off (whatever that means) but it’ll be a few dollars cheaper per box compared to ContactLensKing.com’s competitors.

However, for the vast majority of brands, ContactLensKing.com does not have the lowest price, meaning that you will not be saving big, but rather, spending more than you should!

The only way to know what website has the lowest price for your brand of contact lenses is to consult a contact lens price comparison website, such as ContactsAdvice.com

Online prices for contact lenses vary from site to site and they go up and down all the time. The cheapest place one week may not be the cheapest the following week.

At ContactsAdvice.com I do weekly price checks at all the major contact lens websites for all the most popular brands to make sure that you always know where to save to most money on contact lenses.

==> Consult ContactsAdvice.com’s Price Comparison Chart And Save Big (for real) <==

“Contactlensking.com it’s so easy, contactlensking.com”

This is their little catchy jingle that sounds so silly that it gets stuck in your head.

So that’s it for this Contact Lens King review. Overall I would say that their ad is more or less just full of buzz words to make you think like you have to go to Contact Lens King to save money. In reality, yes they have the lowest prices for some brands, but far from the lowest prices on most brands.

Hope you found this helpful.