When I visited Warby Parker a few months ago, it had been two and a half years since my last eye exam. I knew my new prescription would be very different from the contact lenses I was wearing. But I don’t know, maybe I’ve been wearing the wrong lenses all this time.
During my appointment, the optometrist asked to see my current contact’s package for my new prescription. I pulled a small blue bag out of my bag and she asked, “Are these Hubble telescopes?” She seemed to panic.
I told her that the Hubble lens samples were the only lenses I had ever worn that didn’t dry out my eyes during the day. I also like the convenience of having them delivered to my apartment.
She seemed surprised. She told me that she never recommends Hubble to her patients, calling the lenses outdated and criticizing the company’s review process. However, she was reluctant to prescribe the medicine for me.
I sent the updated prescription to Hubble, but the optometrist’s concerns still haunted me. I’ve never had problems with my eyes, but maybe Hubble has something sketchy. So I decided to do a little research and get a second opinion.
hubble contacts ratings
Founded in 2016, Hubble supplies customers with contact lenses for about $1 a day. The company has raised $70 million from investors at a valuation of about $246 million, according to PitchBook.
On the Internet, I found doctors criticizing Hubble’s methods and methods. Dr. Ryan Korte of the Northlake Eye in Charlotte, North Carolina is one of them. He tested out a free trial of Hubble in February 2018 but said he couldn’t wear contact lenses for more than one day.
Corte’s main arguments were much the same as my ophthalmologist’s: outdated materials, questionable testing methods, and concerns for patient safety. But his comments praised the business acumen of Hubble’s co-founders. “They took old stuff and built a brand with a fun name and a sexy marketing campaign,” he wrote.
Coulter is concerned that Hubble is taking shortcuts and not prioritizing the patient’s overall eye health. “If you lose your sight due to contact lenses,” he told me over the phone, “it can cause eye strain, headaches, fatigue and reduce people’s overall quality of life.”
Not only Colter. The American Optometric Association (AOA) has criticized Hubble for replacing conventional lenses with special prescriptions that do not take into account conditions such as astigmatism, dry eyes, or corneal size.
“Contact lenses are not a panacea,” said AOA President Dr. Barbara Horne. “It looks like Hubble believes their lenses can do it, but they absolutely don’t.”
Reports in publications such as The New York Times and Quartz criticized the way Hubble tested his recipes, as well as the old materials he used to make his lenses. Hubble uses metafilcon A, a material that has been in use since 1986.
There has been much debate about whether the old materials used by Hubble are really inferior to the new ones.
In a statement to Business Insider, Hubble said there is no evidence that new lenses that allow more oxygen to reach the eyes are more comfortable or perform better.
But I’m wondering if there are any serious or long-term risks of using an outdated lens material, or if it’s more of a personal preference, like choosing between the latest iPhone and a two-year-old model that works great.
I spoke to four doctors and none of them recommended Hubble. They say the lens material is outdated and the company risks selling inappropriate contact lenses to patients.
I also reviewed over 100 Hubble complaints that were filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The complaints reflect the same concerns and mention clients who received Hubble footage without the knowledge of their doctors.
I ended up talking to seven clients, most of whom stopped using Hubble because they didn’t like contact lenses.
Dr. Alan Wegener of Richards and Wegener Optometrists in Liberty, Missouri, said he didn’t prescribe Hubble because the technology was outdated. “People don’t go out and buy old flip phones,” he said.
When Korte, an ophthalmologist in North Carolina, fits his patients contact lenses, he makes sure that the lenses are exactly in the center of their eyes, have the right curvature, the right diameter, the right strength, and that the patient feels comfortable. “If the fit is bad, it can slip and cause discomfort,” Korte says.
However, serious problems can arise if the patient switches to another lens that the doctor never fitted him.
If the lenses are too tight, they can deprive the tear film and cornea of oxygen, which can lead to complications, Coulter says. Most of the doctors I spoke to were concerned that the Hubble lenses would not deliver enough oxygen to the eyes.
I have found that oxygen is essential for eye health. The retina is one of the tissues with the highest oxygen consumption in the body. In the 13 years I’ve been wearing contact lenses, I never knew my eyes could “breathe”.
Each contact has an Oxygen Permeability Rating (OP) or Transmission Rate Level (Dk). The higher the number, the more oxygen enters the eye. Oxygen not only makes eye contact comfortable with every wear, but also helps maintain eye health over the long term.
Dr. Kathy Miller of Envision Eye Care in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, said she would not prescribe Hubble lenses because the material does not allow enough oxygen to reach the eye.
To check a prescription, Hubble calls the client’s doctor via automated message. Under the FTC’s contact lens rule, vendors must give physicians eight business hours to respond to a prescription approval. If sellers like Hubble don’t get a response within 8 hours, they can follow through.
The FTC received 109 complaints about Hubble and its work. The most common complaint is that doctors are either unable to respond to “robotic” and “incomprehensible” voice messages from Hubble, or do not give permission to check, only to find out that their patients still wear Hubble lenses.
Hubble said in a statement that it uses automated messages “in part to prevent review agents from accidentally missing information that contact lens regulations require eye care providers to report.”
According to AOA President Horn, Hubble’s robotic calls were difficult to understand, and some doctors could not hear the names or birthdays of patients. The AOA is working on a bill to ban automated calls, she said.
Since 2017, AOA has received 176 doctor complaints about test calls, 58 percent of which involved Hubble, according to a filing filed with the FTC by AOA.
The doctors I spoke to said they never received information from Hubble to verify patient prescriptions.
Dr. Jason Kaminsky of Vision Source Longmont in Longmont, Colorado, filed a complaint with the FTC. He declined to comment on the complaint, but said that in one case, Hubble replaced certain lenses and materials he prescribed to patients. He said he never authorized Hubble lenses, but his patients got them anyway.
Horn had a similar experience. She fitted the patient with a special lens for astigmatism. A few weeks later, the patient returned to Horn’s office, distraught with blurred vision.
“She gave [Hubble] a prescription, and Hubble gave her lenses that didn’t even come close to what she prescribed,” Horne said.
While some Hubble customers may receive expired prescriptions, others experience service outages when their prescriptions are not validated.
I haven’t seen an ophthalmologist since August 2016, but after my prescription expired in 2018, I got Hubble contacts for almost a year. Hubble told me that he rechecked my prescription in December 2018 even though my doctor’s office told me he didn’t have a record of that authorization.
Brand strategist Wade Michael said he found Hubble’s marketing approach appealing and stylish compared to Harry and Kasper’s. “Just by coincidence, I don’t think the final quality matches the actual product.”
hubble contacts ratings
Michael can comfortably wear his previous Acuvue Oasys lenses once every two weeks from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm, but can hardly wear Hubble Daily.
“I have found myself trying to put them on my eyes as late as possible before heading to work in the morning,” says Michael. “About five or six o’clock in the evening they are very dry.”
His new doctor prescribed One Day Acuvue Moist, which, according to Michael, means “day and night.” “Now when I hold my lenses, I almost feel like water. You can tell they are very soft and really hydrating, which is a pretty stark contrast to Hubble.”
When Feller first signed up for Hubble, she said she thought they would be simpler and cheaper. “That was before I knew they were dailies,” Feller said.
Her previous shots lasted all day, from 9am to 10pm. But she said the Hubble footage only lasted around 3:00 pm. “I always have to take them off because they dry out my eyes and it’s uncomfortable,” Feller says, dipping them in a saline solution to make them more tolerable.
When she got home after a long drive, she said she couldn’t get the right lenses and her eyes were red and irritated. “It was terrible. It seemed to me that there was a contact inside. So I’m going crazy now.”
The next day she went to an ophthalmologist, two doctors checked her eyes but couldn’t find a contactor. The doctor told her that the contact lens must have fallen off and scratched her eye.
Ferrer threw away the remaining Hubble lenses. “After that, I couldn’t get them back into my eyes,” she said.
Within three months, Eric Vandegrift noticed that his Hubble contacts had become drier. Then he had a bruise under his eye.
“My vision was getting worse,” Vandergrift said. He wears them regularly every day. “I actually take them out for the rest of the day because they’re dry.”
One night he had trouble removing his contact lenses, but until morning he did not notice a scratch on his right eye. He went to a music festival with partially blurred vision and mentioned Hubble on Twitter.
“Part of the blame lies with me,” Vandergrift said. “Customers know when a product is cheap,” he says, the whole experience made him take his health more seriously.
Overall, I have enjoyed my few years with Hubble with few negative side effects. I don’t wear them every day, but I usually change my glasses and contact lenses within a week. I admit my Hubble has been building up lately because I’ve been wearing glasses more than usual since I started this post.
Post time: Jan-17-2023
