The old boast made by webmasters in the mid to late ’90s that you could find virtually anything on the web was, although enthusiastic, slightly exaggerated in those days.
Wouldn’t be now though.
2008 and the internet is the largest global communication system in history – and it’s hard to see what could ever usurp it from such a lofty position.
As well as a few disadvantages that this huge ‘goldfish bowl of chat’ brings, there are a few notable advantages too.
You can find out just about anything on just about any subject you care to mention.
You can talk to, literally talk to people the other side of the world for free (discounting your broadband charge every month) using the internet phone capability as so perfectly demonstrated by Skype and associated clones.
You can sell your old tat on auction sites and buy other peoples tat to replace the tat you just sold a minute ago.
But most importantly for a lot of people – you can find and buy, in just about whatever combination you want, your everyday normal things for a lot less than if you had to rely on the local shops or centers.
As the name of this article would suggest, I’m focusing on contact lenses, cheap contact lenses to be precise.
Cheap contact lenses are very easy to find – simply go to Google, Yahoo or MSN, type in “cheap contact lenses” (including the speech marks) and you will get back page after page of sites selling lenses cheap.
Just doing that now brings up a site called Just Lenses who are selling off top of the range Acuvue lenses for nearly 40% off normal price.
Not bad!
But – and this is a ‘You But’, you have a responsibility to yourself if you are going to use the ‘net for cheap sourcing of goods.
People , and that includes me it has to be said, blithely trust, assume and believe that what we see, read or buy from the web is legit, clean as a whistle and passed by countless quality agencies, inspections and governed by serious manufacturing checks, laws and controls.
Sadly – that’s not the case.
We have to take the responsibility of checking and verifying anything we get from the web before we use it and we need to make sure that we do so doubly when it is something as potentially damaging as a contact lens.
As well as running sensible checks on the website based company you are about to purchase from (checking their returns policy, indemnity details and authenticity guarantee) we also need to make sure we give anything being delivered to us a sever check.
Can you imagine the horror if you bought something like cheap lenses from a company who markets on the web, buys their product without licence from a manufacturer in a country where checks and quality control are non existent and ships them straight out without even checking themselves.
Would you put something from a chain of creation like that into your eye?