Skip to main content

Do you wear contacts? If so, read on. You have the right to get your contact lens prescription from your eye care prescriber — whether you ask for it or not — at no extra charge. The Contact Lens Rule, which the FTC enforces, says so. That lets you take your prescription wherever you want — online or to the mall — to shop around and look for the best deal.

Periodically, the FTC likes to take a look at its rules to make sure they are up to date, effective, and not overly burdensome. As part of our review of the Contact Lens Rule, we wanted to look at ways to make sure prescribers are giving patients a copy of the contact lens prescription once the contact lens fitting is completed. We recently updated the Rule to help make that happen. The Rule changes go into effect 60 days after publication of the Federal Register notice.

Now, after giving you a copy of your prescription, prescribers have to ask you to sign a confirmation and keep it for at least three years. Prescribers can confirm that you got your prescription in one of four ways:

  • ask you to sign a separate confirmation statement
  • ask you to sign a copy of the prescription that has a confirmation statement, which the prescriber will keep
  • ask you to sign a copy of the sales receipt for the examination that has a confirmation statement, which the prescriber will keep, or
  • instead of a paper copy, the prescriber may give you a digital copy of the prescription, if you consent to the digital delivery and the method of digital delivery. The prescription must be accessible, downloadable, and printable. If the prescriber gives you your prescription electronically, she doesn’t have to ask you to sign a confirmation statement. She will, though, have to ask you to sign a consent form to get your prescription electronically. This is to make sure you know what you’re getting, and have the ability to use it.

If you suspect an eye care prescriber is violating the Contact Lens Rule, report it to us at ftc.gov/complaint. For a more in-depth look at your prescription rights for contacts — and eyeglasses — take a look at Understanding Your Prescription Rights for Glasses and Contact Lenses. It includes a list of what you should see in your prescription.

Search Terms
buying
doctor
eye care
prescription
seller
shopping
Topics
Shopping and Donating
Health

It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.

The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.

  • We won’t post off-topic comments, repeated identical comments, or comments that include sales pitches or promotions.
  • We won’t post comments that include vulgar messages, personal attacks by name, or offensive terms that target specific people or groups.
  • We won’t post threats, defamatory statements, or suggestions or encouragement of illegal activity.
  • We won’t post comments that include personal information, like Social Security numbers, account numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. To file a detailed report about a scam, go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.

Return to top