I am writing in response to the article in the Nov. 21 issue of Vision Monday “1-800 Contacts Executive Slams ‘Doctors Only’ Contact Lens Suppliers.” I was disgusted with the remarks made by Charles Coon and feel no sympathy for him. All these years that 1-800 Contacts has been stealing my patients, have I complained? Sure I did, but I know I can’t compete with their prices so I got over it.

I don’t believe the ‘Doctors Only’ market was the culprit in their third quarter sales, but rather it was due to an overflow of web sites that sell contacts. I went to the AOL search engine and typed in “contact lens for sale” and it came back with 518,000 hits. Then I went to Yahoo and typed in the same thing resulting in 5,180,000 hits. Finally, I went to Google and got 7,480,000 hits. Now, granted not every hit I got is going to sell contacts, but I did find pages and pages of Web sites. 1-800 Contacts created the perfect system for contacts--web orders. What followed was a retail sales revolution and 1-800 Contacts was the creator of its own competition. I firmly believe that the blame on “Doctors only” contacts is just a ploy to tap into a market they have been trying to get into for years. A market by law they can’t get into but one they will try just the same. Your article stated that anticipated retail net sales would be approximately $220 million, which is higher than last year’s numbers. I’m not sure you have the right to complain when your company makes that much money. When does the greed stop? When is enough, enough?

Michael A. Toner
President, Toner-Parsons Opticians, Inc.
Baltimore, Md.