An dispensing opticians around

[bruffin]

Does anyone know about the legality of selling varifocals online. Our optician says it is illegal to dispense dh prescription, but cant find anything online.

It could be because he's partially sighted? Otherwise its perfectly legal although unwise as you need to take measurements with the frame on the patient's face, otherwise they may not be looking through the correct part of the lens.

He has a strong prescription. He bought a pair of varifocals online last year. His went to see his normal optician today who said that he should never have been able to get his glasses online as it was illegal. He has always had a convergence problem but these glasses has made them worse.

If his prescription is complex (over +/- 10) then I didn't think they could be purchased online. The 3 groups that legally have to be dispensed/have specs fitted by or under the supervision of a registered practitioner are under 16s, complex prescriptions and partially sighted.

I agree with the PP that it's unwise to buy varifocals online because of the fitting and measurements although I know a lot of people do.

The other grey area is if your prescription is over +/-5 you should legally have a BVD measurement on your paper copy. That's the distance between the front surface of the eye and the back of the trial frame lens during the test. It should be measured again once the frame is chosen as if the chosen frame sits much further away or much closer it could alter the required prescription at dispense. I don't see how an online retailer could get a customer to measure this accurately themselves. I couldn't measure my own!

I hope that kind of makes sense. It sounds a bit muddled to me reading it back.

Thank you
His prescription is -5.5 in both eyes but no bvd on prescription on last prescription. He did have to measure the distance between the centre of pupils.

See I would say the BVD isn't likely to make much difference around -5 (although legally it should be recorded) because your chosen frame would have to sit massively different to the trial frame to have an impact which is unlikely as it'd be too far away to be worn comfortably. If you're a very high prescription a couple of mm's difference would matter.

The horizontal distance between the pupils would be needed for any specs. The vertical centre would be needed for a varifocal too. Did they ask DH to dot the lenses at the pupil centre when he was wearing the frames to place the order?

He didnt have a trial frame, i was loojing yesterday and it seems some companies send out trial frames, but this conpany didnt.