Obviously there is some acceptable line here, but I think the States handles this decently well enough. In Austin where I live you can get what is called a “homeowners permit” in a lot of cases. Meaning the city will come look at your work and as long as it’s up to code you get a legal permit just like a contractor would get (https://www.austintexas.gov/page/homeowners-permit). You can only do this to your own home so it’s not a shortcut to running a chuck in a truck business without a license.
You place an order with the retailer (online retailers typically allow you to simply type in your prescription values when adding lenses to your online cart; you don't need to show an official written prescription) and specify your doctor's name and phone number. Upon receiving your order, the retailer must call the doctor to see whether the doctor objects (invalid prescription). The retailer is to ship the order only if there is no objection (including no response at all) within 8 business hours. So just give the retailer the name and number of someone who won't immediately object, which is quite easy (e.g. a permanently closed office).
Of course, you need a refraction to know your prescription values. But once that's done, if your vision doesn't change over time, this allows you to ignore the expiration date of the prescription.
Optomitrist asks if your current prescription is ok, asks you to stand 20ft back and read a few letters and you’ve got a script you can use wherever.
On the other hand, maybe I typed that in when I was first signing up two decades ago, and the optometrist I gave them has long since gone out of business?
Trial and error? I guess that might work if you have a simple correction (no astigmatism).
My current hack, which is not as great as yours, is to put a reminder on my calendar for a few days before my 1 year prescription ends. If I order new contacts in the one year period for another year’s worth of contacts (even if I am not out yet), I essentially get to go 2 years between visits. I will try your hack next if I can figure out a good way to get contact info for an office that won’t object.
Neat trick though. I got lasik a few years ago but I would do this if I hadnt
Anecdotally this is far from true. Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK for example require a prescription for anything more complicated than reading glasses.
There are plenty of reasons why, mostly summed up by your comment about “whatever magnification you need” - eyeglasses for distance vision are infinitely more complex than “magnification” and if you’re buying anything other than reading glasses without a proper exam and matched lenses, you’re doing yourself harm.
Unless of course you are talking about reading glasses, in which case you’re also wrong, as you can get those for a couple of bucks pretty much anywhere in the US with no prescription.
I have never needed a prescription to get (non-reading) glasses in the Netherlands. In fact, there are webshops where you can purchase any pair of glasses (obviously, you have to enter the values of an eye examination).
I’m in Canada. To order glasses I just punch the few numbers from the optometrist into any random website and glasses show up. That’s… kind of necessary if you want lenses that actually correct for your vision.
With Americans in this thread talking about them trying to verify with the optometrist and stuff… I don’t think we’re in the same league at all.
I don’t understand how this could possibly work. Contact lenses have at least three parameters to define the lens. It’s not just “magnification”.
If you have an astigmatism, there are two more, and a further two if you have presbyopia (for a total of up to 7). Almost everyone has presbyopia by the age of 65, so it’s not some rare condition.
Do these pharmacies you speak of just have aisles upon aisles of contact lenses?
Anything else? Go for it. I fitted a bunch of taps and a toilet, changed single sockets to double+USB sockets, changed light fittings, fixed poorly wired lighting circuits, installed Cat-6 through the walls to a few rooms, all sorts of stuff. And none of it was anyone else's business. You can (should?) get a professional inspection and safety certificate before you sell the house, but that's about it AFAICT.
I'd be happy enough with the situation in Austin, so long as the city inspections were cheap or free. I'd be happy enough to do a short course in the basics before getting some sort of permit. Where we are now is nuts.
(But at least I can buy a pair of generic reading glasses pretty much wherever here!)
The pricing is reasonable enough - it’s cheap enough to actually be worthwhile to do several things yourself that normally you’d have to pay a contractor for. I did it when I ran some electrical conduit to my garage to add a few 120V receptacles in there.
My general rule of thumb is also I won’t touch gas. But also anything like plumbing that is INSIDE walls I usually am looking to have a professional handle as well. It’s harder to fix knucklehead DIY mistakes when they are covered up behind drywall.
It does make me want more plumbing setups like I’ve seen in Europe. When I lived in Sweden I loved for instance that a lot of bathroom plumbing is completely exposed, so DIY’ing plumbing work is actually pretty accessible. Here where you have to dig into the walls to get at it makes it much less appealing since not only do you have to be a a decent plumber you also have to be a decent drywall person as well.
One of the behind-the-scene videos was something like "that old steam-powered whatever they just happened to find in the scrapheap? Yeah, we've got the inspection certificate right here."
Boiler explosions will do that to a country.
