This month it was time to reorder contacts. My insurance only covers glass or contacts each calendar year. I just started wearing glasses this year so I used my benefits towards a pair of glasses. I prefer contacts because they don’t get in my way and allow me to use my peripheral vision so this year I’m paying out of pocket for them.
I’m ordering from Vision Direct which is owned by drugstore.com and is the cheapest, reputable place I could find to get my contacts from. I’m wearing monthly disposables and my right and left eyes have slightly different prescriptions so I need to order two boxes of six contacts each at a time. In theory this should be enough contacts for six months but I had two incidents in April where I lost right eye contacts (I think my allergies disrupted them) so this time around I only had enough for four months and now it’s time to reorder.
Each box is $48.99 regular price. Two boxes is $97.98 plus $6.99 shipping for a total of $104.97. I got a 10% of coupon in my email recently which I applied to my order and reduced my total to $95.17.
Vision Direct automatically offers free shipping when your subtotal reaches $100 so I added a 12 ounce bottle of Clear Care for $11.49. At $0.95/oz that’s not a good price at all but I also got 10% off it and it’s something I know I’ll use that pushed me over the $100 free shipping threshold and saved me $6.99 on shipping. By adding it to my order instead of paying shipping, I brought the cost per ounce on it down to $0.27/oz which is a really good price (compared to $0.33/oz at CVS with a sale, a manufacturer’s coupon, and an Extra Care Buck offer or $0.44/oz at Costco).
In the end I’m paying $100.51 for the order which is slightly more than if I had just paid the shipping myself, but I’m getting something I use every day at a better price than I’ve found anywhere else.
I find that it’s sometimes, but not always, worthwhile to add another item to an order to get over the free shipping threshold. It’s important to do a little math and breakdown the real cost.
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I also order my contacts from visiondirect. They participate with Upromise so I go through there first to get that discount applied to my college savings fund. I also always check naughtycodes.com and they usually have a code to get some sort of additional discount. Hope that helps!
.-= SaveAtHomeMommy´s last post ..Walgreens Deals 7/12-7/18 =-.
I get sucked into free shipping deals all the time. I just hate the idea of paying for shipping when I could get something else instead. The problem is that I often use it to buy stuff I don’t need rather than stuff I do need.
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