I'm going to open with a little anecdote about some of the poorest timing I've ever had in my life.

In October/November 2011 (ish) having just started Sixth Form and getting used to being a mature college student (and part time lifeguard).Visualise the Science block as being one long, narrow corridor with classrooms on each side. I walk out of one and bump straight into a friend and colleague (she's a lifeguard too) in the year above leaving her own classroom. Recalling at the weekend, she mentioned something about a gym induction on Sunday, and today being Monday, I asked her 'Hey! How was your gym induction?'
Her: 'Oh, it was....fine, thanks. Yeah.'
A little hurt, I turned to walk away, only to realise that a teacher was following her and she was holding onto a friend having a panic attack...

LENATIMING. ALWAYS PERFECT.

Anyway, I had this post schedueled but in the light of recent events, thought I'd edit this in because my internal appropriateness clock seems to be broken.

I made my first order from EyeCandyLens.com in the run up to my school musical. It took a couple of weeks to get to the UK (from South Asia, so pretty impressive I guess).

 
 The phials they come in are SO CUTE. Very sharp edges, though :/


 I'm not a noob to wearing contact lenses, but I only wear daily disposables so don't really have to faff with correct cleaning and storage. With these, I was really quite stupid and didn't read the leaflet properly, so put them in the supplied case (cleaned with hot water first, obviously) with some saline solution and allowed them to soak. Needless to say, when I put them in my eyes they were really quite uncomfortable? I could feel them every time I blinked, and they itched. But, having heard that circle lenses are less comfortable anyway and that they were a bit thicker, I put up with it, thinking I was just new to circle lenses. I soaked and cleaned them religiously, but not with the correct solution. I'm a numpty, I know.



Did this for three or four cycles, before realising that they were meant to be soaked in multipurpose solution, and not saline. I don't know if I've ever had a bigger Eureka moment than the first time I put them on after they'd spent the night in that...almost as comfortable as my usual daily disposables. Reading is fun!

Without:


With:


Please ignore the eyebrow forest and failed false eyelash application in both cases.

I ordered prescription lenses in the design 'Flower Black'.

Postage was free (and they came with a cute bag and a free contact lens case) which is what initially attracted me to them. I paid £14.19 in total which was pretty much the cheapest for just one pair of lenses that I could find, on the internet. Because I have poor vision, I needed prescription lenses. Lots of places on the internet, even some in the UK, do prescription lenses, but you have to participate in a 'batch order' which I thought was stupid and didn't want to do. Why not just keep a few of each in stock? I don't want to have to wait for everyone else to finish ordering before the store sends off for them, waits to recieve them, then package them up and send them to ME. I'm impatient, deal with it.

Some lens shops that I found on my searches only had a couple of very very popular plano (no corrective power) lenses in stock and everything else was marked either 'out of stock' or 'batch order only'. Go away.

Anyway, I was going to end this review with a little 'I'm very happy with how this went and I'm already saving up to order again' but yesterday my Twitter feed came up with this.

This is the 'poor timing' I was referring to earlier on.

I've got to reconsider now, my previous attitude towards my contact lenses...all that time I was happily soaking them wrong, cleaning them incorrectly...could have done some serious damage to my eyes. And that would have been entirely self-inflicted, through ignorance and carelessness - HystericMint was as careful as you can get and through no fault of her own, something this bad could happen to her eyes, so imagine what I could have done to myself?

The worst thing about her post, in my opinion, was that, considering the huge costs incurred in the damage to her education, optometrist bills, etc. (I always forget that not everyone is lucky enough to live in a country with an NHS-like system) the compensation she was offered was pretty minimal. The company isn't named so I don't know which one it is, but I would hope that the next time I shop with a circle lens supplier, in the event of one of their lenses being faulty (not due to my own cack-handedness) that they would fully support me in any way necessary, as a paying customer. In future, when I next purchase lenses, that will be something I investigate before buying - whether companies can man up and take responsibility when required.

Just to clarify, my personal order was great - nothing went wrong at any stage.

For the time being, I am happy.