Own brand solutions (Contact Lenses in general)

Member Name: mikeb

Product:	Contact Lenses in general
Date:	10/12/00 (122 review reads)
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I've been wearing contact lenses now for over twenty years and despite the occasional time when you get dust in your eye and it hurts like hell I'm very glad I don't have to wear glasses all day.

I was advised not to get lenses until I reached 16 and was delighted when I got my first pair, hard contact lenses at that time. Would you believe that hard lenses were over £60 then so in reality the prices have probably dropped alot over the years. I had hoped to go onto soft lenses in a short time but my prescription is not too good and was advised to stick with hard. After a few years my optician told me about gas permeable lenses which let the eye breathe (or something like that) which makes them more comfortable. I changed to them and I am still wearing them to this day - no, not the same pair, GP lenses. I would really like to change to disposable but again it is not advised for my prescription so I'll stick with what I've got.

What has not really changed over all these years, including the range on offer, is the solutions available for contact lens wearers. They have continued to go up steadily in price and given that lenses in comparison have not risen, the solutions now form a hefty part of a years cost for lens wearers. When I first started to buy solutions I would just buy the best known name or one who had the same name as the people who supplied my lenses, not anymore.
I first noticed that Boots were offering their own brand of solutions at a cheaper price than the traditional brand names and started buying them. There didn't seem to be any difference betweem the two apart from a small saving in cost, but I have now found an even cheaper supply.

With supermarkets now trying to attract more shoppers I have found that they are starting to offer solutions at very reasonable prices. Better than that, they are also now offering their own brand considerably cheaper than brand names. As someone who wants to use
the minimum effort to maintain my lenses safely, I tend to favour the all in one type solutions. Originally I bought the brand name from Tesco which proved to be very good value but, when running low recently, noticed that there was also a Tesco's own brand on the shelf for a couple of quid cheaper and bought this instead.

When I opened the box I thought the solution bottle looked familiar, looking similar to the brand one I was currently using. On further investigation it was not similar, it was identical, apart from the label, even down to the markings on the bottom of the bottle. Surely there are only two possible reasons - either Tesco have copied the brand name to make it look identical which is unlikely or they get the brand name to make it for them and put a Tesco label on it. If the latter is the case then there is no point in anyone buying the brand name and paying an extra £2 for different packaging, but people obviously do otherwise they wouldn't be on the shelf.

This has made me wonder how many other own brand items are actually the same as the well known brand names apart from packaging and price. I have seen some websites which tell people how to create well known recipes etc to replicate the flavour and think that there should also be a site that lets peple know which own brand goods are the same as brand names. Perhaps such a site exists already and if so I would appreciate someone leaving the address in a comment. Surely it would not be too hard for someone to put together a site like this and think it could save the average shopper a fortune and perhaps force the major companies to drop their prices of branded goods to the same level as own brands just to compete.

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