The short version. Warby Parker has one of the strongest consumer brands in eyewear and one of the worst third-party reputation records of any retailer we looked at. Both of those statements are true, and the reason they can both be true is worth understanding before you decide what to make of it.
The uncomfortable numbers
Checked 23 August 2026:
- Better Business Bureau: F, not accredited. The file records a failure to respond to 10 complaints, with 4 unresolved.
- Trustpilot: 1.5 out of 5, rated “Bad.”
For a company with Warby Parker’s reputation, that is jarring. It is also close to what we found at Lens.com, which we would actively warn a patient about.
Three reasons to hold that lightly
We are not going to hand you those numbers without the caveats, because the caveats are substantial.
The file is about the whole company, not contacts. Warby Parker’s BBB profile sits under retail optical goods and covers a business that is overwhelmingly about glasses — frames, prescription lenses, home try-on, retail stores. Contact lenses are a small part of what they sell. Almost none of those complaints are likely to be about a box of Acuvue.
Complaint volumes scale with retail complexity, not with badness. A company shipping custom-made prescription glasses and running physical stores generates more things that can go wrong than one shipping sealed boxes. Ten unanswered complaints at a company Warby Parker’s size is a small absolute number — for comparison, 1-800 Contacts had 128 complaints over three years and holds an A+, because it answered them.
Trustpilot skews negative for large consumer brands in a way that BBB files do not, because satisfied customers of a mass-market retailer rarely go and write a review.
What we would take from it: the failure to respond is the meaningful part, not the letter grade. An unanswered complaint is a choice. But it is a choice made about a glasses business, and we would not use it as the deciding factor on a contact lens order.
What they are for contact lenses specifically
Warby Parker went public through a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2021 and re-incorporated as a public benefit corporation before doing so. It was founded in 2010 by four Wharton students. This is a real, scrutinised, publicly reporting company, which is more than can be said for some of the cheaper sellers.
Prescription verification is the most flexible of anyone we checked. You can upload a photo of your prescription, enter your doctor’s contact details for Warby Parker to reach out, or email it in. Most retailers offer one or two of those paths.
Shipping is free on standard orders, with expedited options available. We could not confirm the expedited prices from a primary source, so we are not going to quote them.
Returns run 30 days, and contact lenses must be in their original unopened packaging. That is unremarkable — better than Hubble’s 14 days, far short of ContactsDirect’s six months.
FSA and HSA have a dedicated payment path. Warby Parker has a vision insurance page, but we could not independently confirm whether it bills VSP or EyeMed directly at the point of sale or only supplies reimbursement paperwork. If insurance matters to your decision, ask them before ordering rather than trusting us or anyone else on that point.
We could not verify Warby Parker’s prices for the twelve lenses in our price index, so they do not appear there. We are not going to guess at whether they are competitive.
The footnote that says something good about them
In 2024, 1-800 Contacts sued Warby Parker for bidding on “1-800 Contacts” as a search keyword — the same conduct the FTC had spent years challenging as anticompetitive. On 8 October 2024 the Second Circuit ruled for Warby Parker, holding that buying a competitor’s trademark as a keyword is not by itself infringement.
Warby Parker spent money defending the right to show you an alternative when you search for a competitor. That is a small thing, and it is on the right side of the argument about whether shoppers get to compare prices.
We found no FTC Contact Lens Rule action against Warby Parker.
Our view
Warby Parker is a reasonable place to buy contacts, particularly if you are already buying glasses there and want one account and one return process. Verification is the most flexible in the category and the company is publicly accountable in a way most online lens sellers are not.
It is not the place to go for price. We could not verify their lens pricing at all, and nothing in their positioning suggests they are competing on it. If cost is your priority, check Costco or work through our price index.
On the F rating: we have shown it to you because we would rather you hear it here than find it later and wonder why we did not mention it. We do not think it should decide your lens order. We do think a company that leaves ten complaints unanswered should be told so.
Contact Lens HQ does not sell contact lenses. Some links on this site earn us a commission, and none of them influenced anything above. Reviewed by Dr. Teresita Bollar, OD.
