Thursday, January 5, 2012

Cruising and Prescription Drugs

Warning- rant to follow.

Like many people my age, I take several prescription drugs for various ailments related to getting older.  This presents a problem to those of us who are cruising.  I thought I had it covered by filling them at Walgreen's, a nationwide company.  I put all my meds on automatic refill.  As we traveled, I would go online to Walgreens.com and update my pickup location to the closest Walgreens to where ever we were.  This has failed miserably.

Regardless of the pickup pharmacy I entered online, I'd receive an email that my order was ready to be picked up in Stamford Connecticut.  Every single time.  I'd then have to phone in my order to the local Walgreens to be picked up.  Other than being aggravating, this wasn't that big of  a deal.  But the latest was.

I went to my drug drawer to take one of my meds and I was out.  How could this be?  All of my meds are on auto-refill.  I went online to Walgreens.com and  found that this one was taken off of auto refill.  Not by me.  I placed an order on their website on Friday December 30th with expedited shipping.  It was New Year's Eve weekend, and knowing there might be delays, I called on Tuesday, January 3rd to check on the order.  It had not been shipped.  Why?  Because my copay was $125 and the person on the other end of the phone wanted to know if that was OK.  What????   I placed the order, I entered my debit card info, why wouldn't it be OK??  

She said the order would be processed right away.  Meanwhile, we're sitting here in Annapolis with a perfect weather window and want to leave. 

I called again this morning to check on the order.   After going through two operators, I was told it will be delivered by the end of the day on Friday.   Friday???   This is expedited shipping?   Well, it didnt ship until Wednesday and expedited shipping is two day.

As you can tell, I'm totally fed up with Walgreen's rotten service.  I don't think I've ever dealt with such an incompetent and inefficient company.  Luckily, the drug I'm waiting for isn't insulin or anything critical, but still, I'm paying marina fees here in Annapolis while I wait for drugs to arrive.

So here we sit in perfect trawler weather waiting for pills.  Needless to say, I need to find another nationwide pharmacy to fill my prescriptions.  Suggestions, anyone?

4 comments:

  1. I don't use them myself, but check Wallmart.

    Bill Kelleher

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  2. We used CVS for our last 2 years of cruising. There always seemed to be one in any town we stopped in and ordering them through the online service seemed to work MOST of the time. We'd guesstimate where we'd be when our pills would run out and and placed a refill request for that location. However, what was best was when we were on the Great Loop we got our prescriptions filled for an entire year instead of just 30 or 90 days. We had to jump through a few hoops with the insurance company, but it was worth it not to worry about getting prescriptions filled "on the road".

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just another thought, go on line and check for locations of the different pharmacy's.

    I found that my pharmacy ( Rite Aid ) was not in every state.

    Bill Kelleher

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi, just a moment back I was searching for the information on the prescription drugs and now I am here. So much information, really well executed blog. This is really informative.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete