Oh, You WILL Be Judged At The Albertson’s Pharmacy
Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Occasionally, I find myself so angry that I can actually no longer speak. Happened to me this afternoon.
But I need to back up a bit. My oldest son has three medications that he needs to take for his asthma. We went to the doctor this week and got him new prescriptions based on how he’s doing. If he doesn’t have the prescriptions, he can’t breathe well. So I decided to get them filled right away.
Yesterday I dropped off one of them at Albertson’s and the other two at Rite Aid. Why? You might have noticed the coupon in the Rite Aid ad for a $25 gift card with a transferred prescription. I requested that Rite Aid transfer the prescription over from Albertson’s. No problem, they said.
This isn’t new for me. Rolling prescriptions is a system similar to couponing, and I play by the rules. That’s why I have a Prescription Rolling tracking sheet in the back of my book. I’ve never had a problem, and I like to think it’s because I read the terms and conditions carefully, and then follow them.
So imagine my surprise this afternoon when the Rite Aid pharmacist told me that Albertson’s refused to transfer my prescription.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s the strangest thing,” said the nicest pharmacist in the world with whom I’ve dealt several times. “We work with them all the time, and this has never happened before.”
Hm, I thought. He continued to be apologetic, but I assured him that I would go and ask what was going on and that I didn’t consider it his fault. I paid for the two prescriptions for Oldest and headed next door to Albertson’s.
I requested the prescription at the Pick-Up counter, and the cashier asked if I had any questions.
“Actually, I do,” I said. I showed her the coupon. “I would like to use this coupon at Rite Aid.”
“Oh, we can’t accept that coupon,” she interrupted.
“Yes, I know, ” I continued. “I’d like to use it at Rite Aid on a transferred prescription, and they told me that someone in this pharmacy refused to transfer my prescription over.”
The cashier looked confused, and turned to ask her colleague who had joined us at the counter.
Colleague sneered at me. “You had just gotten it filled. It was ready.”
“So?” I asked. I genuinely meant it. Cashier looked chagrined. “I’d like it transferred,” I said.
“Well, it was ready and we were supposed to transfer it?” She looked as if she had just sucked a lemon. ”I mean, that’s just wrong.”
THAT was the moment. Excuse me?
“What?” I said. “It’s a system, and I save money using coupons. It’s not personal. It’s a transferred prescription.”
“Well, it was filled, it’s wrong.”
The Cashier stepped in and tried to smooth things over. “Well, imagine if you worked in a busy environment and you got stuff done but then it was transferred.”
I stared at her, jaw set, FURIOUS. I simply shook my head at her. I could not trust myself to speak.
Would it have mattered if the prescription had been left for three days? What about a week? What will the employees at Albertson’s judge me on next? What will they require me to purchase or not purchase?
Regardless, Oldest needed his prescription. It killed me to pay for it…but the situation promised to deteriorate and I needed to leave. My only regret is that I paid for the prescription.
Wilson Writes » Blog Archive » Prescription Deals says: March 4th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
[...] the irony, after my fiasco at Al’s this week – keep that in mind should you transfer a prescription to Rite [...]