i send a message to mine

here is the rant that i promised in my last post.

i fill my birth control prescription using drustore.com. a few weeks back i had a gyno appointment and she phoned in and renewed my prescription. on wednesday night (technically thursday, about 12:30) i checked my email and found an email from drugstore that had been sent at 7:20 in the morning, saying that my order had been confirmed and x amount was going to be charged to my credit card. the package tracking indicated that the order had shipped. this order was not placed by me. in fact, at 7 in the morning when the order had been placed i was asleep in bed, dreaming sweetly.

i emailed customer service as is reccommended if you have a problem with your order. i recieved an automated reply, with links to irrelevant FAQs, and responded to the email as directed since the help was inadequate to solve my problem. no more email was forthcoming.

i went to bed and called the customer service line the next morning. i was immediately transfered to someone's supervisor after explaining the problem. the guy told me that they have an agreement with the insurance to automatically send prescriptions. there are some vast gaping holes to this logic, both as to why it is totally irritating, why it would never be a good idea, and as to why it shouldn't apply in this case.

1. it wasn't a new prescription, it was a renewal of a prescription that they already have on file for me.

2. my primary insurance doesn't touch the pills. the secondary one is a free incentive program where i signed up saying i would buy this birth control, and so they give me a discount– still, i'm paying more than 4/5 of the cost, so there is no way that they should decide when something is ordered purely from a monetary perspective– their input should count less since they pay less. not only that, but absolutely nowhere, either in the paperwork involved in the program, or in anything i read from drugstore, do i recall reading that this was the policy. it certainly didn't happen the first time i filed this Rx with them.

3. the policy that the website has where you can't cancel orders once they've been placed totally screws over the consumer, and a thousand times moreso when the consumer hasn't been the one to place the order.

4. not only was the Rx not new, but they didn't place it immediately after reciept as per the policy. my doctor called weeks ago– i know, i checked after she said she'd called to make sure the renewal was on file on the website.

5. as many of you know, i'm not going to be at my current address for very much longer. in fact, it will be a toss up as to whether the pills will arrive prior to my departure. i have both my parents' address and tripp's on file, having had meds sent previously to both locations. by not having me order my meds myself, and not having me confirm the information at checkout, they are putting me in a situation that no pharmacy should EVER put someone in. they are violating my right to privacy. since they can't cancel my order, and can't change an address once something has been shipped, there is a high likelihood that my parents will have to forward the pills to me. luckily for me my parents are glad i take precautions, but i can think of many people who have parents who would flip their lid if they found out their kid was on birth control, and would certainly find this out if they were made to forward the pills to their child.

perhaps none of this is that big of a deal. i just know that i was charged what for me is a large amount without my prior knowledge or consent, and that i have been inconvenienced as i spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened, and that me and my family will be potentially inconvenienced further.