My doctor called in a prescription for me today and it was only later that I realized I had asked him to call the wrong pharmacy location. No problem, I thought. I can call and have the prescription transferred to the location closest to me.
I called the pharmacy phone number and it turns out that this company doesn't have separate lines for the store and the pharmacy.
"Push 3 for the pharmacy."
I push 3.
"Push 1 if you are a doctor, push 2 if you need flu shot information..."
It took three button pushes and some bad hold music to reach a person, who promptly asked me to hold.
When she came back, I told her my situation and she sighed and said that if the other store called her, she would transfer the prescription and even more promptly than before, hung up the phone.
How is the customer to know which way the transfer needs to go? Push or pull? And now that they know the problem, why is it still my problem to fix? Why can't a pharmacy tech go into the system and push my prescription to the correct store?
I call the other store, wade through the exact same voice mail maze and reach a pharmacy tech who then, without telling me, transfers me to the pharmacist herself. I explain my problem, including the fact that the other store is making me call her, and she sighs a bit. She pulls me up in the system, sees the prescription and agrees to transfer it, and we hang up the phone.
Clearly, I am in the computer system, so why is it that I needed to spend fifteen minutes to make two obnoxious phone calls and irritate four pharmacy workers to move one tiny plastic bottle across town?
I guess they only offer bitter pills at this pharmacy!
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