What is WRONG with these prescription people?!?! I'm positively ripping out my hair.
Got the mail today and much to my delight, there's the package of meds I've been waiting for. Phew, that's a relief. Oh look, 4 messages on the machine. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, "This is Advance PCS [the idiot mail order people] and there's been a problem with your order. Please call us at blah blah blah." Oh no.
I check the meds out and sure enough, there's a problem. I take a medicine called Toprol XL. It's the primary medication for my heart condition, the one that saved my life. You know, the important one. Well I take it twice a day. In the morning I take 75 mg and in the evening it's 100 mg. Previously I'd been getting a bunch of 50 mg pills and taking 1 and 1/2 in the mornings and 2 at night. Sound easy enough? Oh no, my friend.
They sent me one bottle of 100 mg pills with instructions to take it once a day in the evenings. Uhhhh, where's my 75??? Nowhere to be seen. So I call the customer help line. HA! After 10 minutes of listening to options and pressing buttons, I learn that they're closed, of course. They have the very convenient weekend hours of 8 am to 3 pm Mountain time (which translates to 7 am to 2 pm). And of course I didn't get home until 5 this afternoon sooo...make a note to call them tomorrow.
Then I happen to be going through the rest of the mail and guess who sent me a letter? That's right--Advance PCS. And what do they say? Here it is:
We regret that we are unable to fill your prescription for Metorpolol (75)...
You regret? Yeah, I'm sure you're all broken up over it. And they spelled the medication wrong.
It was necessary for AdvanceRX to contact your physician to obtain prescription authorization
And why is that? They HAD the prescription. I know, we faxed it to them ourselves. Not only that, but I've been taking this medication at this dosage and frequency for a year. Why is this a problem now?
We were unsuccessful in obtaining the information we needed to fill your order.
Oh yeah, right. My doctor is the most accommodating person I know. He has gone above and beyond to work out these prescription difficulties (yes, this has happened more than once) before. I doubt they even called him.
We were also unable to reach you to inform you of the situation.
NO WAY!!!!! This letter was mailed on Tuesday, and the only phone message I got was from today. They are totally lying.
If you wish to have your order filled through our pharmacy, it will be necessary for you to obtain a new prescription.
This is just bullshit! We just faxed them a brand-spanking-new prescription two weeks ago! And of course this could all be taken care of if they had called my doctor, but apparently they're not even going to try that. No, now it's my responsibility to obtain a new prescription saying the exact same thing the prescription two weeks ago said. This is ridiculous.
Because yeah, I have nothing better to do with my time these days than call my doctor and ask him AGAIN to call this stupidf***ing pharmacy and get the prescription right when it was perfectly clear the first time around.
You might remember that I'm leaving for Germany on Monday morning. Boy am I glad I had the foresight to get that backup prescription yesterday. Now at least I'll have enough to get me through until we can sort this out. I just can't believe it. I hate these people.
You know, this is raising my blood pressure, and that's very bad for my heart.
Posted by Shelby at February 7, 2004 06:01 PM