Walgreens Ripoff Horrendous customer service, lying pharmacy technician, unhelpful management Grayslake Illinois
After tearing a ligament in my knee, my D.O. called in a prescription (at about 2:15 p.m.). I went to pick up the prescription at 4:30 p.m. the same day. I was told it would be another 1/2 hour to 45 minutes before it was ready.
Now, I could understand the wait if there were other people in the waiting area. I was the only one.
I asked the pharmacy technician, "Sam A." (a teenaged girl with attitude) what time they had the prescription was called in. She said 4 p.m. Right then and there, I knew she was lying because I was standing beside the doc when it was called in.
After waiting for a long time... I asked the store manager if he could possibly expedite things for me. I was in pain, I wanted to go home and rest my leg.
He said "they're working on it as fast as they can."
Well, other people came in, filled prescriptions, got their order and left. I'm still sitting there.
After paying for the prescription with my Visa card, "Sam" literally threw the card at me. When I looked at her with my mouth open in disbelief, she snottily said "Oops, I'm sorry." Yeah, right.
So, what's the deal with Walgreens?
Is it a 24-hr. wait to get prescriptions?
Is it perhaps company policy to make people wait for scripts so they'll browse and spend more money?
Is it perhaps they understaff (physically) and underhire (like Sam)?
Is is company policy not to address consumer concerns? I left a message for their consumer affairs department (very polite... you get more action when you're pleasant)... No response.
I guess I'll have to take my business to another company who actually wants to earn my money instead of treat me like an inconvenience.
Pissed off in
Grayslake, Illinois
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Hiren
Sunnyvale,California,
U.S.A.
Walgreens pharmacy is inefficient
#2UPDATE Employee
Tue, June 24, 2008
I am sorry that you had to wait long, but its not really the employee's fault, that the whole Walgreens system is designed to be very inefficient.
First things first, when the doctor calls in a prescription more than 50% of the time they won't get to the pharmacist, because the pharmacist are busy with the millions of duties put on them by Walgreens. So the call is automatically forwarded to the answering machine for prescribers. From there the pharmacist has to manually check, so when the Tech said 4pm, it really meant that the message was retrieved at 4pm.
As for the rushing portion, the system has another flaw, that it will not let the pharmacy staff wait the order of processing for the prescription, once it has been entered. Prescriptions are reviewed and printed all in order, and they are all filled in that such order. However, one can pick and chose from the system, but Walgreens discourages that, and marks their employees down when they do that.
I am a technician who works in a 24 hour walgreens, and I deal with alot of these problems about the wait times. But you have to remember to keep your cool, because its not an easy job being a tech at a 24 hour place. Just so that you know, Walgreens is not really a good place to work at, because of the way they treat their employees.
Anyways goodluck and hopefully this wont happen again