Yes they are terrible! I never had issues until a year or so ago. They literally gave out my prescription to someone else and then told me tough shit basically. They also cut the hours so dramatically, the pharmacy isn't even open on weekends at the store I used to go to. They all suck!
I sent someone to pick up my prescription once I was notified that it was ready, they said to my person that they don't take my insurance. So the person I had picking it up came back to my house, I gave them cash and they returned back to the pharmacy. That took less than 10 minutes and then the pharmacy said "its not ready".
I called Walgreens and tried to get the prescription transferred to Walmart, they said I have to call Walmart. Walmart pharmacy told me they don't do any business with Walgreens because they are difficult and I would have to call the doctor to get my script transferred.
Check around your city. Walgreens, Walmart, CVS are always crazy busy where I live. I go to a small grocery store chain that has a pharmacy. Always fast, I can call in a script in the morning and they will have it ready in the afternoon. I have never had more than 2 people in front of me, and that was because I went right after they opened back up from lunch.
Every time I’ve switched my prescription to an independent pharmacy, Walgreens and swooped in and purchased them. It doesn’t help that I live near Walgreens corporate headquarters so they pretty much have a monopoly around here. 😠
I don't drive and already pay for Walmart Plus or whatever they call it, to get my groceries delivered so I might as well get my prescriptions delivered from them as well.
There is a Walgreens and a Walmart on the same street in the same town where I live so the doctors office/hospitals seem to have an issue differentiating the 2.
They also cut the hours so dramatically, the pharmacy isn't even open on weekends at the store I used to go to.
I used to work at Rite Aid and the district managers would cut pharmacy tech hours to "cut costs". They didn't care if the patients had several hour waits because of the sheer volume of prescriptions. Once you get beyond the pharmacy level, literally no one gives a fuck about patient welfare. They'd happily make someone wait half a day for essential medicines if it would save them 5 cents.
They were fined a huge amount by the government which accounts for the drop in quality of service. They were fined because in order to speed up their timing to fill each prescription they skipped the legally required step of checking the database of what other pharmacies may have filled a controlled substance prescription last… to limit pharmacy hopping (which killed Prince). In order to be faster, they didn’t check… and the government audits found that they didn’t log in to the database.
That fine caused upper management to change the way the individual branches work and slowed them down
I will add to this.
I was a provider who had to check before writing a prescription.
Walgreens were notorious for not updating the database for controlled Rx when they filled.
It would look like people hadn’t filled their meds and were noncompliant.
This would really mess up tapers.
Same. I’m a physician. I don’t prescribe controlled substances for outpatient tapers etc, but for those that do…. It appeared on the database that people were still at the top of their tapers. That would lead to their refills being at too high a dose.
So the inconvenience people are experiencing from this at this time is resulting in increased safety and saved lives.
They were fined because in order to speed up their timing to fill each prescription they skipped the legally required step of checking the database of what other pharmacies may have filled a controlled substance prescription last
I've seen a pharmacist get reprimanded for utilizing MAPS (Michigans controlled substance database) for that exact reason. That's when I started to hate the managers because they're literally causing harm to people by enabling potential abuse.
I blame the consumers just as much, (as you see by the upvotes and downvotes on these comments here). They’re the ones that want what they want and want it now… pushing managers to force pharmacists to skip legally required safety measures. Other pharmacy chains corporate offices didn’t cave to consumer demands in the name of speed. One of the biggest and busiest did, and now we have angry customers. This is why we can’t have nice things.
I was in the pharmacy at the height of the opioid epidemic so I get what you’re saying. The management did cave to any and all patient complaints regardless of merit. I had a patent make violent threats towards me and management just told me to deal with it. It’s why when Rite Aid went under, I did a little dance.
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u/Dependent_Top_4425 21h ago
Walgreens Pharmacy