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Category: Bad Diabetes Companies

A Deductible and Double Co-Pay Later

Chris Stocker

My saga with OptumRX is over, at least for this go round. As my previous post mentioned, I’ve had a very difficult time getting my insulin re-order. As an update to the previous post, I have received all the insulin that is needed.

I ran out of insulin and needed to go Target in order to fill my retail prescription because the mail order did not ship in time. I decided I would pay the $100 deductible because I needed the insulin, however when I went to pick it up, they couldn’t process the order because it said I just had the mail order filled.

If you’re getting confused, sorry, but this is how it went down. The pharmacist had to call in for an override which took another 15 minutes.

Finally, I had my insulin from Target which is a one month supply, now I just needed my 90 day supply delivered.

I did not get the delivery the next day, so I called and the RX was still being processed which I don’t understand how it takes that long when I had a RX on file, but just ran out of refills. And why does insulin need refill limits anyway, it’s not like I’m going to stop using it any time soon, but that’s a different story for a different time.

I received my delivery of insulin yesterday so I am good to go for insulin for the next 4 months. Which means hopefully I won’t have to deal with Optum for another 4 months.

Over the last 12 months I have had a mail order get delivered to wrong address, test strip order be delivered with half of the 3 month supply damaged and the test strips on the bottom of the bag, this fiasco, Humulin N delivered instead of Humalog.

And that has all been with OptumRX. To say that they are probably the worst mail order pharmacy is an easy choice.

Target Pharmacy Needs Serious Help

Chris Stocker

Well after yesterday’s post about my RX problems, I thought today was going to be simple and easy and I would just go pick up my insulin and be good for the next month, wow was I wrong.  And I will say this now, and probably several times throughout this post, the pharmacy employees at the Target in Aventura Florida need to be fired, no questions asked.  I understand that people make mistakes at their jobs, but when 4 people make the same mistake and do not admit their mistake and tell me that I am the wrong one when I have been doing this for 7 years almost, then there is a serious problem.  Let’s get into what exactly happened and why I am so damn pissed about this situation and fiasco at the pharmacy today.

I went over at my lunch break for work to go and pick up my insulin.  When I got there they went and grabbed my insulin out of the fridge, but as I looked at the bag, it looked kinda small to be 5 vials of insulin, which is a normal one month supply for me, because of how much insulin I use.  I asked them how much was in there and they said 1 vial and I said, “there’s no way that’s going to last me a month, that’s going to last me about a week at most.”  The pharmacy tech tried to explain to me that they filled the order as how the doctor sent the RX over and that I must be over using insulin and that I am not using the insulin as prescribed to the doctor.  First I said, do you know anything about diabetes?  It’s not a doctor’s orders, I have to take insulin for the amount of food that I am eating.  They still tried to argue with me that this was the proper amount and I said it couldn’t be because I have been getting the same RX from this same doctor for almost 4 years now, so that’s impossible.  They passed me along to their manager.

She had the same story, sorry sir, this is what the doctor prescribed.  I was not taking that for an answer because one vial of insulin would not get me by until the beginning of December, so I was pretty much fighting for my life here.  I asked to see the RX and they told me that they couldn’t show me it.  I don’t know the privacy laws or anything in regards to that so I’m not going to argue that, but I looked at the doctor’s order’s on the vial they were going to give me and it said 160 units per day. So I told the pharmacy manager to grab a calculator.  I said,  that this vial has 1,000 units in it, so when you divide 160 per day into that, how many days is that?  The answer came out to 6.25 days, and that is just on an average, which it is usually more than that.  So, she said, well by that calculation it seems that 5 vials would make sense to give me, but that’s not what the RX said.  By this time I was just flabbergasted, and just in shock that this lady just said this.  I didn’t even know what to respond with, I just said, “are you serious?, do you know how to count, how the hell did you get certified to do this? You are literally going to kill me because of your inability to do your job correctly.” She said, sir I apologize but that’s just the way it is.  Then she said, let me just take a look at the original RX again.

She comes back, and this is the part that pissed me off the most, is giggling and has a smirk on her face and goes, “haha, sorry, the pharmacist read it as 160 units monthly, not daily, lol sorry our apologizes.” WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!!!???  You are going to come back laughing and giggling about this mistake because you can’t read?  What about this old guy that is at the counter also arguing with them about the amount of pills that they gave him, there wasn’t enough in there.  They could be killing him by giving him a monthly amount but telling him to take it daily!  Eventually she admitted their mistake and gave me the correct amount of insulin.

I’m just getting pissed off about this all over again and can’t even talk about it anymore, so this is how I am going to end my post.

Target Pharmacy, you should be ashamed that you hired such incompetent people.

Stressed the Eff Out!

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

It has been such a long time since my last endo or CDE visit. I was supposed to have one on July 25th, but I was on vacation and also, I never received a call from the doctor’s office so it makes me wonder if I even had an appointment anyway? My endo is one of the top in the area so it took me 6 months to initially get in and since she hasn’t seen me in a long time, I may be back on that waiting list again. There was even scarier news that happened yesterday.

I received a letter from CobraServ who is a company that my COBRA continuing coverage was being processed through stating that my account with them had been terminated on June 30, 2010, but the letter was dated July 25, 2010. That doesn’t make sense that it would come 30 days later because there is the whole 63 days of continuing coverage issue. Well, wouldn’t you think that I would receive a letter or e-mail from my former employer stating that they switched companies to handle this stuff? Of course not. They are so incompetent that I wouldn’t expect anything more from them anyway. If you can’t trust them with the health insurance of a 3 year employee, would you really trust them to deliver on your 90 day supply? Just saying.

Moving on. I haven’t heard back from the new company yet, but I only sent an e-mail so I will have to give a call to them later on. I have been extremely stressed these last few days. Thursday night I test drove a 2010 Hyundai Elantra and fell in love with it, especially the new design and extended warranty. Saturday I went in to get all the paperwork done and after 4 hours on Saturday I had to come back Sunday to finalize the paperwork. I left the lot on Sunday with the new car and leaving my trade in as long as I came back on Monday with proof of residence, easy enough right? Absolutely not. I live in a house, I get my mail at a UPS Store. So since all my bank statements are going to a UPS box, that doesn’t prove that I live where I say I live and the bank doesn’t want to give the loan out because of that. Are you serious?

So, they give you the car and then a day later they say….oops, we may need to take it back, are you kidding me? They want 3 months of bank statements going to where I live, why? Wouldn’t you rather prefer that my most recent statement is to the residential address? It is just so damn frustrating, so wish me luck and keep your fingers crossed that this small little technicality doesn’t screw up getting a new car. A bank statement going to a UPS store location, that I pay for on a monthly basis as opposed to the envelope going to my residence, how can that determine whether or not you get a loan?

Aetna RX Home Delivery Major Failure!

Chris Stocker 16 Comments

My test strips woes of the last month or so have been well documented between my blog and Twitter.  The CVS fiasco being the worst part of it.  The chapter has ended, but it seems that the book is continuing.  Let me explain.

I contacted Aetna RX Home Delivery because I have to use them because of the insurance that I have.  I contacted them on Tuesday April 13 and gave them my credit card number to ship my testing strips.  I explained that I would need them by Friday, so I will pay the additional $20 to ship them overnight to me.  I hear nothing on Wednesday, nothing on Thursday and nothing on Friday.  I called them back and asked if the supplies had shipped yet, and they said no, the order hasn’t even processed.  Well that right now makes me feel good that I needed them rushed and 3 days later the order hasn’t processed.

Since I was leaving to go up north, I had the address changed to my PA address.  Well Thursday of the next week, after I came home from New York, my strips still weren’t there so I called Aetna once again.  They proceeded to tell me that the strips were already delivered, to my Florida address.  By this time I am pissed because I explained that I needed them in PA.  The customer service rep agreed with me that it was Aetna’s fault because she saw the notes in the system.  I asked them to overnight the strips to me in PA and when I got to Florida I would send back the other box.  She said that I couldn’t return them and if they did reship them since it was their fault,  that I would still have to pay the copay of $90 for them.  That is when I lost it.  Why would I have to pay for a whole other shipment and not be able to return something because you made a mistake?  That makes no sense to me what so ever!

I didn’t hear anything back from them on Friday or Saturday, so I had to call them again this morning.  They still haven’t shipped out the re-order they said they were still reviewing the case.  I told them that there is no reason to review the case because I am no longer in PA, so that rush delivery is no longer needed, but I’m glad that my emergency means 4 days to them.  I finally received my strips, but I wanted my $20 refunded back for the overnight shipping because they shipped them to the wrong address and they just sat in my FL mailbox for a week, so why should I pay for overnight shipping?

I was told that customer service can’t do anything about it, but document it, and it is up to the reship department to make the decision on whether I will receive my $20 back for overnight shipping.  I don’t know what kind of investigation is needed, you charged me for something that you did not provide, so give me my damn money back!

Aetna RX Home Delivery, you have just made the list.  You can join CVS in customer service hell!

CVS – You Are a Failure Part 2

Chris Stocker 6 Comments

I don’t want to sound like I am trying to take CVS out of business or anything, but they need to be held accountable.  For so many years, companies could do whatever they wanted and pretty much get away with it.  Now with blogs and Twitter and Facebook, companies are held responsible for mistakes that they make.  You can read about what happened last week at CVS and their misleading ads.

On Friday, I was supposed to pick up the test strips that were ordered for me.  Well when I got there, there were not any boxes of 50 strips on the shelf, so I’m thinking, here we go again.  I asked the lady behind the counter for 2 boxes of 50 and explained to her that they had ordered them for me on Tuesday.  I was told to come in after 12:00, so I strolled in around 2:00 p.m.  The shipment still was not unpacked so the lady said she would just go into the shipment and pull them out.  Well the head pharmacist said no, she could not do that and told me to come back after 5:00 p.m. tonight.  That really irritated me that the head pharmacist, who should know the importance of strips, told me I still had to wait.

I was not able to make it back to CVS that night, so I decided to go the next morning.  When I walked in on Saturday morning, once again I didn’t see any boxes of 50 counts on the wall.  It was all new people working that day, so I had to explain the whole thing over.  They told me that none were ordered so I would have to wait until Friday.  I nicely explained to them, that no I am not waiting until Friday and they were selling me the 2 boxes of 25 for $9.99, since the box of 50 was $9.99.  She said no.  I kind of disagreed.  When I asked for the store manager, luckily he was extremely busy and just said ok do it, without even really listening, she finally rang them up.

They wanted to give me a rain check for Friday again, but I just told them to keep it because I would rather pay an extra $20 then to step foot into that store again.  I am done with CVS; they no longer exist in my life.  This was an example of some of the worst customer service that I have ever seen.  Do people understand that they are messing with people’s lives?  If you work in a pharmacy, should you not be required to understand diabetes in the most simple forms?  Understand what testing strips are for and how important they are and that it’s not a game of oops sorry.

CVS – you are a failure!

Fired Up Friday – CVS Pharmacy Misleading Ads

Chris Stocker 6 Comments

I am picking back up Fired Up Friday again.  I did not post anything last week because I decided to take a few days off from blogging and being on the computer constantly.  This week, my post was brought on from something that I tweeted about Sunday afternoon, if you didn’t see it, this is what I said:

Basically, this is what happened.  At about 3-4 a.m. I woke up and had to go to the bathroom for the second time in the middle of the night.  I had Taco Bell for dinner that night, so I thought that maybe my sugar could be pretty high, so I decided to test, which I never do at that time because I hate waking p and testing my sugar.  When I pulled out a strip, the vial slipped out of my hands and the strips fell out, normally I would just pick them up.  However, this time they decided they wanted to take a swim in the glass of water I had sitting right next to me.

That was my last vial of testing strips until my Freestyle Lite ones came in on either Tuesday or Wednesday.  Sunday morning I decided that I would look through the ads in the paper to see who had a better sale that weekend, CVS, Walgreens, Target or Wal-Mart.  CVS was the winner with having boxes of 50 strips of the TrueTest (which are the exact ones I was looking for) for $9.99.  I went out to the CVS right across the street to buy about 3-4 boxes because you can’t beat that price for back up strips.

The pharmacy only had 2 boxes of 25 and 1 box of 100.  So I said, well can you sell me the 2 boxes of 25 for $10, or the box of 100 for $20?  I knew that they couldn’t do this, but it was worth a shot, so I wasn’t upset about that.  I was a little concerned how they could have sold out that quickly, since that sales price was valid that day.  The next closest CVS was a few miles away, so I decided to call and they were out of stock also.  So I called the 2nd closest, and they were out of stock of the 50’s as well.  By this time, I am really irritated, so just for fun, I decide to call 10 of the closest CVS pharmacies to see if they had them in stock, to my surprise, not a single one had a box of 50 in stock.

So, what does that tell you?  Tells me a couple of things are possible.  First, maybe all 10 of those stores sold out so quickly that by the time I went there at 1:00 p.m. they were all sold out already.  Second option is that it was a simple oversight by an inventory manager for not having a sales product in stock.  The third and final option is that they had a special like that, a “too good to be true” special and did not stock their stores properly on purpose in order to drive traffic into their stores.  It wouldn’t be the first time I have seen this done by these type of stores.  That’s why milk is always so cheap in CVS and Walgreen’s just to get you into the store and by other stuff that’s overpriced.

This irritates the heck out of me.  I am in marketing, so I know the whole marketing side of this, but it’s not good marketing.  You are preying on people with a disease that need these testing strips to help manage their diabetes to get them into your store and then not have any of the product in that they came in for.  This is just unacceptable to me.  This is also the second time this year that I have had a bad experience with CVS Pharmacy, the other was their walk-in “clinic” where I had to teach the nurse about stuff instead of her helping me.

If you are going to advertise a product, please have it in stock.  You may think that you are creating this great marketing plan, but in reality, you are losing customers.  You have lost me, maybe nobody else, but I won’t ever walk into the store again.  Sometimes diabetics need some extra strips for emergencies that their insurance isn’t going to cover.  We all know how over-priced testing strips are already, so when you have a sale or deal like that, you are about to make the life of a diabetic a lot happier.  However, you used my illness to draw me into your store, congratulations.

Am I just over reacting?