Wednesday, May 30, 2007

 

I Pay $336 a Month to Get Treated Like Shit

Every month, I order $1608 dollars worth of medication from an on-line pharmacy owned by the shitty insurance that I have. To be fair, I don't pay $1608 (except for the first order which met my insurance deductible for the year), I'm only responsible for 20% of this.

So, every month, Tel-Drug of Pennsylvania gets $336 of my money. That's a sizable amount of money, especially for someone working for the wages that can be earned at [Nameless Company] in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I figure that about one hour and forty minutes of every 10 hour shift goes toward paying for my medication. Then again, I'm not good at math. Also, it's not like I have a choice. I need this medication, and while I bitch about my insurance, compalining that I'm spending $336 instead of $1608 is a little silly.

What I can complain about, though, is the service I've received from Tel-Drug of Pennsylvania. I have been on my medication for about six months now and have placed 7 orders. Of those orders, six have been screwed up in one way or another. The order was never placed or was delayed for no reason. I had to get on the phone and call them to remind them to actually place my order. I was told by one technician once after an order wasn't sent "It's just sitting here, I don't know why it hasn't been sent."

Tel-Drug is getting $1608 dollars from me and my shitty insurance provider monthly. I am paying $336 monthly to be ignored by a company that is supposed to be providing me a service. I imagine they're making a tidy profit from me. Yet they screw up most of my orders.

So the first suggestion Tel-Drug had for me was to order 3 months worth of medication at a time. The medication doesn't require any special storage, so I could have three months of it around at a time. I'd only have to deal with Tel-Drug 4 times a year instead of 12. They'd have less opportunity to screw up orders, I guess they'd only screw up 4 orders a year under this plan.

This won't work, of course, because I don't have $1008 lying around at any given time. Yeah, I end up spending that much anyway, and I'd be able to budget for it, but this isn't a solution. It doesn't fix anything. They're the ones screwing up, but I'm supposed to go out of my way to make things easier for them?

The next suggestion was to assign me to a person to handle my orders. This is great because their automated phone system isn't worth a shit. I spent over 2 hours on the phone one day (mostly on hold) trying to straighten out a screwed up order. I have to call a number on my dime, which doesn't actually cost me anything extra because of my VOIP phone service, but the point is that it actually saves Tel-Drug money. Why should I be saving them money? They're apparently not using any money they save to improve their customer service.

In an interesting little side note, my last order wasn't screwed up. Since I assumed that it would be, as all of the others were, I ordered before leaving town for 3 days. This order went through perfectly and was delivered the next day while I was on the road. UPS will only try to deliver a package for three days. So when I got back home, they were through trying to deliver. I went to pick up the package at UPS, but they aren't open until after I go to work. In short, while Tel-Drug didn't screw up this last order, because I assumed they would I didn't get my order for a week anyway.

In another intersting side note, Tel-Drug told me that they'd dropped me, that they wouldn't be handling my account anymore. Because of my attitude. They'd screwed up six out of seven orders and I'm the bad guy. I have been told by [Nameless Company] HR (the same folk who royally screwed up my hiring process) that this isn't the case. We'll find out on Monday when I try to place another order.

BOJ

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Comments:
Whoa... dude. Is this shitty insurance company an HMO or a PPO (sounds like a PPO)? Whichever you have, it sounds like next year with open enrollment you need to switch to the other (if you have such a choice).

I searched for the pharmacy and found what insurance co it is... ick, I've dealt with that ins co before. They're like the Yugo of insurance.

Quinn
 
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