Getting prescriptions (re)filled through CVS Caremark turns out to be a constant unpleasant adventure. My password keeps needing to be changed, for no reason I can see, and what happens when I get to the “manage your prescriptions” page is always something different from all previous log-ins. Sometimes I can find no way to get the list of my (alas, very many) prescriptions, or get the list from two years ago, or some list that probably belongs to someone else, so I just abandon the task and try again the next day. Twice I’ve been told that that resource is not available.
Today my problem was a prescription for prednisone 5 mg tablets, which I put in weeks ago, got a message saying it had been processed, and then no news whatsoever. So, after elaborately proving who I was and then changing my password, I found the “track your orders” resource (sometimes it just vanishes and I’m shit out of luck, but it was there today. And told me that instead of being mailed to me (as I had instructed), the rx was sent to my local CVS, held for two weeks without being picked up, and returned to the warehouse. All without any notification to me.
Oh, you say, that should be no problem, just put in a new order. The “submit an order” option was in fact available. Joy.
But there was no joy in Mudville. The “submit an order” box told me that this rx had recently been filled, so would not be available for filling again until July 21st, six weeks from now. I went away for a while, to weep in frustration and have a cup of tea, then looked up the dreaded Customer Care Center telephone number.
This routine I’d been through a number of times, and like everything else, all the steps were different from what they’d been on previous tries. (I’ve become convinced that the programmers just re-jiggle everything every six hours or so, just to show that they can.)
The CCC gives you an AI program that asks you what your problem is, and it is utterly pointless to try to actually explain your problem, because the program only recognizes a few responses. These seem to be a bit different on each occasion, but one of them is always a way to request a human being. The last time this turned out to be REPRESENTATIVE; this time the magic word was AGENT. (I think HELP DESK sometimes works. But on any given occasion, only one response will make the magic happen.)
No, you do not then get a representative, agent, help desk, or genie. Instead you get a list of 3 to 5 kinds of helpers, with numbers attached. This list is in jargon and it’s never the same twice. Here, my experience is that the system is somewhat forgiving; if you end up getting the wrong kind of agent, they’ll either decide that they can handle your problem anyway, or will transfer you to the appropriate genie.
But … you can’t go on without providing the genie with tons of evidence about who you are — numbers, dates, names, addresses, and so on, again never quite the same ones. It takes time.
But then I was admitted to the charmed circle, and the genie actually recognized my tale as a catch-22 and found it genuinely funny. Also unacceptable. But it took her some minutes of phoning around to get stuff undone and re-done and then to present me with an apology and the news that my prednisone would go out to me this very afternoon. Cautiously, I explained that I was disabled and housebound (she already had my birthdate, so she knew I was really old) and needed reassurance that it was going out in the mail. To my home address.
“Oh yes, sir. To your home address. It should take a few days.”
…..
So I didn’t get to tell you today about stamps for Pride Month. Instead, I took the entire afternoon ordering some prednisone tablets. Though while I was drinking that cup of tea, I ordered myself a sheet of US stamps: 2014 Harvey Milk commemoratives. And you get this story.
June 3, 2025 at 7:23 pm |
I know WAY too much about this, and my hatred of anything to do with CVS/CRK — pharmacies, mail order, home care, clinics– goes back at least 30 years when they ruined a company I loved in a forced merger.
One tidbit that does NOT get them off the hook, as they should have called, emailed, sent a pigeon or a drone or just fucking delivered: a pharmacy may not bill your insurance unless the drug is on the shelf, and the payment for claims occurs around 10-14 days; if you haven’t picked it up they can’t collect the money.
June 4, 2025 at 7:21 am |
I would never have chosen CVS Caremark, but it’s what I got this year in my State Teachers Retirement System (of Ohio) benefits package (no doubt because CVS underbid other suppliers, including the previous excellent one).
June 3, 2025 at 8:36 pm |
Ah, another we-know-all-your-contact-details-but-we-sure-ain’t-gonna-use-them-to-actually-contact-you story.
I had some money that I wanted to transfer. I rang another organisation and was told, by a human, that I could transfer it to one of their specific products, and I duly noted down the advice. I sent off the appropriate forms. The money left the first place, but never arrived in the second (I could check both accounts via the internet). I gave them a bit of slack because it was around Christmas, but when I rang in January, I was told that they had already had it for a few weeks and that it couldn’t go into the product that I wanted. I had been given the wrong advice. Meanwhile, they were just holding the funds.
Every time I had rung them in previous months, they had checked my contact details, yet when something came up that was odd, they didn’t even do me the courtesy of checking with me by phone or text or email or letter. They could have told me of the difficulty and then suggested another one of their products that I could transfer the money to. Their inaction spurred me to withdraw all my other money that I had with them in other accounts. Eventually, months later, I also got back the original money that I had originally tried to transfer in. They grudgingly supplied a small amount of money for lost interest.