Amazon Pharmacy

My doctor accidentally wrote a prescription for a three month supply of a medication for an acute illness that is generally not prescribed and certainly not filled for more than a month of quantity at a time, and generally not for more than 10 days.

When I placed my order, I thought the price was high, but figured it was because I hadn't hit my deductible and it was an expensive medicine. There was no obvious indication on the UI about the quantity of the prescription, just the price.

Amazon pharmacy accordingly sent me almost a small pharmacy-worth of this medicine. I called them and asked why the pharmacist didn't notice that this was a _highly_ unusual quantity of this medication (The quantity was *EIGHT* retail packages of the medicine) and raise a flag and check with the provider or me. The pharmacist I spoke to told me that they personally would have done so in this circumstance and told me they would refund the order and provide feedback to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. I later got an automated email that the refund request by the pharmacist was rejected by their finance department and could not be appealed.

I won't be using Amazon pharmacy again.

Started using this about a month ago out of frustration with the consistently poor experience I was having with another mail order pharmacy. When you take a medication daily you want it to take as little mental bandwidth as possible. Having to call an 800 number every month or two to verify some inane details at the request of my old pharmacy was enough to get me to look for an alternative. So far this is exactly the kind of experience I’d expect and want… zero drama, all online management, extremely quick delivery.

None of these services has scheduled meds, so ADHD folks, keep going to your local pharmacy.

I already won't use Amazon for things I put in my body -- the product commingling and counterfeit situations make them a non-starter for me on this. Precision and control are just not in their company DNA, so I don't want their shipped products mucking with my DNA. :)

Apple would be far higher on my list of consideration than this. I'd even say Google, for the 2 or 3 years that the product lasted.

While I do find healthcare somewhat plodding and archaic, these anecdotes remind me that it's not always a bad thing.

Everything with Amazon seems good until something goes sideways and then you are trapped in their nightmare of customer service.

If you have too many screwed up deliveries from Amazon you are suddenly, silently grey listed by them and now you cannot ever talk to a human being, they will only send you forms to fill out, by hand, and then wait a week or two for reply.

I spent a month arguing with them that they totally screwed up a delivery by giving it to an unknown apartment at an unknown location because their own photo showed a completely different door and doormat than the 100+ previous deliveries. They insisted it was geofenced and impossible to mis-deliver, lol.

I cannot imagine what a nightmare people are going to have after a medication delivery is so royally screwed up and given to someone else.

Other online services to consider:

https://costplusdrugs.com/medications

https://walmart.com/pharmacy

https://www.singlecare.com/

https://www.goodrx.com/

I kinda like the idea but unless something changes around Schedule II drug rules, you can't completely replace in person pharmacies.

I'm curious if this stuff:

A) makes it inside the US

B) scales outside of it

My gut reaction is A) maybe, B) hell no.

I wonder if they're as bad at preventing knock-off drug supply from polluting their inventory as they are with retail products. I can't think of a product line I'd feel less comfortable buying from Amazon than pharmaceuticals.

This is from their PillPack acquisition?

Switched to CostPlus pharmacy and haven't looked back, cheaper and easier than Amazon.

Our local Walgreens is so terribly slow that I switched over to Amazon. It's about a million times more convenient. Auto-refill notifications, no waiting in line.

I’ve been using PillPack since before they were acquired by Amazon Pharmacy, and love them.

If you have several prescriptions and especially if you have to take different medicines at different times of the day, you can save a lot of time and effort with PillPack. They package all of your daily meds into small packets labeled with the medication‘s and the time that you need to take them. They come in a big role and you just tear off the packets for the current day. You can also tear off several days if you are going on a trip, and you don’t have to bring a bunch of bottles or pill sorters.

Personally, I have found them to be reasonably priced and very convenient and they have quickly resolved any issues that I have had.

been using them for awhile, most annoying part, is that if your doctor doesn't do electronic prescriptions, because it is hard for them to setup, the fallback is to fax and is very very slow processing.

Who’s their target market? Just one off prescription?

Next stop: Amazon Dispensary.

Don't think I would trust amazon with my drugs after all the mixed inventory business...