Prescription for hell

Yesterday the pharmacies of the Cupertino, Saratoga and Sunnyvale Target stores did something I did not think was possible: they made Express Scripts look like they aren’t the worst prescription provider ever to blight the healthcare system.

My doctor transmitted two prescriptions to the Cupertino Target (and one to Express Scripts, whose business model appears to be to obstruct everything your doctor prescribes until either you die, the doctor dies, or your condition clears itself up). Since one of the scripts is a first stab (so to speak) at treating back pain I’ve had for a couple of months, I felt it was a bit of a priority.

(On a pain scale of 1 to 10, 10 being “shoot me now”, I’ve been hovering between 6 and 8 for a while.)

So when the clerk there said, “We don’t have that one—is that okay?” well, no it wasn’t, really. I asked if the Sunnyvale store had it, so he phoned—oh, yes; they had both medications. It would take about an hour for them to [some kerfuffle about transferring it electronically, which I didn’t understand, because e-stuff moves pretty much at the speed of, you know, electrons] have it ready.

I dawdled my way over to Sunnyvale, and even though an hour hadn’t elapsed since I left Cupertino, I thought I’d check to see how they were progressing.

That’s when we all discovered that the transfer had somehow been made to Saratoga, not Sunnyvale, and Sunnyvale could do bugger all until Saratoga had backed everything out of their system and e-transferred it over to…

Well, you get my drift.

The thing I wasn’t really happy about (and I did mention, didn’t I, that these meds are for pain, meaning I wasn’t my baseline sunny self) was that the staff thought it was really quite a jolly thing to have occurred. Imagine, sending it to Saratoga, even after having spoken with us to check we had it.

Well, eventually I got both medications and did a lot of deep breathing on my drive home. And then I took Target’s little “post-shopping customer satisfaction survey”.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the “instant winners” of their $25 gift card. Possibly because I totally screwed their Net Promoter Score (NPS), and told them I’d ask my doctor to send future scripts to CVS.

But guess what—when I got home and fired up my PC, I had a little email from Express Scripts announcing, “We are processing your order.”

Of course, they still have any number of ways to screw that up, so I’ll hold off on any surveys.