CVS Pharmacy

Absolutely terrible pharmacy. The «miswrote» the prescription for my 1 year old. We gave him 2 doses, then realized something was not right. Called the pharmacist, Jennifer, who did not apologize. She just said they would take up the problem internally. This was not a doctor writing a prescription issue, this was entirely on CVS and the pharmacist and tech, who both did not notice a terrible mistake. We will not be going there again, and I will be emailing the CVS corporate.

This pharmacy’s staff is the worst. There is absolutely no consideration for the customer’s time. Plan to be invisible to the staff for the first 5 minutes. Prescriptions are often lost or returned to inventory one day after they are ordered from the doctors office. Today was the las straw. CVS Caremark delivered my meds to this location. I went to pick them up; the pharmacy employee got my bag, placed it on the table next to her and started making reminder calls to customers while I waited for her to give me the bag. I finally spoke up and asked if she was going to ignore me. I will not return to CVS. The have lost me as a customer today. Walgreens, here I come.

I have worked as a pharmacy tech for a higher volume store and this particular location NEVER has my prescriptions ready. I have had to pick up prescriptions monthly for my daughter and myself this year, and I will call for a refill and they say it will be ready the next day. I come in and it’s never ready. Take now for example. I stand in line 10 minutes to hear her prescription isn’t ready. And I called 2 days ago!!! Now I am told I have to wait another 20 minutes. What’s the point of calling a refill in if it is never ready? And I mean my scripts are never, ever ready at this one location. I have heard a pharmacist tell a customer fresh out of urgent care with a script for pain meds for a broken arm that the meds wouldn’t be ready until the next day. They were still open for another 30 minutes. When I worked, it didn’t matter what the time was. If they walked up before you closed, you took the script to fill it that day. Especially if it’s obvious they just came from urgent care or an ER. Ugh!!!

The one thing about this pharmacy is that it usually takes forever to check out. At the most I’ve seen two cashiers but most of the time its not their fault. The hold ups almost always happen when people come in with their pesky coupons and take forever trying to find the ones that work out of their stack. In my opinion their manager should always have two registrars open. One line for people that just want to swipe their card or pay cash and one line for people that want to use coupons. It’s been too many times when I come to this place for speed and convenience but once I grab something I need I’ll usually have to wait in line quite a bit to be on my way. At least the people that work behind the counter always apologize for the delay even though it’s not their fault.

This pharmacy’s practices are annoying and frankly unsafe.
Many a times I have bought something (generally cosmetics) and have found that the item is expired and had to go back to make a return or exchange. One time I bought expired eyedrops – thank goodness I checked the date before PUTTING THE EXPIRED MEDICATION IN MY EYE. Their photo dept is a joke. I ordered some prints once and they were all blurry. (I ordered them again at Walgreens down the street and they printed and looked normal and non-​blurry.)
However my worst experience by far has been in the actual Pharmacy itself. Most of the staff has no idea what they are doing, which is concerning because they sell you prescription medication. When it is busy, most of the pharm techs seem frazzled and confused. When it’s not busy and I am the only customer waiting, they still seem frazzled and confused. I used to get my regular Rx from there. I enrolled in the Automatic Refill Service, which is supposed to automatically refill your Rx your call your provider if there are no refills left. It should be convenient, but multiple times I have been called by the automated service and told that my Rx is ready to be picked up and I arrive and was told that no my Rx has not been filled and can’t be done for another x amount of days. Isn’t the point of this service that I don’t have to do these sort of calculations myself? After this occurred a few times, I asked the pharm tech what could be done so that I was only called when the Rx was actually ready to be picked up, she told me «I can’t help you with that.» Not «I’m not sure, sorry.» or «Let me get someone who might be able to answer your question better». Nope. «I can’t help you with that».
But by far the worst thing that has happened to me at this pharmacy is the following:
I went to pick up some Coricidin HBP, which is a line of cold medicines created for people with High Blood Pressure since the decongestants in many cold medicines can cause their blood pressure to dangerously spike. I could not find in the OTC area and thought maybe they kept it behind the counter. I asked the pharm tech if that had Coricidin HBP or anything similar for people with HBP. She looked at me blankly and then said «Let me go ask someone.» Fine. I watch her talk to another pharm tech and then she comes back and tells me «You don’t have to worry about cold medicine for HBP. It’s only a concern if you have high blood sugar.» WHAT??? 1) Even if you are medically ignorant, the fact that HBP is LITERALLY IN THE NAME should give you a hint that it is related HBP. 2) It is COMPLETELY ILLEGAL for pharm techs to give any kind of advice about medications, and 3) her «advice» was SUPER DANGEROUS. What if I didn’t know any better and followed her advice and gave my father a decongestant which made his BP spike? Once the tech told me this, I repeated my question more clearly: «I am looking for Coricidin HBP. It is an over the counter cold medicine without decongestants that is safe for people with HBP.» She then looked up something in her computer and found the medicine for me. She was completely unapologetic about her mistake. This type of incident is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. I really should have remembered the names of the two techs and reported them, but I was so mad after standing in line for 30 minutes before those incompetent people even got to me that I just went home as fast as I could. When I shared the incident with friends who live in the area, sadly none of them were surprised because they have experienced the incompetence themselves. That was when I realized that there was absolutely no need for me to continue my business or at any other CVS.
Bye CVS, hope you don’t get someone killed.