Curious also if this is Canada-wide or just in Ontario:
Recently have had two occasions where Shoppers was pushing me to have the pharmacist prescribe a renewal of something, rather than troubleshoot an error with a renewal request through 1) my family doc and 2) a specialist.
In both cases they wanted to charge me $15.
Case #1 I just said no thanks and called my family doctor, thankfully it was sorted out quickly.
Case #2, Shoppers’ automated system waited until Saturday at 5pm(!) to notify me that the renewal (which I’d requested on Tuesday at 11am) had not gone through. When I called, they tried to charge me the $15 - but I successfully pressured them to give me a few days of the medication while I sorted out the issue (which is what they used to offer).
I can’t help but wonder if this is the ‘enshittification’ of pharmacy services, where they tell you they’ll take care of the automated renewal, but then - oops! - they mess it up and try to squeeze $15 out of a patient who just needs their medicine, and doesn’t have time to make a bunch of calls, or trek over to the walk-in clinic or whatever.
Anyone else having similar issues? If so, it might be worth collecting people’s stories and raising a fuss.
Yep. We had an ongoing prescription for my wife something simple ( I forget what) I went to pick it up and the pharmacy tech was like oh we will pull you aside for a consult. I’m like, uh its not for me its my wife’s and she’s had it for a year I think she knows how to take it.
Another time for one of my kids they charged my insurance company for a medicine they hadn’t handed out yet. They assumed we would get it monthly even though my kid had moved. So just billed the insurance anyway. I lodged a complaint with the insurers that they were commiting fraud.
Then you had shoppers and manulife trying to go kahootz and force you to use only shoppers.