The perils of Rx-by-mail

Like millions of other medicated individuals, I receive a prescription every three months from Medco. While this saves me approximately $1000 annually, the savings do not come without a few headaches. Make that migraines.

First of all, Medco requires a signature upon delivery, so I can’t use my home address as I work away from home during the day. When I first started using Medco, I would wait for them to attempt a delivery and then go pick it up at the local UPS center (which is close to 30 miles round-trip from my house, hence my treatment of the word "local"), but then I started having the meds delivered to my doctor’s office.

You may wonder why I don’t have the Rx delivered to my work address. Oh I’ve tried that. UPS completely screwed up the address and delivered my medication (yes medication, something that to many might be attached to an adjective like important or necessary or yeah, private) to some strange woman in some strange office building and it took me almost three days to hunt it/her down. No more work addresses where absolutely anyone who can hold a pen can sign for my medication. It amazes me how easily people will sign for a package for anyone – stranger or not.

So, here’s a synopsis of this month’s fiasco: Prescription was mailed from my doctor’s office on July 27th. The package of meds left Medco on August 3rd and reached the general vicinity of my doctor’s office on August 4th. Since Medco left off the suite number for the office, UPS claimed they could not deliver the package. In an attempt to obtain the suite number, UPS mailed a postcard to the incomplete address, hoping for a response. When questioned about this tactic the UPS employee responded with, “Sometimes the post office has addresses we don’t. We don’t really expect an answer.”

OH-KAY.

Before speaking with the UPS employee who delivered the preceding nugget of wisdom, I was told by a different UPS employee that my package had lingered too long in limbo and had therefore been returned to the shipper. Oh Joy. Four days worth of meds on hand and my ability to function is up to the now proven inept organizational skills of UPS and the oh-so-ever-alert staff at my doctor’s office.

After discovering that the most damning mistake in this cluster-EFFF was committed by Medco (their label is the one that left off the suite number) and having spoken with a sincerely helpful Medco representative, I was somewhat at ease. Miss Medco told me she’d follow up with UPS, but the whole postcard-mailing-scenario was really bugging me so I called UPS myself to get a first-hand explanation of their hair-brained, address-finding process.

Up until the last two minutes of my third phone conversation with UPS, I was severely regretting my decision to follow-up with them. The brain-splittingly retarded 15-20 minutes preceding those two minutes made me want to kill myself.

Mr. UPS did not understand that I could not confirm the failure of arrival or the successful arrival of the idiotic post card sent to a half address. He kept telling me to contact the shipper – even though I repeatedly told him that the shipper was a moot point in this scenario. What finally reached him was this:

“The package was shipped to Durham. The address was incomplete. Someone told me it was returned to the sender (Medco). You’re telling me the return shipment hasn’t yet been initiated, despite what I was told not one hour ago. WHERE IS THE PACKAGE? It’s medication, I NEED it. I will pick it up. I just need to know where it is!”

Mr. UPS then said, “I am going to make an arrangement for you. One of our centers will call you within one hour and relay the details of where you can pick up your package.”

Really? You don’t know where it is. You can tell me nothing, but you promise someone is going to call me within an hour with detailed instructions on where to locally find my pills. Skepticism was dripping from my voice when I said, “Allrighty.”

Well, to prove me a butthead, I was indeed telephoned approximately 30 minutes later and told that my package could be retrieved at my convenience. Since the facility in question is opened until 8 pm, I picked it up last night.

My “luck” seemed pretty odd since Mr. UPS 2, who called me from the package-hostage facility, said to me, “Ummm. I don’t know how I even found this. It should SO not still be here.”

When I walked into the customer doorway (at final UPS destination) with only my license in hand, the man at the counter asked for the address of delivery. When I sputtered it out half-assed (it's not my personal address) he obviously recalled the conversation from less than an hour before and said, "Oh yeah. For the lucky one."

Nice to know the freight of a schedule II drug is being handled so carefully.

As an end note, the automated voice menus for both Medco and UPS are infuriating. At try three with UPS, I was screaming a seemingly interminable string of random numbers into my phone and I still got, "Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't quite get that." I'm surprised I have a single strand of hair left on my head.