"Lunch rush hits. She's upset but understands I need to work with other customers, so she calls. She's very cooperative with us helping other customers. Eventually things calm down and I'm put on the phone with the support for the coupon company who she's been on with for 5 min. The rep tells me to tell the person to call the GoodRx number, then wishes me a good day & hangs up."
"I get to break the news to this lady that she needs to call someone else because our system is right, that coupon does have a $74 copay. She's even more upset; doesn't understand why the email lied to her and why there's a difference. I help her find the number & she calls. She finally gets a tech at GoodRX who tells her without a doubt it will be $28. She's happy. I'm happy. I get on the phone and she very matter of factly she tells me all the information. I already notice a problem. This is the program our senior tech found... the $48 one. I cooperate and punch it all in. Yup, $48. I tell her that. "...oh." she stammers and asks for the claim number. I give it. "Your prices must have gone up!" Yes its my fault. Then she tells me that a change in price changes the copay (no shit) & leaves me on hold."
"Shortly after the phone call _cuts off_ leaving _me_ to deliver the bad news to the patient who has heard enough to know she was lied to. We are now back to square one with a patient even _more_ upset, with me having to break bad news twice, and a solution I already had."
"I then explain what I was going to explain in the first place. The senior tech had already reached out to other pharmacies. We found her one for $20 for her supply with some cards their tech used, and we'd be happy to transfer it. I had already started to explain this but she was _so insistent_ she had this nice email that said she could get it here."
"While on hold for those few brief seconds I noticed a wonderful message in GoodRx's hold music. "If the price at the pharmacy is different than the price on the coupon, the pharmacy is correct." If GoodRx hadn't sent this woman this email getting her hopes up we could have saved her a _lot_ of fucking grief. They provided an experience so bad this woman was in _tears_ and could not understand why they had "lied" to her."
"GoodRx empowers people to think that the mystical internet knows more than the pharm techs at the store. You might save 2-3 bucks but if there's a card for 80% we probably have the info already written down, and we probably use a universal identifier for it. for ex: FMLWZ. I was done with them by the time i was done trying to help this poor lady. She couldn't understand why the lady hung up. She couldn't get an answer, leaving it to _me_ to explain _their_ fuck up. _That_ is a bigger problem to me than the privacy issues. _That_ experience that I was made complicit in. I can't put into words how terrible I felt for this lady. When I screw up (saying i can fill a med that's out of stock) I personally call. I own my mistake. I had two people in two parts of the GoodRx machine pass the buck to me, and in doing so confuse this poor woman even more."
My thanks to Natalie Spencer on Twitter as @Zyradyl for tweeting this story just yesterday.
By the way... we're still waiting for Doug Hirsch to respond to my open letter blog post on June 10.
And with some "discount" cards we have to pay their fee even if the patient elects not to get the med!
ReplyDeletewhy not honor the $28 quote as a price match? customer (happy) saves money. you (also happy) save time. your company (should be happy) still makes $24 profit which is a lot more than they would have made if the lady had a caremark or express scripts plan.
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