Readers will recall I’m a bit of a stickler for customer service.
In recent days, I’ve experienced the very good and the very bad of it all on that front.
First, the good. My wife had a new prescription and the good folks at the Goucher Street Giant Eagle pharmacy texted her when it was filled. It was going to be $600 or so. She was upstairs at the time, but I heard the scream from my living room perch.
My wife balked at the price. I was willing to pay because it was necessary, because some things (such as one’s health) you don’t cheap out on, and, frankly, because $600 is a mere fraction of what I gave back in the past week’s precious metals collapse.
I’m no high roller, but even after the carnage of last week, I can afford to dole out $600 on short notice without a panic attack.
But, my wife was adamant about not getting the prescription due to cost. She did some research and dispatched me to look into some things on the computer.
Bottom line, it seemed Good Rx could knock a couple of hundred bucks off that. She had some text response from somewhere else that might help.
I checked on the drug company site, called their toll-free number and waded through the phone tree before getting the message, sorry, no one is on-duty so try again some other time.
My wife and I are on Medicare and we each have prescription drug plans. But, based on our history of low-tier, generic drug usage, and because plans that cover everything without huge deductibles cost a king’s ransom monthly, I went with the lower plans.
Now, she had a need for a Tier 3 drug. But, I’m still not sure a better plan would have proved cost effective considering those monstrous premiums.
I resolved to head to Giant Eagle early Sunday and check out the options, pulling out the old credit card and forking over $600 if required.
I apologized upfront to the first young woman to wait on me, explaining I had a complicated case. She was pleasant and, when she hit a roadblock, called over an older woman.
Eventually, I was told to give them 15 or 20 minutes and come back.
This I did and when I rolled up to the counter, the younger woman waved the prescription package at me and the other woman walked over to explain there was a manufacturer card attached I could activate and save money on a refill down the line.
Great, I told her. Now, how much for this prescription fill?
Nothing, was her reply. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Even though I did get a health insurance license after retiring from writing for newspapers, and tend to know more about this than the average guy, the opaque world of prescription drugs remains largely a mystery.
If these women had told me sorry, it’s $600, I’d have paid without thinking they had let me down.
But, they both went the extra mile and found some sort of solution. That, my friends, is customer service.
On the other hand was my experience at the Burger King drive-through in Westwood.
Said Burger King has been tough in terms of customer service in the past, but of late has done much better. In particular, there have been previous times when they would not accept multiple coupons on the same visit. But, that has changed and when I noted it to a woman a few months back, she was astonished that anyone ever had given me crap over such a thing.
Even so, I make it a point to announce each time even now when I plan on using coupons for different parts of the order. And this time, the female voice on the other end of the communication gave me a large sigh of disgust when I said I had two coupons. It was so loud and long-lasting, I felt moved to comment.
“Is there a problem?” I asked. “Can you handle this, or do I need to talk to someone else?”
No, she replied, she would handle it. I gave the order and thanked her. No response.
I moved up a window and the visual of the person spoke volumes, what with the ring in the nose and other trappings of the counterculture. I paid, again thanked her (it?) and again no reply.
It must have been my lucky day because the stop at the next window to collect the food produced the same offended worker. Again, I thanked that worker and again it ignored me.
Without doing the exact math, I’d say the two coupons saved me less than $20 and it bothered the Burger King worker to no end that I’d made her push a few more buttons.
Meanwhile, the two Giant Eagle pharmacy workers had saved me $600 and did it with smiles and pleasant conversation.
Vive la difference.
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