Heartfelt Thank You to Walgreens

Dear Walgreens,

I wanted to tell you about the outstanding service I recieved with my last contact with one of your pharmacies.  Six days ago, I had a prescription for a new antidepressant called in to the location where I generally get all of my presciptions filled.  I got an email saying that the pharmacy had gotten my medication, but my insurance company wasn’t going to cover it.  I could pick it up, but would be responsible for the retail price.  I called to follow up and find out if there was something I needed to do.  It was late in the day on Friday, and as it would happen, my insurance company required a letter from my doctor as to why I was changing medications.  When I asked what I could do, I was told that I’d have to wait for the doctor and insurance companies to complete their parts.  In effect, my hands were tied.


Today, Thursday the 28th of Feb, I called back to ask if anything had changed.  I spoke with a lovely young woman by the name of Marcella on the phone.  She was able to pull up my records and saw that they’d not heard anything back yet.  I was a little frustrated, but know that sometimes you have to wait for the gears to turn.  Imagine my pleasant surprise when this wonderful employee of yours said she’d not only re-faxed my doctor the information they needed to fill out, but offered to make calls to both the office and my insurance company so we’d know the status and an eta.  

I’ve been on some sort of antidepressant since about 2001, and have had to jump through the hoops to get the care I’ve needed more than once.  My experienced have been that the majority of the time, it’s up to me to shake the trees to harvest the fruit.  And that’s exactly what I was expecting this time too.  I am pleasantly surprised at the willingness of your employee to help someone they didn’t know to get the medications they need.  I also know that we generally don’t hear the praise, all we as customer facing professionals hear are the complaints.  I wanted to make sure someone knew this woman went above and beyond when she certainly didn’t have to.  And for that, I’m very grateful.  Please extend to her my gratitude.


*Edit.  Two weeks to the day after I reached out to  my doctor about wanting to switch medications, I get a call back from them.  They had the forms they needed to fill out, but needed to know what other medications i'd tried to justify the switch.  Now, I know we'd done this dance when we put me on the Zoloft to begin with.  I would think, since mental health records follow you wherever you go, they'd still have had that.  But, they didn't.  So, I gave them the laundry list of ones I'd tried since 2000, and that was that.  I was just certain that it would take another two weeks for the insurance company to review the paperwork, and was expecting to get my prescription filled closer to April.  I'm happy to report, I was wrong.  VERY wrong.  Later the same day, Walgreens called to say I had a prescription waiting to be picked up.  Holy Time warp, Batman!  I went to pick them up last night, and am anxiously awaiting their buildup to therapeutic levels in my system to see if this does the trick.  I'll let you know in 3-4 weeks.