WARNING: Walgreens Phone Refill Reminder Service Has A Kink

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I am a loyal Walgreens customer, even when I am out of town.  I love their pharmacy staff.  They have helped me when I have been out of town and my children have gotten sick, when we’re out of medicine and our insurance refill date hasn’t arrived yet, and so on.  Every month I use the automated service to call in my medicine refills, but now Walgreens has a phone refill reminder service.  It is a great idea, it saves me from having to remember to call in my refills and I don’t even have to know the prescription numbers in order to get my prescription refills lined up.  You will get an automated call that tells you which medicines are due for refills and you have the option of setting those up right then.

I am truly for this service, but it has a major kink.  I haven’t been allowed to set a “home store” to my account and the service sends the prescription to the last Walgreens store that I used for that certain refill.  This doesn’t sound bad, but here are a few instances where I was burned through this service.  I live near a Walgreens that closes early, and sometimes I have to drive to another location in order to pick up our medicine if I don’t get there before they close.  When this happens, that prescription is now assigned to that store and it will be sent there  for refill if I use the refill reminder service after purchasing a refill from that store. This happened once and when I tried to pick up our prescriptions from our Walgreens location, I was told that our medication had already be refilled for the month and our insurance wouldn’t cover another refill for another month. This was a huge problem, and I told them that I had filled it through the phone refill reminder service and sure enough, our prescription was setting at the other location waiting to be picked up.

I feel that this should have never happened, their system has a kink and users should be able to set a  “home location” so that this doesn’t happen. This summer we went to Florida and I wasn’t able to get our prescription refills before we left because it wasn’t time for the insurance to allow another purchase.  I spoke to Walgreens about this and they told me to find a Walgreens in Florida and refill our medicine there.  I was able to call them, tell them my husband’s name and they refilled the prescription with no problem, but then when I used the phone refill reminder service, guess where my prescription was refilled.  My medicine was refilled in Florida and was waiting for me to pick it up.  This led to several phone calls to get this straightened out before I could pick up our prescription from our local Walgreens.

If you never stray from your Walgreens store location, then by all means, use the phone refill service.  If you travel and frequently need to pick up a prescription from another Walgreens location, I would stay away from this service because it will do nothing but cause confusion and inconvenience until they get their kinks worked out.  Have you ever tried this service?  Did you have any issues with it?

6 thoughts on “WARNING: Walgreens Phone Refill Reminder Service Has A Kink”

  1. Whose brain child was that? Talk about something not being thought through. Do they really think that everyone uses the same pharmacy every refill? And the fact that it was refilled in FL – the system doesn’t have safe guards for that? That web development teem should be fired!

    1. We had to wait for our pharmacy to check this out before we could get our refill filled at our “home store.” Again, I love Walgreens, but this service just isn’t for people who ever pick up refills anywhere other than their “home store.”

  2. I use Walgreens to fill my Prescriptions, and I didn’t know that they even offered this, as I often forget to call in my refills before I run low, I am almost out of one that I called in on Friday, and they are still waiting for the Doctor to approve, I wish that I had remembered to call in sooner, this would have helped for that Prescription.

    But what as Hassle you must have had trying to get your Prescriptions. I will definitely keep this in mind.

    Thanks for the information, most People wouldn’t know about this, so I appreciate your letting us know!

    1. The automated refill reminder service called me again today and I just hung up. It is a hassle to call it in myself and I often wait too long before I call, but I don’t want the hassle of tracking down my prescriptions anymore.

      Bobbie Anne

  3. I like Walgreens the best out of all of the pharmacies in Baltimore Maryland where I live. Unfortunately I switched insurances and Walgreens don’t take it so I am stuck with Rite Aid who is the worst pharmacy EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

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