Rant on shipping

[Doofy]

I have one med delivered by UPS. I wouldn't rely on the postal service to get it to me before it goes bad since it's packed in a cooler carton. UPS picks it up from the depot a couple states over and has it on my door step the next afternoon.

The one time my maintance drugs were mail order and shipped USPS, they would take 4 days at the earliest,, usually 6 to 7 days from two states over to get here. That shot would be bad by the time I received it.

And at $15,000 a dose....... who's gonna pay for another dose???

Insurance as well as the pharmacy would both tell me to get bent if I demanded another shot.

Sad that the USPS is so hard to deal with concerning lost, missing or damaged items. Easier to write it off than to try getting satisfaction from them. I wouldn't trust them delivering life saving Meds either.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Sounds more like a problem on Amazon's part, not the USPS. They can't deliver what they don't have.

Both shipped by USPS.
What’s weird is 2nd one disappeared from Amazon orders, unless I search it, then it shows shipped by USPS.

 

[goeduck]

Medication by mail never worked well for me. I would rather go to a local drugster.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My insurance wants me to use mail order medicines, so they charge me more to pick it up from my local pharmacy. Costing me $21 month more right now. Bunch of people at work complained, so one of the managers took down people’s grievances with our health plan. Nothing changed this year, and that manager moved to a different company.

 

[Oaktree]

Medication by mail never worked well for me. I would rather go to a local drugster.

Same here.
The insurance I use has only 2 "preferred" pharmacies...their mail order or a supermarket chain, the nearest store of which is an hour's drive away. Since our doctor wrote all prescriptions for a 3 month supply, it's easy enough to combine mine and my wife's refills into one visit, make a day trip out of it. This particular supermarket is much nicer than anything nearby, so we do our "stock up" grocery run at the same time.

 

[mrmikey]

I use Costco pharmacy and they use Canada Post. I'm not a fan of Canada Post as a company other than our local delivery driver is great. I've not had a problem.......yet.........Mike

 

[Dftodd]

Medication by mail never worked well for me. I would rather go to a local drugster.

I had issues with my mail order meds. I was locked in to using certain pharmacy. Using another pharmacy more then 3 times and you got penalized for it.

Nearest pharmacy was 30 miles one way.

So I decided to try the mail order. Thats when the nightmare started. They started getting really goofy with their billing. After spending roughly 30 hrs on the phone, I got fed up, wrote them a check for what I owed them, not for what they said I owed, and told them good luck getting the rest.

They sent a sales rep into my wifes work for a sales pitch to try and get the nursing home she worked at to switch to them.

Wife handled all the pharmacy orders and billing. She stopped him mid way through his pitch in the morning meeting and asked who he was with.

As soon as he said the name of the company, my wife threw him out of the building She told him there was no way she was gonna deal with them. My husband just spent over 30hrs on the phone trying to get his meds straightened out and you still got it wrong. There is no way I'm gonna do that for 100 patients.

They have since opened a pharmacy locally. So any normal prescriptions and maintenance drugs get sent to them to fill.

I'm stuck using mail order for one drug since it has to come from the specialty pharmacy. So far they have been pretty decent and the couple times I have had issues, it was resolved pretty quickly.

I did have to get my companies HR manager involved when I went on the medication though. Everything was approved, but the bloody pharmacy wouldn't send me the medication. And nobody could explain why. After a couple days I lost my patience with them and got the HR manager involved.

HR manager put me in touch with the sales representative that managed the companies account. Which was a major account for them with over 30,000 people. Within a couple hrs they shipped the meds out.

 

[California]

Wow. Kaiser HMO here. Their emphasis is preventive medical care to reduce the need for treatment, and they're pretty good at it.

None of those pharmacy hassles. Walk downstairs from clinic to pharmacy and they are already preparing your order, your name appears on a message board in a few minutes. Pay $5~$10 deductible sometimes, and walk out. It's rare to be asked to pay retail for a prescription and their generic Iboprufin, allergy medicine, etc that is non prescription is inexpensive. Mailorder similar. Everything (in our experience) gets mailed out by their regional pharmacy by next day. What you pay to subscribe, covers all the BS so you never see an invoice.

Health care treatment likewise, usually a $10 fee as you check in for anything then never an invoice or discussion of cost.

Going into Kaiser can feel like the DMV but that's just the screening counter, the medical professionals are excellent.

I hope it isn't too political to say Kaiser has been looked at as a model for lower cost health care.

 

[Doofy]

My pharmacy by mail has $0 deductible. All other pharmacies charge me a $4 co-pay for a 90 day supply. Very Happy as some of my Scripps are very expensive.

 

[MossRoad]

Ordered a tire for my suburban. It showed up today. I guess i was expecting it in a box, but it was just a tire laying on the front steps with a label on it. Looked kinda funny. Too bad I didn't have an old couch out there for them to set it on.

 

[California]

Ordered a tire for my suburban. It showed up today. I guess i was expecting it in a box, but it was just a tire laying on the front steps with a label on it. Looked kinda funny. Too bad I didn't have an old couch out there for them to set it on.

Low-waste shipping. Nothing but that label to discard! I got a coupe of 8" trailer tires/rims like that. Just taped together and left on my porch.

Reminded me of a video showing how a basketball was shipped. It's own fancy trademarked carton then bubble wrap around that within the shipping carton. WTH? Kid opened the box and immediately dribbled the ball on concrete.

But my personal classic was HF's adapter for the top mount of their 3-point quickhitch. Indestructible, rated 40 hp. Small enough to wrap your hands around. Shipped in a cubic ft carton stuffed with styrofoam (non-recyclable) peanuts. A Tyvec envelope would have been sufficient, or an Amazon-style bubble wrap envelope to avoid damage to other mailed items, maximum. Again, WTH???

 

[PILOON]

My best was when I shipped an light aircraft strut from Montreal to Vancouver.
I simply taped 2 shipping labels on that strut and sent it without any protection at all.
It made the trip without any damage !

I gambled!
Being longish and very light I figured it would ride on top of the load or along a bottom side of the truck.
Also aluminum is a tough material that I doubted any carton could cause it damage.
Buyer responded that it arrived in great condition.

LOL, saved me wood and time to 'crate' it.

 

[3Ts]

I ordered one of the small 2 gallon water heaters from Amazon - it came in the mfgr's box with a label on it. Which is fine and what I expected. Then I ordered a battery powered edger, instead of putting a label on it like the water heater, it was put in another much bigger box with no padding and shipped. ??? Never can tell the reasoning behind the packing methods.

 

[Dftodd]

My pharmacy by mail has $0 deductible. All other pharmacies charge me a $4 co-pay for a 90 day supply. Very Happy as some of my Scripps are very expensive.

They sent out a benefits survey several years ago now. At the time we were locked into a $10/ month or $20/ 90 day supply.

Local pharmacy had two profiles set up for me. One with insurance that she ran most of my meds through. But if I could get it cheaper without insurance then she ran it through the other profile.

My statin was $14 for a 90 supply without insurance.

After quite a few of us complained about it, they revamped the prescription drug plan. Those drugs we were being over charged for are now supplied to us for free

 

[Dftodd]

Here's one that I'm happy about and need to give some thanks where it is do.

I didn't realize that chewy is similar to prime as far as shipping goes.

Recently our shepherd got really sick and we had to change her food. Canned dog food for an 80lb dog is expensive. Chewy saves us around $0.60 a can. With free shipping over a certain amount. I order a months supply at a time.

I place the order when we get down to 12 cans left of her food.

Placed the order yesterday. With a shipped notice last night and arrival date of Tuesday.

Got back from doing errands a little while ago. Our order was sitting on our door step

 

[Oaktree]

But my personal classic was HF's adapter for the top mount of their 3-point quickhitch. Indestructible, rated 40 hp. Small enough to wrap your hands around. Shipped in a cubic ft carton stuffed with styrofoam (non-recyclable) peanuts. A Tyvec envelope would have been sufficient, or an Amazon-style bubble wrap envelope to avoid damage to other mailed items, maximum. Again, WTH???

Do ya one better, had to order a button-cell battery for my camera. Came by itself in a box that was probably 8x8.

Health care treatment likewise, usually a $10 fee as you check in for anything then never an invoice or discussion of cost.

Going into Kaiser can feel like the DMV but that's just the screening counter, the medical professionals are excellent.

I hope it isn't too political to say Kaiser has been looked at as a model for lower cost health care.

I wouldn't call that political. Never heard of them, but I'm in northern New England.
Most cities of any size have pretty decent health care facilities, but when you're out in the country you get what you get. Not enough population density to support a facility of the scale that could do what you have where you are. We did finally get our first "doc in the box" walk in clinic here a couple years ago. Before that if you needed to see a doctor outside of 9-5, it was the ER or nothing.

 

[MossRoad]

My best was when I shipped an light aircraft strut from Montreal to Vancouver.
I simply taped 2 shipping labels on that strut and sent it without any protection at all.
It made the trip without any damage !

I gambled!
Being longish and very light I figured it would ride on top of the load or along a bottom side of the truck.
Also aluminum is a tough material that I doubted any carton could cause it damage.
Buyer responded that it arrived in great condition.

LOL, saved me wood and time to 'crate' it.

I just ordered an aluminum rim for our 2013 Impala. It showed up in a box. Opened the box and there was bubble wrap surrounding another box. Opened that box and there was the rim surrounded by bubble wrap.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Both shipped by USPS.
What’s weird is 2nd one disappeared from Amazon orders, unless I search it, then it shows shipped by USPS.

Amazon now showing my order again, “running late”. USPS so incompetent.

 

[Oaktree]

I just ordered an aluminum rim for our 2013 Impala. It showed up in a box. Opened the box and there was bubble wrap surrounding another box. Opened that box and there was the rim surrounded by bubble wrap.

Probably a good idea, if an unboxed rim (especially an aluminum one) didn't get all scratched up in transit, who knows what damage it could cause to other items.
Tire, makes sense to ship it naked.

 

[LD48750]

Probably a good idea, if an unboxed rim (especially an aluminum one) didn't get all scratched up in transit, who knows what damage it could cause to other items.
Tire, makes sense to ship it naked.

But it too could get scuffed up, dirty, scratched and who knows what being shipped naked.
Should be bubble wrapped in a cardboard box inside a wooden crate at least.