Readers, I return to my writings today after far too long away, in the time honoured tradition of using my blog for an old-fashioned online grumble.
I’m on a couple of long-term medications. Sometime in the past decade, I transitioned from submitting a paper prescription to a (high street large brand) pharmacy local to my then-everyday place of work and then collecting the medications from there, to having the prescription sent to them digitally, but still collecting in person. And then, actually sometime before the major disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020[*], a friend told me about an app called Echo, which would let me do all of the administrative side of it via an iOS app, and then have the medications delivered via the regular postal service, so I wouldn’t have to do the pickup step. In all honesty the pickup was the absolutely most minor annoyance (the admin bit and having to actually re-order myself, usually 2 months at a time, was always far more tedious), since I was going to an office daily, and the pharmacy was right there.
In the 2020/2021 lockdown period, having my medication available like this was an absolute necessity! The Echo app worked nicely with my UK NHS account and Royal Mail reliably delivered the drugs to my door.
Then, Echo was acquired by Lloyds Pharmacy (one of the two largest UK pharmacies, the other being Boots, which is the location I alluded to using on the high street, in the before times). Initially everything was fine and the Echo app continued to work; eventually Lloyds took over the branding entirely as LloydsDirect; they were using DPD for delivery (for a period); and I would get notifications of dispatch and delivery.
Next and very recently, the service was taken over by (or renamed? I am unsure) Pharmacy2U. Don’t get me started on the name! The app now barely works and the migration was painful. I just looked in the App Store and I see that there is also a “Royal Mail Health” app which purports to deliver repeat prescriptions, but is also actually Pharmacy2U. Guess who does the delivery, anyway.
Here are the circumstances and events that prompted me to ramble angrily on the internet today:
- I ordered my repeat prescription, because I was running low.
- My medications were delivered, today, by Royal Mail. Look, they even provided proof of delivery! Here is a picture of my front door.
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- I was not at home.
- There is more than one item banded together. Each item, individually, fits through the letter box. They could have been posted through the door.
- There is a secure delivery box out of frame, immediately on the left of this image. They could have been left securely inside it (and, this was installed because of previous items taken from the doorstep!)
- One of the items contains 60 days worth of medications, current UK NHS prescription value around £20. They are of course only of use to others with the same specific medical needs, but there they are.
- The location shown is visible from the street; the front gate was left open.
- I arrived home, and (fortunately) the items were still there, where they had been left ~5 hours earlier.
All’s well that ends well, right?
… here are the additional teeth-grindy parts!
- In between the two parcel(ish) items, was a leaflet from Royal Mail telling me about the convenient ways for me to send and receive parcels, which involve me going to their locker locations, presumably so that they can employ fewer delivery staff that leave packages insecurely in plain sight on a recipient’s doorstep. No! I am having my items delivered to my door – this is What. You DO.
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- The final poke in the proverbial eye was that when I opened the box containing my tablets, there was also a leaflet inside advertising Pharmacy2U’s range of weight loss supplements! No. Just. NO. Your role in this process is to dispense the required medicine, not to upsell me on something entirely different!
Look, I sleepwalked into this delivery process – I went from a “slightly more convenient than collecting near the office” to, not being in an office every day and/or having to have the stuff delivered, and not paying much attention to mergers and acquisitions until they affected me – but – gNARgh!!!
First world problems, perhaps, but this is pathetic. It’s insecure. It’s bad service. It could easily lead to medications being stolen, at an increased cost to the NHS since they would only have to re-issue (and I already pre-pay for the certificate). No doubt had things gone missing, the supplier and the delivery agent would point fingers at each other.
I’m really, really done with this late stage capitalist cost cutting and lack of interest in customers or results. Can we just, you know – not.
/rant done for today. Thanks for reading. Maybe I’ll write something more positive tomorrow. Anyway, long time, no regular blogging. How are things with you, how was your day?
(post title thanks to a quick search landing me on Neil’s post looking for alternative terms for “enshittification”!)
[* I’m referring to the general shutdowns of the 2020-21 period; not suggesting that this pandemic is actually “gone away”…]