Does anyone use an online pharmacy for their regular prescription? I have a prescription that I need to fill and am considering using drugstore.com to fill it. I use them all the time for shopping, but have never used their pharmacy services. Obviously, this doesn’t work when you’re filling a prescription for antibiotics to treat a sinus infection, but for a regularly occuring prescription, it’s not a terrible idea.
I have a strong dislike for my local pharmacy thanks to rude staff, crazy lines, and the fact that they have filled my prescription with expired medication, so my options are to go out of my way or try something like drugstore.com. Anyone have any recommendations or warnings?
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
I’ve done this before via my HMO’s online pharmacy. It was generally cheaper, quicker, and easier. The key is remembering to renew early enough to get your new prescription in the mail.
drugstore.com is fine, but anyone reading this should be warned to be careful in choosing a company. There are plenty that will do their best to scam you. The government has a list of legitimate websites:
http://www.nabp.net/index.html?target=/vipps/intro.asp&
This is important, as they have found many sites to be selling counterfeit medications. Very dangerous!
That being said, I have had prescriptions mailed to me before. It was through our HMO, though.