"Do you have . . . "

Do you have these kinds of moments? I do, probably my old cranky age causing it all but it drives me nuts.

I get all my medications via a mail order pharmacy. As a military retiree, I can use Express Scripts and get supplied a 90 day supply of my prescribed medicines. I have a number of them. And I get very reasonable prices, mail free but have to put up with a sort mass production kind of operation. Express Scripts is the largest of its kind, so not much competition. And it is the only military sourced mail order house for medications.

I have had dropped prescriptions, ignored prescriptions, but never a wrong prescription. They began pushing automatic renewals which I thought was a good deal only to find out that I had reinitiate the automatic service with each renewed prescription. I guess they could not figure out renewal versus new prescription, pretty dumb, huh? That caused me a problem.

Today I got a telephone call, an auto telephone call, not a real person. The call was to say three of my presciptions needed to be renewed. What Express Scripts failed to say was the current presciption was still good until the end of May of this year and this was the last resupply on the current prescription. So the communication left me up in the air. Considering the source and past performance I immediately called them on their 800 number (well really it is an 877 number but you know what I mean).

Well I got the usual auto menu deal. First say your name, then your birthday. The auto reply says they recognize the phone number and give me a menu that has absolutely nothing do with what I want to talk about. After several button pushes resulting in several layers of irrevelant menus, I pressed and held the "Operator" or "0" button on the phone and got a connection to a "customer advocate." I have learned from experience to go for the operator button and you will get a real live person to deal with. Why can't they do that to begin with.ive person?

As you can imagine it is at last a live person. We discussed the call and what it really means or did not say. Turns out my prescriptions are all okay, they expire in late May (which I knew to be a fact). So I asked why was not the remaining other four prescirptions due to expire in May were not also mentioned. No reply, no answer except to say "we apologize" meaning we do not have a clue as to why it occurred that way. Makes you wonder doesn't it, these people are dealing with life issues like medical prescriptions and can only get it half right. Makes you wonder that what you get in a bottle may not be what you really need. Their credibility sits on the edge all the time.

Well it turns out my auto resupply kicks off on the 26th of April, today being the 24th of April. That's okay. One prescription of Bayer Test Strips that are used to measure my blood glucose was due to be renewed on May 6th. I pointed out the reason that date appeared is because Express Scripts did not have them in stock at the appropriate time for the last resupply cycle and shipped them late. The advocate moved that resupply date up concurr with the April 26th date.

So now I can expect one package of all my prescribe medications in the mail. And, yes it is about time to go see my personal physician for my annual look see. I can not call it annual check up since that is not covered by Medicare, you get one physical examination when you go on Medicare, so I do not know how the Doctor sends in this for his fees but he seems to know how to do that. So I will get poked and punched, pricked and tested once again and all my medications will get renewed. And I will send them off to Express Scripts and start the cycle all over again,