Horrible Experience at Rite Aid

I too was given the wrong prescription, coincidently from Rite Aid. I
was prescribed an antibiotic and a painkiller(vicodin) at the same
time. I did not look carefully at the pills and began taking the
prescribed doses. I noticed during my son's football game that I
really felt loopy. That's when I looked at
the pills and realized that both bottles had been filled with vicodin.
I was double dosing on the painkillers. This was while I lived in
Oregon. I brought it to the pharmacists attention, and of course they
apologized and gave me the right rx's. Funny thing is, 12 years later,
living in California, I had the exact same thing happen with the Rite
Aid here for the same meds! Needless to say, I will NEVER
have a prescription filled at Rite Aid again. Fool me once, shame on
you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I like a banana when it has just a touch of green still but that's
it.

In pudding or a popsicle,putrid -now think of a thick syrup maybe
even with bitterness.

You should get what you ask and pay for and yes I would flavor it for
free if it were up to me.

Another big chain gave me the wrong Rx one day.I had plates removed
from my ankle and it was supposed to be for Tylenol with codeine.

I got home with my new baby and before taking it looked it up in the
home prescrip book and it didn't match so I called the pharmacy,they
wern't sure what they had given me and asked me to bring it back.

When he finally determined what the pill was and looking at my
history screen he looked sick and said "I am so glad you called and
chose not to take this,it's penicillin"

The last time I had that I wnet into anaphalactic shock and almost
died so imagine home alone with a new born until my 8 year old came
home at 3:30 or my husband at 4:30.

There's no doubt in my mind that was divine intervention that made me
check it out and maybe so in your case too.

The Providence of God

You did not get what you paid for. Your complaint is valid.
Could they have offered to add another flavor to mellow out the
banana? Maybe a second one like cherry or grape could mask the bad
taste, and there would be no distinguishable flavor per say. You
definitely deserve a refund however or free flavoring on your next
script.

Yeah, when I was a kid I had to swallow nasty medicine too. And yeah,
it made me better. Does that mean my son shouldn't be allowed to have
medicine that tastes better and makes being sick just a little more
tolerable, because the nasty stuff works just as well? Years ago they
didn't have a polio vaccine either, and many people survived without
ever having polio. But you can be darn sure my kid has been vaccinated
for it.

But all of this is beside the point. The OP paid for something she
didn't get. She is entitled to a refund.

WRONG AID

need I say more?

I love bananas, green ones, but I hate anything that smells like
banana or that has been flavored to taste like bananas. I'd never be
able to take medicine that was banana-flavored, even as an adult.

I have to agree with a lot of the comments below. While it may not be
the end of the world for her daughter to take icky-tasting medicine,
she paid for a service and did not receive it.

At the base level, she has a very valid complaint, expected a
reasonable response, and instead was given attitude. While I
understand that there may have been issues with "returning" medicine,
given that a RX was required, and for all the pharmacist knew, the
bottle had been refilled with water, the pharmacy should have AT LEAST
offered to return the OP's $3, since the wrong flavoring was added.

Good luck, Kim, and I hope you get a positive response!

Kids are finicky about medications to begin with so having them
flavored is a good idea.
You had every right to get your money back. I would have opened the
bottle and had the pharmacist smell the medicine to prove it was not
grape flavored.

I am not so sure about the $3.00 charge as I see these signs posted
with this charge and a listing of available flavors posted at many a
pharmacy - even CVS.
Its just a way to make money because it costs next to nothing to put
the flavoring in these meds as only one concentrated drop is used.

I believe one of the reasons medicines aren't supposed to taste good
is because of fears children will mistake them for candy.

I am old enough to remember when there was such a thing as children's
aspirn and I also remember how it tasted exactly like the stuff in
pixie sticks!

Eh... that sucks. Omnicef and the generic Cefdinir are fruit flavored
and it doesn't help that the medication has a chalky taste to it. I
have often found that flavoring actually makes the medication taste
worse. Sometimes, the flavor that's already in medication can be hard
to change with added flavor. Anyways, it seems that the pharmacy made
a mistake and they should've taken the medication back and given you a
new bottle with the correct flavoring.

You asked for something you were not given, and on faith took it home.
When you discovered the error of Rite Aid, you went through the
inconvenience of returning to the store, where they told you you were
mistaken, and tried to convince you banana was grape. You were then
refused an exchange.
This is gutter level customer relations, in a drug store where as one
reader pointed out, the same mistake could have been made with the
medicine itself. The good thing about a letter to the BBB is that the
store management is forced to read it, and will probably take some
action within to see that it doesn't happen again.
Sorry for your experience, it's a shame things have descended to this
level.

My instinct is to say that you may have overreacted a tad (the BBB?
really?), but I do agree that you should have gotten what you paid
for--and, if a mistake was made, they should have cheerfully and
apologetically corrected it. Good job on thinking to call your doctor
and rectify the situation rather than stewing and whining about it;
that was smart and responsible.

Perhaps, when persuading everyone you know to stay away from Rite-Aid,
you could explain that they made a mistake and refused to acknowledge
or correct it, rather than focusing on how much your daughter hates
bananas. :-)

I agree with the OP and I think RiteAid should have corrected their
mistake.

I don't know if anyone on here has had tonsillitis...the kid is
probably already miserable enough without having to gulp down stuff
that tastes gross. I had chronic tonsillitis as a child that got so
bad I ended up having my tonsils and adenoids removed...it was a
miserable couple of months before then.

I would have given anything for any of my medicine to come in better
flavors. One medicine I was supposed to take post surgery was so
disgusting that I would always spit it out when my parents weren't
looking...of course, this led to me getting an infection.

Riteaid should have fixed the mistake or given the OP their money
back...it's only fair and right.

On the one hand, years from now your child will be grateful for
everything you did for her whenever she was ill. When I was 15, I got
an extremely bad sunburn that caused my skin to bubble up head to toe
in softball-sized blisters. I could not bear to have even the weight
of a sheet on me. Against my will, my mother scooped me out of bed
and plunged me into a tub filled with cold weather. Bad medicine of a
sort.

Yes, the people of previous generations were put through all kinds of
home remedies, bad tasting medicine, etc. We lived and most are also
probably very grateful for what our parents did for us. Your daughter
would soon understand why you had to give her banana flavored
medicine, but the fact is you should get what you paid for.

Someone pointed out this is expensive medication. If that is the
case, the pharmacist should be more careful with it and avoid stupid
mistakes.

First, to the commentators who are saying medicine isn't supposed to
taste "good" but is supposed to work, I think you missed the part of
the letter where the OP said her child hates the taste of bananas.
It's hard enough getting a child to down icky tasting medicine and it
only adds insult to injury when it comes flavored with something you
hate.

Second, if manufacturers can make medicine that tastes better than
"medicine", why not take advantage of it? Personally, I'm thrilled I
can get medicine for my kid in different flavors. Progress rules!

Third, I agree with the OP's letter, and I think her solutions for the
pharmacy to make it right were reasonable. While I realize they
wouldn't want to take the hit on taking back medication they couldn't
resell, it was still their mistake. What if they had given her the
wrong actual medicine? Would their resolution of "too bad" still be
acceptable?

And as for the flavoring, if I had paid an extra $3 for it (which I
think is ridiculous), you darn well better believe I'd expect to get
what I paid for.

I was a pretty sick kid until the age of four, and whatever medicine
didn't taste horrible was the stuff being pumped through an IV. More
recently, I have memories of nearly puking after swigging back a dose
of Buckley's (but I will never let it be said that stuff will not stop
a cough in its tracks).

That being said, because you paid extra for the flavouring, the least
they could have done was gotten it right. But on the other side of the
coin, what if it hadn't come in grape flavouring? Or no flavouring at
all? What happens when your daughter grows out of the tasty medicine
and has to start taking the northern favourite of brown colouring,
sap, and wintergreen?

First, I agree with Wolf. We've taken disgusting-tasting meds for all
our lives. Your daughter should be able to do so. What would Omnicef
have tasted like without the flavoring? You may have made it worse.
You could do what my parents did--give your daughter a few bites of
ice cream to numb her taste buds beforehand, and a few to wipe out the
gross flavor after. Plus, the ice cream would feel good on her
tonsils.

Second, you did indeed pay for something you didn't receive. But the
$3 also includes the pharmacy's costs to store the flavoring and put
in the proper amount. It's great that CVS will provide flavoring for
free, but you were warned of the cost before Rite Aid added it.

I checked out this medication at drugstore.com. It appears to be
quite expensive. "In these tight financial times", Rite Aid can't very
well be dumping an expensive bottle of medication. They can't refund
it and put it back on the shelf for someone else.

I agree, we all tasted nasty medicine and we lived. Kids shouldn't
have to have flavored medicine. But.. he pay Rite Aid for a specific
service (adding grape to the medicine) and instead they added banana
to the medicine. If his daughter doesn't like bananas now he's worse
off. I imagine if he was told they only have banana flavor he would
have declined.

Should we also stay in the dark ages, because walking certainly is
better for your body than all of this lazy driving we do.

Just because medicine used to always taste gross, does not mean it has
to stay that way. Plus, some of the flavorings help, but do not
remove the bad tastes.

In the end, this was a service she paid for. It was their mistake.
They should have taken control of the unused medicine and replenished
it with grape flavored stuff. These actions should have been
accompanied with a sincere apology and the OP would have left and
probably had an ok view of RiteAid.

Personally, I don't know what it is about RiteAid. We've tried to use
several of them, only to find their Pharmacy staff to be rude or, at
the least, make you feel like they are doing you a huge favor doing
their jobs. Never at a CVS do we feel that way, regardless of
location. Thus, we always go to CVS. I suggest the OP continues to
use CVS in the future if it's not too far for them.