Amanda was exhausted, after dealing with her mother’s post-surgery care and bringing her home from the hospital. Neither of them anticipated that the biggest problem would that day be with getting her post-discharge prescriptions filled. One of the medications was more obscure than she had imagined. They visited three different pharmacies in their rural area and were ready to give up hope when they finally visited the pharmacy at the local Meijer. They had the drugs! For $250! Oh, no.

I just wanted to let you know about an act of remarkable customer service.

I brought my mother home from the hospital today — she’d had surgery on Tuesday, and I’ve been exhausted trying to manage her care. When I finally got her today, they gave me a packet of what I was to learn were esoteric prescriptions (that included her painkillers), and didn’t let her out until 4:30 p.m.

As we live in a rural area, we drove home (1.5 hours), and I left for the nearest pharmacy that was open after 6, which is approximately a half hour drive away. Got to the pharmacy at 6:30; the pharmacist took one look at the top prescription, basically said, “NOPE!” and referred me to CVS. Repeat procedure at CVS, to Walgreens. Repeat again. It is now 7:15, and I threw my hands up and went to Meijer, a regional department store, in [redacted], MI. They closed at 9 p.m.

They HAD THEM. I was thrilled — but my standards were pretty low by that point. Dropped them off, was told that they were slammed tonight and that the prescription would be ready in 40 minutes.

Got back at 8 p.m., they told me the total ($250) and asked if I had Mom’s prescription card. I did, or so I thought. They took one look at it and said no, that it wasn’t. Her employer had apparently just switched things around, and instead of the number being on her card like it used to be, she had a new one that she didn’t realize was a prescription card.

That could have been the end of it. They could have told me to stick it, to go home and get the card — even though that would have gotten me back to town after 9. I was wide-eyed thinking I was going to have to travel even farther away to a larger city to find a different pharmacy to fill her prescription. But they were absolutely amazing. They said they’d take the numbers over the phone — and even though my phone was dead from using GPS all day to get to and from the hospital, they let me use their phone over the counter for what was not a local call.

Unfortunately, despite Mom having a major insurance provider, her employer apparently has some sort of equally esoteric prescription drug plan, and the number had a bunch of 0s and Os and 1s and Is that looked similar and that we apparently mixed up over the phone. The pharmacist spent more than half an hour of plugging different combos into the computer before she finally called Mom back, asked for the customer service number, and worked with the customer service rep for another ten minutes to make sure it was all taken care of.

Past closing, they had it sorted out. Cost to me? $35. I am one very, very relieved and elated customer, and my mom got her pain meds. They really went above and beyond helping to make sure she didn’t have to go without until tomorrow when I would have more time and freedom to track down her medications.

I realize a lot of this was our fault as annoying customers that didn’t have our stuff sorted out, but Meijer came through for me in a major way even when I had mucked things up through my misunderstanding and stress.

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