Sarah noticed after a visit to the pharmacy that the technician had failed to charge her for one of her prescriptions. It’s difficult for her to get into town from her college campus, so she figured because it’s the store’s error, she’d let it go. Karma does not agree, and has sent swift and annoying punishment down for Sarah. She must pay for the prescription, or the CVS system will robocall her several times per day reminding her to pick up the prescription.

I went to get two scripts filled the day the power came back on in our town. Surprisingly, the lines weren’t too long although the phones were ringing off the hook. I was impressed that they managed to fill both scripts in 15 minutes, as it was a small emergency but when it came time to check out, the Pharmacy Tech who rang me out seemed incredibly distracted, even abandoning me at the register to go speak with some friends of his.

Several days later I realized he had forgotten to charge me for one of the scripts, but since it was only $3 and to put it bluntly, his fault for not paying attention to his customer, I let it slide. However, since this weekend I’ve been getting two to three calls from CVS per day, claiming that “my prescription is in and I need to come pick it up.”

When I called to inquire as to why I was getting these calls, as I had all my prescriptions, the woman who answered said that it was because I never paid for the second prescription and she wouldn’t turn off the reminders until I came in to pay them their $3. I’m a busy college student who doesn’t have a car and so don’t usually go into town more than once a month (usually to coincide with refilling this prescription), so now I guess I have to deal with my phone being blown up multiple times a day all because a pharmacy tech couldn’t pay attention to his job. Thanks CVS!

If you truly must wait until next month to pay the tab (isn’t that close to finals week?) use my favorite trick for ignoring robocalls: silence their calls and give the number a name like “ZCVS” in your phone’s contacts list.

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