It is ironic, and coincidental, that my last post — six months ago — was about London Drugs, and now it is again!
Anyone who lives in this area knows London Drugs. They’ve been around for decades, almost a century actually. They were a great place to get all sorts of stuff except your meat and vegetables, but especially electronics, foreign (especially British) chocolate bars and candies and (in the old days) get your film developed and photographs printed. But like I said in my last post, NO MORE! I considered my issue with their sub-par passport photos to be a one-off, niche problem that could easily be avoided, and I still planned to (and did) patronise them for other goods. Until yesterday.
Until 2019 I had my drug prescriptions with London Drugs, since they were almost right next door to me, but in that year I moved and there wasn’t a London Drugs near me so I transferred my prescriptions to a nearby Shoppers Drug Mart. Then I moved again, and the situation with the proximity of LD and Shoppers was the same.
Then this year it turned out that Shoppers and Loblaws were mistreating their pharmacists and over-billing the Ontario government. I’m not a big fan of dishonesty, theft and slavery, so I decided that I’d move back to London Drugs, despite the extra drive. Yesterday I went to LD to do just that, and fill a new prescription. After several minutes of the LD employee typing out my biography on her computer, she then informed me that my prescription would be ready in an hour and a half! Excuse me?! Did you say an hour and a half?! At Shoppers I generally have to wait ten minutes, if that, and in that time I usually wander around the store and pick up a chocolate bar or two, so their making me wait for just a few minutes is actually good (ironically) for their business! I don’t expect instant service, but come on, ten minutes isn’t a big deal but ninety minutes is!
So I told this LD employee all of that, and she claimed that the pharmacist was busy and that the best they could do was an hour. So I took back my prescription and said I would return to Shoppers and get it filled there. Which I did, only to have Shoppers — the same Shoppers I’ve been using for the last year and which previously filled prescriptions in ten minutes — tell me it would take half an hour! By this time, of course, I’m done fighting The System for the day, so I said, “Whatever. I’ll probably be back tomorrow, or next week.” I then left.
So I’m still unhappy with SDM, but I’ll look into other alternatives for my next prescription. (I think there’s a Pharmasave in the area.) But now I’m done with London Drugs completely. I even gave away an LD gift card I had until a few minutes ago. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t like to make two trips to accomplish one activity, especially when I’m burning fuel to do so! If all their fucking surveys and consumer focus groups don’t tell them that, then they deserve to go out of business!
This is the problem with reading/watching/listening to the news. If I didn’t, I’d have never known about the Shoppers/Loblaws dishonesty and I’d still be dealing with them.
Here’s more information about the way Loblaws/Shoppers are treating pharmacists and scamming taxpayers, from Wikipedia as of today:
In 2024, Shoppers Drug Mart was criticized for enacting sales quotas on pharmacists for MedsCheck, a government sponsored program in Ontario. MedsCheck reimburses healthcare providers for medication reviews, allowing for a maximum billing of $75 per patient, which led to the profitability of enacting sales targets. CBC News reported that approximately 1.4 million dollars was billed to the province for a week in February 2024. A class action lawsuit was filed against the company in regards to these quotas.
And here’s a full list of Loblaws’ stores — just in case, you know, you thought you should stop doing business with less honest companies — also from Wikipedia:
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- Dominion Stores
- Extra Foods
- Fortinos
- Freshmart
- Maxi
- No Frills
- No Name
- President’s Choice
- President’s Choice Financial
- Provigo
- Real Atlantic Superstore
- Real Canadian Liquorstore
- Real Canadian Superstore
- Shoppers Drug Mart / Pharmaprix
- SuperValu
- T&T Supermarket
- Valu-mart
- Your Independent Grocer
- Zehrs Markets
And here’s information about a May 2024 boycott of Loblaws, and other Loblaw controversies, including taking millions of dollars from the federal government … while, of course, not lowering prices but continuing to pad executive salaries!
