Category Archives: Rip-Off

Incompetence? Thieving? or Both?

Why I consider Lloyds Pharmacy incompetence and bad service to be  a conscious decisions to steal from me by stealing my time ?

Time is money, and nobody more aware of how precious time is than the self employed, so when a contractor like LLOYDS Pharmacy uses YOUR time to cut-back on staff providing service below the expected, then it is an indirect thieving. The contractor steals your valuable time to beef up their profit.

It is simple equation to understand. Say you need 10 staff to process a prescriptions,  and two staff to take your details and pass the prescription to the processing section, and one staff to collect the ready packed processed medication and one staff to dispense it to patients and one to supervise and step in to clarify difficult question. It is 15 staff for operation to run smoothly with average waiting time to collect prescription between 5 to 10 minutes.

But when Lloyds pharmacy keep you waiting double, triple and quadruple the acceptable waiting time in order to cut on staff so only one collect prescription and takes details, and the same person passes it inside, while the 10 processing become only seven and the same person dispensing collects from inside, the contractor here cut staff by one third to increase the profit from NHS ( ie from our taxes ) by one third, who is actually paying for this? It is you and I from OUR time which is money if you are self employed. Lloyds pharmacy basically steals the value from you, the value of your time to boost their profits by cutting staff and services.

This is a personal experience as on Thursday September first I handed a prescription ato the the Lloyds Pharmacy staff at the Royal Free Hospital ( which they are the contractor now )  after waiting 11 minutes in a queue ( because one untrained girl instead of two or more staff collecting prescriptions ) to hand my prescription in. I answered all questions, filled form as required. Having noticed that over a dozen of patients were waiting as well as along queue for collection, being told that it would be over 20 minutes ( meaning over half an hour) wait and since I am self employed and had work to do within the next 20 minutes I agreed with the young lady that I will collect the medicine in the morning Friday 2 September after I  finish  treatment which was due to start  Friday morning 8:45 AM.

After finishing the treatment on Friday, I went to collect the medicine as agreed at 15:20 the day before. The same young lady who made this agreement with me wanted to start the process all over again, there was no medicine and nobody had processed my prescription.

The manager was cheeky in her half-hearted apology saying “ I too pay taxes” when I reminded her that taxpayers funding her Lloyds pharmacy profits expected a reasonable service. I asked her why she thinks that her and Lloyds Pharmacy time was more valuable than my time. I wasted another 15 minutes while prescription was still not ready. I had a taxi waiting charging me waiting time and a train to catch. I left without collecting prescription and said better the prescription be ready when I visit hospital Tuesday for my next treatment.

I still see Lloyds pharmacy practice as an indirect thieving from me in shape of stealing my time to boost their profits .