I get two or more marketing emails from Walgreens every day. I never signed up for them. I think I gave them my email address many years ago for some sort of special offer, and in the last few weeks they’ve been bombarding me with marketing spam about twice a day. I’ve tried to unsubscribe and I get the message that “We’re sorry to lose you” but the messages keep coming. I’ve marked them as spam and into my spam folder they go. Does somebody at Walgreens, a place I never expect to shop ever again, really think this is the best way to build up customer loyalty? I think the last time I shopped at a Walgreens was over five years ago.

Meanwhile, Rite Aid has shuttered a bunch of its stores but, so far, not the two closest to me.

Given the way they are behaving, I don’t expect that to last.

The last few times I’ve been into each of the two locations closest to me, they haven’t had the items that I’ve wanted. I’ve asked the sales clerks and they tell me they’ve been ordering them, but headquarters doesn’t supply them. So I’ve been forced to go to CVS, which isn’t quite as convenient. Is that any way to run a business? Run it into the ground, perhaps.

Even though I’ve tried to cut down on my ordering from Amazon, I can get some of those items more cheaply and reliably from that online behemoth.

Then there’s the prescription department at Rite Aid.

For some reason they have my cholesterol medication on auto-refill. And apparently when it’s on auto-refill, it gets filled by some centralized filling center and then sent to the local outlet. Now I can’t complain too much about this because the cholesterol medication is a freebie for me. The health plan that I have (you know the one that I have as a former government employee but which Republican congress critters don’t want the rest of US inhabitants to have access to, that health plan), anyway my health plan foots the bill for the cholesterol medication and I don’t pay a cent for it.

Which is the only reason that I don’t complain that Rite Aid is now two months ahead of my actual usage. I didn’t realize that myself until I got home and saw that I still had a full bottle that I hadn’t touched in addition to the bottle that I’m using.

But here’s the thing. I’m on file with Rite Aid to use the easy open lids, and the prescriptions that are filled from the centralized filling center never put on the easy open lid. They always slap on the so-called child-proof cap. (Child-proof. Hah!) So I always have to ask the person who waits on me to change the cap. One would think that as I’m on file with Rite Aid to use the easy open caps, if the prescription is filled by some centralized filling location instead of the local pharmacy, the they would be more careful to get the cap right. If one thought that, one would be wrong.

Then there’s CVS.

Because of a problem with the city recently (never mind the details!), I needed to get prints of a bunch of photos of my house. As it turned out, the most convenient way to do that was to use CVS.

And what do you know. It was convenient. 

So I have no complaints about CVS. At this time.

Well, I wish the remaining outlet were a little bit closer. Did they really have to close the South Street and the Washington Avenue locations?