James Craig was confused when he received the phone call Tuesday.
It was an automated message saying that the “Pill Box at 175 Cambridge Street closed March 8. Your prescriptions have been transferred to CVS at 242 Cambridge Street.”
There is a Cambridge Drive in Warsaw but not a Cambridge Street. Also, neither Pill Box or CVS in Warsaw are located on Cambridge Drive.
Craig, who lives near Warsaw with his wife, immediately called the Pill Box Pharmacy in Warsaw to see what was going on.
“I was confused because my wife and I get prescriptions from both CVS and Pill Box,” said Craig. “And Pill Box delivers medications when we can’t make it so I was upset at first when I heard the message.”
“We received several calls from customers who got the same automated message,” said Pill Box Pharmacy operations manager Greg Winn. “They asked why their prescriptions we’re being transferred.”
Pill Box customers from around Kosciusko County received the message.
Since then Winn has been reassuring customers and letting them know that PIll Box in fact remains open.
He’s also been in contact with CVS to see how such a message could get out.
Mike DeAngelis, a public relations representative from CVS, said during a phone interview Thursday afternoon it was obviously an error.
CVS purchased Pill Box’s North Manchester store in 2003 and the Milford location in 2007.
DeAngelis said it would be “reasonable to assume they are still in our database.”
Winn said when a pharmacy is sold, a customer’s files can also be sold to the purchasing pharmacy.
Later in an e-mail, DeAngelis said that the company could not verify that the calls came from CVS and that an internal investigation would look into the origin of the calls.
The automated message gives the number of a Burlington, Mass., CVS to call with any questions.
Winn called that CVS location and talked to a pharmacy technician who stated the store wanted to send out an automated message two weeks ago to remind customers to get flu shots.
Instead, an old message of the store’s buyout of another pharmacy, that happened to be named Pill Box, was sent out instead.
The tech told Winn that several of her store’s customers were confused by receiving the same message.
Winn said he was told that the phone calls had been stopped as of 3 p.m. Thursday.
This contradicts a conversation Winn said he had with CVS’ regional director of acquisitions Shane Stockton.
Winn said he was told by Stockton that the phone calls weren’t coming from CVS.
This morning, Stockton declined comment but did say that when he talked to Winn he was led to believe CVS wasn’t responsible for the calls.
Winn asked Stockton if CVS could send out another automated message to let customers know of the mistake.
CVS has yet to say whether they’d agree to such a deal.
“Every day we’re trying to take care of the customer, but to spend my day calling CVS corporate office, it’s very distracting. I also feel CVS doesn’t care,” said Winn. “I don’t even know if I can get anyone to admit the call. At this point I would just want a list of our customers that were called so we could get a hold of them.”
Winn was thankful for the Warsaw CVS location though. Employees from that store actually tipped Pill Box off customers calling about the automated message.
