How about I just shop somewhere else?
There’s not a good reason to do this.
Any money saved by preventing thefts in our dying world will be lost from the customers who don’t want to be treated like thieves.
Walgreens CEO, “We lost business due to our locked shelves.”
CVS: “Hold my beer.”
I guess I am starting to be okay with “leaning in” and taking advantage off my “old guy” (false) technical ineptitude and will just pretend to shuffle up to a store employee and ask them to open those cabinets for me
Please use local drug stores. The chain stores are absolutely ripping you the fuck off.
Are they?
I think using goodrx.com has given me the best results to save money on drugs.
Local drug stores should totally be displaying “we’re cheaper than CVS!” if they want people to show up.
That is, if they’re actually cheaper…
I used to use a chain one and then I switched to a local one and I pay half as much as I used to.
FYI, goodrx was selling your prescription info and PII to marketers. edit: to be clear, they were caught selling data between 2017 and 2020.
I haven’t given them any of my info.
Do you think walgreens and CVS don’t sell your data? Lol.
Pharmacy technician here. When we bill a prescription, the processing information (either from your insurance card, or from GoodRX) is entered into the computer, then the claim (including the drug being billed, day supply, and patient information) are sent to the benefits manager (PBM), and returned to give us a determined copay to charge you. It’s during this transaction, that by using GoodRX, your information has been volunteered to GoodRX as part of the billing process.
We do not determine copays - PBMs and your plan formulary do. You showing us a dollar sign on GoodRX does not guarantee you that price.
As an aside, my particular pharmacy does not accept GoodRX due to knowledge of these practices. It may also be interesting to know that GoodRX charges pharmacies a “finder’s fee” for offering a discounted price e.g. you pay the pharmacy $25 for a $22 drug, and the pharmacy pays GoodRX $5. If you can still find independent pharmacies, support them! They will work with you.
I’ll support whoever gives me the best deal!
It’s just business~
I don’t think local drug stores can afford to be cheaper than a big corporate chain. But the pricing isn’t the point, it’s fostering competition against corporate monopolies.
Remember that the single purpose of corporations is to make more and more money. By their mandate to their shareholders, all measure of humanity is pushed into the background in favour of growth. The ultimate goal in that pursuit is monopoly: Being the sole supplier for their customers would allow them to dictate sales prices while being the biggest or even sole customer for their suppliers would give them leverage to shift prices in their favour. Their capital backing allows them to cushion out fluctuations in revenue and take losses, so they can afford to underprice and drive out competition, then crank up the enshittification to extort more money from their customers.
A (comparatively smaller) local store has less leverage to enshittify and exploit. Investing in their higher prices is an investment against that enshittification.
I don’t think local drug stores can afford to be cheaper than a big corporate chain.
Sure they can! It’s not like their owners are surviving off of beans and rice, lol.
No, but their owners don’t have the bulk buying power to negotiate for better prices with suppliers, the centralised management making the per-store-overhead more efficient, the employment power to push wages, the capital backing to run low prices without risking a bad month leaving a noticeable dent in their liquid assets or even run at a loss for as long as it takes for “lowest price” customers to flock to their stores and drive the local stores out of business.
(me wishing CVS/Rite aid/Walgreens didn’t destroy all the mom and pop drug stores)
It’s so hard to find a local one close by
To be fair, if you’re buying drugs in the US, you’re probably getting ripped off by default
Not if you buy them from me. High quality, low prices!
Do you deliver, or should I just meet you out behind the club next to the green trash bin like usual?
The usual spot. The same amount of Viagra and Ducolax as last time?
I’m waiting for the ultimate reductive customer experience. These drug stores will eventually block off access to the shelves and aisles entirely. Instead, the front point-of-sale area and places where people used to wait in line with their purchases will be turned into a new blocked off large vestibule with floor to ceiling transparent glass. In there (where customers can access) will be kiosks which can control tele-presence robots that will let customers “walk the aisle” to look at product on shelves:
If you want to make a purchase, you press a button on the kiosk and pay for it, then a human worker inside will fetch the item off the shelf for you and drop it in a transaction drawer where you pick up your item:
There used to be a store called Service Merchandise with a similar model. Their floor was just a showroom with one of each item, sort of like a physical catalog. You just grab a ticket to buy stuff and wait for it to come up a conveyor, sort of like airline baggage claim. I always wondered why that model never succeeded: it was so convenient and would be even better now with automation and online shopping, qr codes
I remember Service Merchandise! That conveyor belt delivered magic.
These still exist in Ireland. Argos is a big one.
then a human worker inside will fetch the item off the shelf for you
Soon enough that robot will complete that whole transaction and the humans will not be needed
Let’s go one step further and make them a gig worker so CVS doesn’t have to pay them for downtime and instead we get to tip
Like the shoplifters won’t make bogus accounts? Wtf are we even doing here?
I’ve always argued that putting condoms in locked shelves is pro-STD and pro-teen-pregnancy. The fact that you have to walk up to an employee, ask them to open the shelf for you, and have them stand there and watch as you grab a box of condoms has no doubt scared away numerous 16 yr olds when all they were trying to do was be safe.
I have never seen this. Been in many drug stores. Walmart does this. But not any drug stores I’ve seen.
It’s ultimately up to the franchise owner of each location and their subjective interpretation of how crime-ridden the area is
Has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with shaming people having sex
Here’s a perspective you might not have thought of. Younger person is already shamed for even buying condoms (the cashier will see them after all) so they steal the condoms instead of buying them. Store owners are sick of losing money so they naturally lock them up. So yes, it does have something to do with crime.
I’m not here to argue about what you think store owners care about your sex life, I’m just pointing out that there is a valid reason you haven’t considered.
lol good luck with that. when they (and rite aid) started locking up their shelves I stopped buying from them.
Oh good, this is going to be an excuse for every other business to start doing this shit …
If any store starts requiring a fucking app to make a purchase, that store has permanently lost my business.
You have not earned the privilege of being installed on my phone. Get the fuck out of here.
Its 2024and you go to Mcdonalds drivethrough. First thing you hear:
Whats your order code
No good morning. Its straight to whats the order code for the app on your phone.
Thankfully you can be equally rude back and place your order.
Next year though? Dont expect the human to stay around for long.
Line mus go up!
Just putting the products in a locked case is enough to get me to shop elsewhere.
I go there in person BECAUSE I don’t want to log in to your stupid website.
We all just learned from Walgreens’ latest report that placing barriers between consumers and the goods they’re trying to purchase reduces sales, and CVS’ response to this problem is to add a login requirement.
Easing the ordering process, and a solid return policy, is how Amazon exploded overnight. Study after study showed that people would walk back if the website offered the slightest hassle. Also funny, something like a 1.3s load time difference would send people to competitors.
Do they not teach this shit in business school?!
As someone who has a BS in Business, yes they taught this in business.
Similarly we had case studies on Wal-mart’s absolute domination of the logistics game which made them a powerhouse in the “before Amazon” times.
It took Valve years to build Steam into the juggernaut it is based on maximizing customer value and minimizing friction. Years! Like multiple of them! Who has time for that! I need my profits this quarter!
Not really. They mostly teach “quarterly profit line go up”.
Making sales makes line go up.
Make profit machine go brrrrr!
What I’m always stunned by, who is fucking stupid enough to shop there?! I go to the pharmacy, get my shit, leave. Even when I had a fat income, I still wouldn’t pay those prices.
Locally, the Winn Dixie is shutting down because the new Publix out competed them. For those not in the know, both are very nice groceries, with Publix a little nicer and way costlier. FFS, we have an Aldi (along with 5 other cheaper groceries) and it’s never as busy as the expensive stores.
Hit a couple of big box stores waiting on my wife. Never go in those places anymore, especially since inflation went nuts the last couple of years. People pay for that crap?! At Pets Mart a chunk of driftwood is between $20 and $50! Y’all, we’re in Florida, paying for driftwood and sand. The mind boggles.
tl:dr; American consumers are idiots and I’m not going to hear the whining about high retail prices.
we have an Aldi (along with 5 other cheaper groceries) and it’s never as busy as the expensive stores.
That might also be related to the fact that Aldi tries to be very efficient with its operation so they might handle more customers but those customers aren’t stuck in the store as long.
The Germans know how to run an efficient grocery, I hope Aldi, trader joes and lidl destroy “thin margin” US parasites.
JFC fuck Kroger, fuck Safeway fuck expensive shit
Food is the common man necessity and it should be priced as such. We surely as fuck subsidize it, but the parasitic class still charges “market”
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Aldi’s owners still very much got rich off it (they are among the richest people in Germany) so they are not great in that respect either.
The locked shelves are to block thieves.
is that what teevvee told you, boy?
Turns out they also block customers.
They’ve turned blocking thieves into an income stream. Consumers will have to let CVS collect their personal data to be allowed to purchase baby formula.
Uh, yeah?
Ask the physical movie and music industries how well that worked out for them.
They got killed by streaming, not locked shelves.
They got killed by making it inconvenient to use legally purchased media by adding unskippable trailers, copy protection, things like the Sony rootkit,… and also empty boxes on the shelves with the actual media hidden behind the counter.
Making life harder for people trying to buy your product is never a good idea.
That was a mistake on our part… Shoulda killed them with “piracy” matey!
Thank you, subbed!
