Shopping at Walgreens

 There is a Walgreens drug store just down the street from us. It is located on the corner of a busy intersection as they are usually found in prime locations in most cities. Walgreens and CVS have been in the news lately for the difficult working conditions being placed on their pharmacists. It is the result of management cutting expenses over the years and understaffing. We have experienced long waits to get prescriptions filled at certain times of the day. The pharmacy at our Walgreens is open from 9 AM till 1:30 PM and 2 PM till 8 PM on weekdays. 4.5 hours in the morning and 6 hours in the evening. The pharmacy is usually busiest at 11 AM and 5 PM. On the surface it sounds like another group of workers complaining about being overworked and under paid. We've seen strikes from teachers, health care workers, delivery drivers, and auto workers succeed in getting management bow to their demands. It remains to be seen if pharmacy workers will be able to improve their working conditions. The retail drug industry has been crushed by opioid lawsuits and has been in cost cutting mode for some time now.

That is just one of the problems facing Walgreens. They also need to revamp their customer discount system. Someone spends a lot of time placing sale tags on shelves. The discounts are usually 2 for 1 or buy one get one for 50% off. The problem is that the discount is only on select items. It is easy to grab the wrong item, thinking it is on sale, only to find out that it isn't when you check out. On a recent trip to Walgreens, we saw a shelf tag that said buy 1 get 1 free on Lay's potato chips. During checkout we discovered that Ruffel's chips were not part of the deal. So, each bag of chips we had rang up at full price. Our bill was $10 more than we had anticipated. I quickly went back and got one of the Lay's chips that qualified for the deal. We then had the cashier refund both bags we originally paid for. Then we purchased two of the Lay's chips that qualified for the deal. But before we paid for the purchase, we used one of their infamous "On your next purchase" discount coupons that we received from our first purchase. This resulted in an additional savings. They need to get rid of the "next purchase" coupons that print out after you make a purchase and come up with a simple discount system that doesn't cause confusion and wasted time during checkout. That is by far our biggest complaint about Walgreens. The sales tags always seem to be under the wrong item, or someone has put an item back in the wrong location.

If you're a senior, you can always get 20% off in-store at Walgreens on the first Tuesday of every month with their Seniors Day Discount. Around this time, seniors who are myWalgreens members also get Walgreens coupon codes for 20% off online purchases. These discounts only apply to eligible regular-price products. I have yet to do any shopping at walgreens.com, mainly because we have a store within walking distance. It looks like they have a large number of items with paperless coupons and other site wide discounts. Shipping is free for orders over $35 and free for orders shipped to a store for pickup. Walgreens has numerous distribution centers similar to other large retail stores, so order fulfillment should be fast. I was unable to find information about their return policy on their website. Clicking on "Returns" under "Customer Service" brought up the help menu. I guess someone forgot to test that link. Hopefully their new CEO (Tim Wentworth) will be able to fix things and save them from going under.