Is PharmacyChecker Worth Using?

UPDATE on Wednesday, April 5, 2017
As I said in the last paragraph in this post, before publishing it I sent an email to Henry Harvey at PharmacyChecker.com. He sent it to Gabriel Levitt, the President who replied today and said, “I don’t blame you for being skeptical of an online pharmacy for a misspelling but I hope we can reassure you that you can and should trust PharmacyChecker. We just published an answer to your question on our new AskPharmacyChecker section.”

My reply was this:

Gabe,

Thanks for the reply. I really appreciate it. Commenting on that post is absolutely appreciated as well.

The misspelling was what kicked off my resolve to investigate further. Four things gave me pause which I will reiterate here:

1) GlobalCareRx registered this site with Privacy Hero, Inc. in NA whom I called…but they wouldn’t divulge who is behind the site. In addition there is no way to discover who is behind this site, if they’re Canadian or out of some hovel in Bangladesh, or some other place.

2) ​Their company address (Global Care Rx, 7-B Pleasant Blvd, Suite 1083, Toronto, ON, Canada, M4T 1K2) is The UPS Store and is a private mailbox (see: http://www.theupsstore.ca/41/ )

3) Their supply chain is unknown. On their site they say, ​”Global Care Rx contracts with licensed pharmacies in Canada, UK, Turkey, India and Mauritius, in order to provide you with the lowest possible prices for your medications.” and “Our international prescription service contracts with licensed pharmacies and fulfillment centers, and you can save up to 80% when purchasing medications from Global Care Rx.”

​The primary concern any consumer of pharmaceuticals has is the efficacy and safety of the drug one is taking. The secondary issue is cost which I’d hoped to address by finding a reputable online Canadian merchant who could help us.

But it’s that primary concern that I wanted to point out:  I have no trust when it comes to Global Care Rx (and actually others on your list, by the way). Turkey? India? Mauritius? Fulfillment centers? An old truck by the curb could be a “fulfillment center.” What are the chances that drugs that come from there have been temperature-controlled? Are not milk-powder or cut with something else?

When I was the VP of Strategic Alliances at Lawson Software (the ERP company) we had a major U.S. drug retail chain that was trying to track vaccines through the supply chain. If vaccines are out of a tight temperature range they become inert and don’t work. It was extremely challenging and the industry worked to solve it and did so. What assurances do I have that sites listed on PharmacyChecker.com aren’t a couple of guys looking to make a quick buck?​

~Steve Borsch

 

Previous Updates

UPDATE at 12:15pm CDT: Still seeking certain legitimate sources and I’m still not comfortable with even CIPA’s criteria for what constitutes a legitimate online pharmacy. Stay tuned for further updates…

UPDATE at 11am CDT: Found a legitimate online pharmacy called Canada Drugs and they are CIPA certified (Canadian International Pharmacy Association – put in just canadadrugs.com to check their validity). You can also look at this CIPA verified online pharmacies page to see all verified ones.

My wife and I are self-employed U.S. citizens and, as someone with individual insurance, we pay retail U.S. pricing for our prescriptions and definitely want to save money! Every year we expend literally hundreds of dollars more per prescription than Canadians do and we intend to shift our purchasing to a legitimate Canadian pharmacy.

One of the online checkers, one that apparently Google and Yahoo use for results, is PharmacyChecker. But I’m not sure I can rely on PharmacyChecker for due diligence on our behalf. Let me explain why.

After coming across posts at PharmacyCheckerBlog I went to PharmacyChecker and put in one of our prescriptions. Up came a listing of “PharmacyChecker Approved” outlets along with pricing which looked amazing.

I randomly chose to go to one of the sites and clicked on GlobalCare Rx. Examining all of their FAQs and poking around the site I grew suspicious (as I always do when there is no “About Us” or who is behind a website) but kept poking around…until I saw on their homepage that step #3 said, “Recieve your medication” with the word “receive” misspelled. There is NO way a legitimate site would allow a misspelled word like that on their homepage (at least my 250+ website clients would not!) so I poked around some more and discovered that:

  • GlobalCareRx registered this site with Privacy Hero, Inc. in NA whom I called…but they wouldn’t divulge who is behind the site.
  • Global Care Rx hosts their website (with thousands of others, no doubt) at Websavers in Canada.

​Having done supply chain software work in a past corporate life, I am VERY aware of the sensitivity to temperature ranges of shipped pharmaceuticals. Not only do any of us need to trust that an online pharmacy isn’t shipping something from some guy’s garage where he put milk powder in some capsules, I need to know that care is given to HOW something is shipped…so it isn’t sitting in some truck overnight freezing and, by the time it’s delivered, the prescription drug is now actually inert and of no use. Fortunately there are some smart people addressing this exact issue.

While the percentage I agree with what Trump doing is about 0%, this is one area where I hope his disruptive-grenade-throwing tactics make an impact.

I just reached out to Henry Harvey at Pharmacy Checker and asked him to please inform me as to why I should trust PharmacyChecker.com for displaying legitimate, trusted and “verified” sources.​ Hopefully he will reply and/or comment here on this post.

Posted in  

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About Steve Borsch

Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.

Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

Posts by Category

Archives (2004 – Present)

Connecting the Dots Podcast

Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.