CVS: Big on Overcharging, Small on Customer Service
CVS is a retail-healthcare colossus that's growing bigger every year, with a new store popping up on every other city corner these days. This perception isn't too far off, because with over 6,900 stores in the U.S., CVS is the largest drugstore chain in the country. The company fills or manages over a billion prescriptions a year--30 percent of prescriptions written in the United States--and is also the country's biggest purchaser of prescription drugs. The plentiful number of CVS store locations is a high convenience factor most consumers appreciate--but the more you learn about the way the company is run, the less welcoming that development may seem.
CVS's slogan is "for all the ways you care." But recent studies have uncovered corporate practices that are anything but caring--and the evidence just keeps piling up.
Lack of access: CVS's top executive Tom Ryan said has said that the goal of the drugstore empire is to "help transform America's expensive and often ineffective health-care system." Recent study findings, however, are not quite in line with this touted corporate talking point. In December 2008, Cure CVS released a report which found CVS is far more likely to locate MinuteClinics in predominantly white and affluent communities, rather than in urban city areas, low-income areas or areas with majority residents of color. For example, in Washington, D.C., a city where CVS completely and utterly dominates the chain drugstore landscape, there is not a single MinuteClinic in any of the District's 54 stores.
A new study from the University of Pennsylvania published in the Archives of Internal Medicine corroborates these findings. "Of the 930 clinics included in the survey (which included CVS pharmacies, Walgreens and Wal-Mart stores), according to the Associated Press, only 123 were located in areas defined by the federal government as 'medically underserved.'" These findings are particularly disappointing in light of the fact that in-store clinics have been touted as an affordable health care option for the poor and uninsured.
Overcharging Customers? You might want to check your receipt the next time you shop at CVS. The drugstore chain is by far the most penalized food retailer for overcharging in Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulations' 2008 inspection reports, which cited CVS for 711 overcharges last year. Chicago's Department of Consumer Services found over half--54 percent--of the CVS stores inspected in September 2007 were charging consumers more than advertised prices. Click here for instances of other fair pricing problems in places like Detroit and Florida.
