THE PRESIDENTIAL ESCALATION TEAM...

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

Periodically, over the last two weeks I have been banging my head against a brick wall.

The reason for this oddly comforting behavior is my ten day battle with our mail order prescription company. They lost the prescription for my migraine medication and seemed very unwilling to help.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

So each day for more than a week, I called the toll free number and talked to a different customer service representative who was absolutely no help at all.

Which caused me to need my migraine medicine.

Which I couldn't get.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

Essentially, the battle for my migraine medication had brought on a couple of migraines.

I know.

The irony is enough to make my eye twitch.

As each person listened to my tale of woe and then proceeded to tell me that there was basically nothing they could do to correct THEIR mistake I became more and more certain that I would:

a) suffer a stroke
b)experience my head spinning in circles on my shoulders while spewing green vomit
c)start insulting their mothers

You would think when a customer says "Yes, I've been waiting THREE WEEKS on a prescription..." SOMEBODY would say they would get right on that and take care of the matter.

Um....not so much.

OH! And evidently, when they say a prescription is going to be expedited, that means once it's found, sent to the pharmacy, entered into the computer and packaged, THEN they start the expediting. NO OTHER PHASE of the process will move any faster. ONLY the mailing part is expedited. So be under no delusion that anybody is rushing around taking care of your problem. Only the UPS man is expected to hurry.

So after waiting three weeks for my medication, and getting nowhere by calling the number on the back of our membership card, I turned to the only person I could think of

Google.

I googled "president/CEO Express Scripts" and found the name George Paz.

Not only did I find Mr. Paz's name but I found the phone number of the corporate headquarters in St. Louis - and the address.

Now, as much as I wanted to hop in my mini van and drive to St. Louis to give them what for, I didn't. I simply called them.

First, the nice receptionist patched me through to the same ole' customer service line that I had dealt with for a week, so I told them my story, got no sympathy at all, hung up and called the corporate headquarters again.

This time I said "I'm just a customer and I need to file a complaint. No, I do not need to speak to the customer service reps. Do you have a department there in your headquarters that handles customer complaints? Say, a complaint about a prescription being lost and taking three weeks to be processed?"

"We certainly do ma'am. I'm going to let you speak to somebody on our Presidential Escalation Team."

"Thank you so much." Woohoo! The PRESIDENTIAL ESCALATION TEAM. I'm dealing with the big dogs now.

So after telling the PET member my tale of woe and letting them know, as nicely as I could, that it was inexcusable to wait for three weeks on medication, the wheels started moving. I also told them that one of their customer service reps actually told me to just get my prescription filled locally and that I was surprised their customers were being told to take their business elsewhere.

Because sometimes you just feel better when you can tattle on somebody.

Further, when told that I could have my medicine 'overnighted' to me for a fee of $18.00, I suggested that they overnight my medicine to me for FREE since they are the ones that lost my prescription. That worked too. Besides I was going to need that $18.00 for chocolate.

I had my medicine 36 hours later.

Some observations:

A customer should not have to track down the CEO of a company to get reasonable service.

A customer service representative should have some people skills.

A customer service representative should not YAWN while speaking to a customer.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!