Complaint About Rite Aid Is Just Tip of the Iceberg

Quite often, a single consumer complaint is, indeed, the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

But seldom have checks into a company named in a single reader’s complaint revealed so many problems as at Rite Aid--California’s largest drugstore chain since its 1996 acquisition of Thrifty PayLess Inc.

Edward Manley of Temple City wrote me telling of his persistent efforts to obtain a few 20-ounce cans of Empress pineapple chunks, listed as on sale at two for $1 in a Rite Aid ad.

Manley’s efforts ended after five visits to the Temple City store when the manager, Mohammad Rahman, going beyond the call of duty, went to another store in the chain, bought some Dole pineapple chunks and sold 10 cans to the customer at the Empress sale price.

When Ken Simmons, a regional vice president of Rite Aid, heard about the matter, he called Manley to apologize and sent him a free case of Empress pineapple chunks.

Jim Mastrian, an executive VP, said that Rite Aid sales usually move three to four times the normal quantity of an item. But in this case, “we moved 30 times the normal demand,� he said, and for a week the stores ran out.

By the time I talked to Mastrian, however, I had done considerable checking into Rite Aid.

It turned out that running out of pineapple chunks is the least of the firm’s troubles. Some of them involve sensitive pharmacy issues, and they all demonstrate that the takeover of 1,000 Thrifty PayLess stores in the Pacific Coast states has not been easy.

Rite Aid officials say that the company is now devoting its energies, three years after the cquisition, to putting things aright.

But it has been forced into settlements this year with authorities in California, Oregon and Washington in a variety of cases:

* The chain agreed to pay $1.4 million to several California cities and counties for selling infant formula, contraceptives and other goods past their expiration dates. It promised to take products off shelves 60 days before their expiration dates instead of 30 days prior, its previous practice. But in one case, contraceptives had been sold four years after they expired.

* It agreed to pay $2.1 million to settle a lawsuit by Kern County alleging Rite Aid stores there had a pattern of scanner (pricing) errors dating from the Thrifty days.

* Rite Aid paid the Washington state Pharmacy Board $50,000 and agreed to comply with a disciplinary order after complaints of pharmacy misorders doubled. Other improvements are being ordered.

* In May, the chain paid $60,000 to the Oregon Pharmacy Board for not having a managing pharmacist in all its Oregon outlets, as required by state law. (Although a company spokesman told me this reflected only paperwork errors, the acting director of the Oregon board, Gary Schnabel, insisted, “These are cases where they went for weeks or months without managers. . . . They had so many excuses.�

The California Pharmacy Board, meanwhile, said that in the last year 13 of the 47 investigatory cases it sent to compliance committees involved Rite Aid.

Also, the California Medical Assn., representing the state’s doctors, released to me a May 28, 1998, letter its CEO, Dr. John Lewin, sent Rite Aid accusing the chain of sending an improper marketing letter.

“It appears Rite Aid customers have been targeted . . . based on confidential medical information . . . that they are taking cholesterol-lowering medication, and specifically medication that is not Pravachol,� Lewin wrote.

“The marketing letter states that the cost of [the] mailing . . . is paid for by the maker of Pravachol itself, Bristol-Myers Squibb. . . .

“The California Medical Assn. shares in these patients’ sense of outrage that confidential medical information supplied to their particular Rite Aid Pharmacy . . . would be turned over to the Rite Aid Marketing Department and converted into fodder for a marketing blitz paid for by the major pharmaceutical company that stands to profit.�

An aide to Lewin said Rite Aid failed to respond to his letter, or to a follow-up.

But Rite Aid spokeswoman Sarah Datz gave me a response.

“One of the main objectives of Rite Aid is to maintain and improve the health of our customers,� she said. “We believe that education about medication is an important part of keeping customers updated about their health.

“The prescription database that we use for these mailings is confidential, and all these mailings are handled internally, and under no circumstances is the information shared with outside companies. If we send a mailing to a customer and they express concern about receiving it, we immediately remove them from the mailing list.�

In an interview Monday, before I had seen the Medical Assn. letter, Mastrian and Bill Titelman, two Rite Aid executive VPs, insisted the company has made a turnabout and many problems investigated by state authorities are solved.

Titelman suggested that disgruntled employees, resentful of downsizing and other changes since the Thrifty days, were responsible for some of the complaints.

He said the company has been investing and modernizing.

“One thing we had trouble explaining to the county attorneys was why we are opening new stores,� he declared. “We employ 18,000 Californians. We want to operate successfully, so we are investing. They wanted us to spend all the money correcting the problems they were investigating. . . .

“We are very sensitive to complaints about misorders,� Titelman added. “We have a zero-tolerance policy.�

With 33 million annual prescriptions filled in California, 8.3 million in Washington and 4.7 million in Oregon, “the error rate is a tiny fraction of 1%,� he said.

The recent cases in California, Oregon and Washington show Rite Aid can’t improve too fast.

Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventures at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at: [email protected]