I am on Social Security Disability and my medicines cost me over $300.00 each month. I had seen a TV commercial advertising Myfreemedicine.com.
The commercial claims that if your monthly medicines are over $100.00 and you do not have any presciption coverage insurance, they will get them for you for free. I thought this would be a life saver, so instead of signing up online I called the toll free number 1-877-699-2828.
Once I got through to a real person, I was asked a series of questions to see if I was eligible. The main questions were about my income, I was told that being that my income was less than $1,300.00 a month, I qualified. I was then asked what medication I was taking. I was told that 3 of the 4 that I take would be covered.
I was then informed that the fee for the service would be $195.00 and a $5.95 shipping charge, to be placed on a credit card or taken out of my checking account, I opted for a credit card charge. I thought this would be worth it to be able to save almost $3,000.00 a year.
In about 2 weeks I received an application to fill out. Which asked for all the same information that I gave over the phone. It did go into detail about each medication and the Doctor's information that issued each prescription. I mailed all the information requested back the next day and waited patiently for a response.
Two and a half weeks later I received seperate applications for each pharmaceutical companies that dispense my medication. One of the applications did not have an address or phone number that I was to return it to. The names of each medication was hand written on top of the applications. My personal information was not correct on each application.
I took it upon myself to call the two pharmaceutical companies to ask if any additonal information was required. Two of my medicine were no longer in the assistance programs. I was required to send a copy of my 2003 Income Tax Return, proof of my income and expenses. I was not told any of this from myfreemedicine.
The only thing myfreemedicine did was send me the applications with only my name, address, SS#, phone number and wrong birth date typed in. The accompaning letter said if any information was incorrect to cross out the mistakes and insert the correct information.
I got angry after I realized that the only thing they had done for my $195.00 was send me applications that had wrong information on. I called the customer service number I was given at the time I initially signed up, which is 1-800-260-5167, toll free, I was told that I would have to call the other customer service number which is 1-805-681-8202, not toll free.
I complained that it was unfair that I would have to pay for a phone call and the person on the line said she would try to connect me herself. I was lucky that the call went through. I told the person that answered about how disappointed I was that only one of the medicines I take was covered by an assistance program, and of all of the mistakes on all of the applications. I was told that they could send me blank applications and fill them out myself. I declined and asked for a refund of my monies. He tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted. He then told me that he would credit my credit card and it would take about a week. Lo and behold in less than a week I did have a credit for the $195.00.
In the beginning when I spoke to a representative of Pfizer, she gave me a web site that I could find out if any of my medications had an assistance program and would be able to print out the applications myself. The site she gave me is needymeds.com. There I found that 2 of the 4 medicines I take do have a program that will give me my medication free of charge, (one of them does require a $5.00 shipping fee)
To finalize, by going to needymeds.com I was able to locate which parmaceuticals companies offer assistance programs for my medicines and my only costs have been a few sheets of paper two envelopes, a couple of stamps and a $5.00 shipping fee each prescription for one of my medicines.
0 comments