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| - While I appreciate the mere existence of any compounding pharmacy since they offer products conventional pharmacies have never offered, Avella may not be a shining star among them.
They consistently get orders wrong and are poor at customer service and communication IMHO. For example, I recently ordered Progesterone cream, but when I arrived it was in the form of lozenges, despite my being clear about my request. I had to wait 4 days and go back to pick up the CREAM, since this location doesn't actually do the compounding -- their Scottsdale location does.
When it comes to running orders through insurance, they sometimes forget that step all together. You have to remind them on the phone before you go there. Otherwise you will be in for a shock, and have to wait for about 5 minutes while they do so. Even when they say on the phone they have run it through insurance, ask them to doublecheck. Also, once an order has been run through insurance, their system does not seem to provide a way for the rep to find out or tell you how much the order would have cost WITHOUT insurance.
In addition, you have to follow up at every stage of your order because they will usually forget to call you when your order is ready. However, they sometimes call you AFTER you have already picked up your order -- to let you know it's there...duh... They haven't implemented a system whereby the person calling about ready orders has access to the fact you have already picked it up. IOW, one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. They may need an expert to look closely at their administrative systems.
Sometimes you will get one story from one employee, and another one from a different employee.
For example, you may talk to one person re a new order, wait several days for a call to pick it up, then find out from a different employee that your order was mysteriously never actually placed (after you are finally forced to initiate a call to them for status). They will not know what went wrong -- but they will offer to initiate your order again.
Stage Two of above example: The second employee will agree to place your order, but then fail to inform you that you that your doctor needs to pre-approve a refill and therefore fail to actually place the order. After assuming the second order attempt occurred and waiting more days and not receiving a call and again being forced to follow up, you will finally be told that it needed your doctor's pre-approval. Then you will be ever so politely asked whether you would like them to call your doctor for approval (a question they already know the answer to but that they ask as a way of saving face and appearing to be professional). BEGIN PULLING HAIR OUT. Then after answering the obvious "yes," and waiting several more days, you call them to find it's been ready for two days but no one called to tell you, and now they close in 5 minutes for the 3-day holiday weekend. It can literally be like pulling teeth to get your rx -- so plan on 2 weeks from your initial request and expect many COMPLETELY AVOIDABLE mistakes and delays that should never be a regular occurrence for a business that calls itself a pharmacy.
A couple of years ago I requested Spironolactone to be compounded into a cream instead of a pill. Avella Pharmacy said that was utterly impossible and asked me in a rather confrontational why I wanted it in cream form. (Remember, this is a pharmacy that does compounding and already knows the POINT of topical creams is to bypass the liver.) Later I found another pharmacy that could do it. A few months later I called Avella and they said they could do it NOW -- and didn't remember telling me it was impossible.
Their first impulse is to say "no."
Their next impulse is to apologize.
It's never their impulse to improve their systems.
I recommend Melrose Pharmacy on 7th Avenue, or Civic Center Pharmacy in downtown Scottsdale instead.
Avella may never see business from me again. I can think of only one order that was glitch-free in the last 4 years. My naturopath is not very impressed with the quality of their creams/meds -- it may be something about the microns being to large to be absorbed well.
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