The Consumer Value Store (CVS) agreed this week to pay $1.1 million to settle litigation brought in 18 states and the District of Columbia for allegedly charging its pharmacy patients full price for prescriptions the store only partially filled. CVS says it has developed a system to prevent such abuses from happening today, but partially filled prescriptions provided before 1998 were reportedly improperly billed. “Any isolated instances of incorrect billing for partially filled prescriptions were inadvertent,” explained a CVS spokesman. Under the settlement, CVS agreed to pay $1.1 million to be split among the 18 states and the District. The prescriptions would be partially filled by CVS, which told consumers it did not have enough stock of their drug to fill the entire prescription. Yet the company would bill the patients for the full amount, and tell them to come back to the store for the rest of their medication later. Consumers would not necessarily return for their missing drugs.
Now that’s why I call “consumer value.” For more inspirational stories about CVS, search this database by the company name.
