Being in a position where I am probably about to use such a service I wondered how they got paid as to me that service is free. Surely the surgery don’t pay. R-
Probably depends what part of the country you are in (England, Scotland etc) as each place will have its own administration.
Good point. I’m in SW England. R-
It’s usually the pharmacy themselves that pay. My own pharmacy has a small van with their name and logo on the side and they employ part-time drivers.
I’m guessing a pharmacy gets a small cut of the prescription fees so the more prescriptions they prescribe, the more income they receive. By having a free delivery van, they can increase those numbers easily and that should offset the transport/manpower costs.
I use an online pharmacy and they cover the postage cost.
The NHS reimburses the costs of drugs above what we pay and it must be worth the cost of postage to have a customer.
I don’t even pay a prescription charge to the pharmacy as I have a pre-pay card. My medicine just arrives for free.
Nor do I, for chronological reasons, which why I wondered who was footing the bill. R-
Those pre-pay cards… I heard you can setup a direct debit, if I am getting 5 items a month from different places at different times, guessing it is cheaper than 5 * 9.60 ?
I pay £10.81 a month via direct debit and as a result all my prescriptions are free. If you get 14 prescriptions a year (or more) you are saving money.
Same.
Though apparently you can’t change the bank and need to just cancel and set up again so pick a bank you want to stay with
That’s weird they let me manually change mine when I moved to Monzo a few years ago. I just called them with my new details.
Maybe they’ve changed processes since.
Yes, I’ve never had any issues changing bank details manually with them. I think the last time I did that was probably around this time last year.
Now reached the age where you don’t have to pay, anyway
Maybe I just had a slightly inept person then
I should probably call them but I just never remember.
I managed to change mine for the prepayment certificate last year, unless it’s changed now.
It’s clearly just the person I dealt with. I did think it was bizarre. They suggested that if I CASS’d out it would move but I didn’t want to close the account just change details. I’ll try again someday.
Probably didn’t know how to change it over such as if they’re not trained to do that type of stuff or just couldn’t be bothered doing it.