While the traditional way to purchase prescription medication is through a pharmacy, it is becoming increasingly more expensive to do so. Many pharmacists charge much higher rates than they pay, mainly because they have to rent and pay for a building, pay for employees and with insurance often paying the cost, it doesn’t matter quite as much for most. Anyone without a great deal to spend can look online to save money but there are a few things to keep in mind. The following is an easy guide to purchasing medicine safely online.
Find Stores
The first step to buying medicine online is to find a few stores or pharmacies that sell online like quickdoctor.co.uk. Local shops are likely to deliver more quickly and be more reliable but will have the same or nearly the same pricing as pharmacy options. Canadian pharmacies are considered to be the cheapest because they typically price drugs as much as 80% under what they cost in the U.S.. Other options include overseas sellers, although these are not usually recommended as shipping can take a long time. It is almost never a good idea to look up prescription medicine online by using keywords. These will also bring up fakes and scams. Instead, try looking up pharmacies that have been approved by the NAPB (National Association of Boards of Pharmacy), or by the Canadian International Pharmacy Association.
Verifying The Pharmacy
After finding a few great pharmacies (and you will want to find more than one), you should take the time to verify that they are legitimate and selling legitimate drugs. Take a look at any reviews on the site, and then look them up online. For example, you can find reviews of the popular online pharmacy site NorthWestPharmacy.com in this way. Look up NorthWestPharmacy.com reviews and they will come up. You can apply this to nearly any online pharmacy that you want to search for. Checking to make sure that they are located within the U.S. or Canada and checking to make sure that they are verified by the NAPD or CIPA can also help you with the verification process.
Choosing Drugs
Most of the time if you have a prescription you have to get that drug. You won’t be able to use the prescription to get a generic drug unless you take the time to ask your doctor to switch it out. However, you can take a look at the generic options available on the websites you choose, carefully compare ingredients and then talk to your doctor to see if he or she thinks that the generic is a good option for you. Sometimes generic medicine has fewer active ingredients, so this may also be a concern. However, you can usually save a great deal of money by getting your doctor to switch you to a generic prescription. Once you have that, you can go ahead and purchase.
Shipping
It is extremely important to pay attention to estimated sipping times and the location of the medicine. Sometimes even high-standard pharmacies will have to order their medicine in, which can sometimes take weeks. Because it will also have to be shipped to you, that means you could have to wait for your medicine. For this reason, it’s almost always best to order well in advance of when you need the medicine. You can also look on the site to see if any expedited or faster delivery services are available. If not, try calling the site and asking them when the product might be delivered before order and if it would arrive after the time when you would need it, consider purchasing in a pharmacy and order online for the next month. While many sites offer next day or two day shipping, many of them cannot.
It is incredibly important to pay attention to what you are purchasing. If something doesn’t seem right then the medicine might not be real. Be careful and remember to leave reviews after your order. Good or bad, your experience will help anyone who comes along after you. It’s also a good idea to try to stick to ordering from the sites with the most positive reviews. They’ve been around for longer than a company with just a few reviews, which means that they are likely to be more reliable.
Last but not least, if you think you’ve come across counterfeit medicine, you should report it to the FDA. They will investigate the issue and make sure that no one else purchases the medicine until it’s verified as genuine.
Jason Simmons is a former pharmacist turned medical expert who’s always trying to save people money. He wishes he lived in Canada but for now he’s stuck in Massachusetts.
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