Hey folks, we hope everyone had a great weekend. We've had some really positive feedback flowing in lately and we greatly appreciate it. You know, when we first started this project we really weren't sure where it would take us. Would we quickly get bored of it? Would anyone even notice? Were we even qualified to take on such a task? But thanks to all of the kind words of encouragement by our supporters we just keep trucking along and I really feel this is the beginning of something very powerful and inspiring, and inspiration sure seems hard to find these days. But as one Somalian refugee once said, when God gives you lemons, make lemonade. It's in these trying moments where we really witness the true core of the human spirit in all its beauty; we rise above and triumph despite all that stands before us.
We received an interesting suggestion by a friend (we'll call her "Kim") of the Walgreens Medicare Part B Center Watch who suggested we make a documentary on Walgreens similar to film maker Michael Moore's "Downsize This!", where Moore goes after corporations engaging in unethical behavior. Kim, I have to say that is a wonderful idea and we've been thinking about it all weekend. We envision a series of interviews with employees, ex-employees and maybe even customers. Perhaps even some elected representatives as well.
The only problem is we really don't have too much film-making experience or film equipment, so we're asking that if any of you out there do have film making experience or could help us out with any aspect of producing a documentary, please let us know. Have you produced a film before? Worked on a set? Send us an e-mail at exwalgreens@yahoo.com. Also we want to hear what everyone else thinks and if they have any other ideas or something to contribute. Is it a good idea? Bad idea? Let us know.
Showing posts with label supplies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label supplies. Show all posts
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Walgreens Medicare Part B Center: From the rumorville
We've just received a tip from a friend of Walgreens Medicare Part B Center Watch via e-mail. It hasn't been confirmed yet but we're told that Walgreens management is working with Fraley & Company, L.L.C. in trying to stop information from being published on this site. Fraley & Company is an accounting and business consulting firm located in Cincinnati run by Don Brauning. At this time we're not quite sure if this is related to speculation that they're getting government incentive money for training new hires or if it's more of a public relations effort. Either way it makes things more fun around here. Anyone with more information can send us an e-mail at exwalgreens@yahoo.com. Stay tuned...
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Walgreens Medicare Part B Center: Billing the Govt for things customers don't need
With the Walgreens mail order program for diabetic supplies, their main source of revenue is the federal government through Medicare. And for many of the customers, they're paying nothing out of pocket because they have both Medicare and a supplemental insurance. This creates an interesting dynamic where customers don't really complain if they're getting supplies they don't need because they're not personally having to pay for it either way. If you were sent a bunch of stuff in the mail for free, you probably wouldn't go out of your way to dispute it or send it back.
A little background: Medicare will pay for a new glucose meter every 5 years, new test strips, lancets, and control solution every 90 days, a new battery every year, and a new lancing device (the thing that pricks your finger) every 6 months.
Walgreens has all of its reps pushing their Walgreens TRUE Result meter, a private label meter manufactured by Nipro Medical (who also makes Liberty's meter, which in fact is the same exact meter) which they offer complimentary at no cost to medicare or the customer. Offering free meters has become somewhat of an industry standard these days; it makes it much easier to entice customers to switch over and they make a big chunk of change back on the test strips, which must be compatible to the meter. It's very similar to Hewlett-Packard selling printers at a loss but then recouping big margins through ink cartridge sales.
Most customers who sign up with the Walgreens home delivery service do switch over to the TRUE Result meter since it's pushed and offered for free. It's a kit that includes a carrying case, control solution, 10 test strips, lancets, and a lancing device. Most kits by other manufacturers come with these same items as well, whether it's the One Touch Ultra, Ascensia Breeze, or Accu-chek Compact Plus. The problem is, Walgreens has its reps adding lancing devices on orders even though they're already included in the kit they're receiving, whether it's the TRUE Result kit or any other kit. So let's say a customer gets a TRUE Result meter. They'll end up with two lancing devices: the one included in the kit, and the added-on Reliamed lancing device that the government was charged for. Does anyone need to be sent two lancing devices? Of course not. Is the Reliamed lancing device better than the one included in the kit? No, in fact we've tried them both and prefer the one included in the kit. Also, the Reliamed lancets which Walgreens is pushing are compatible with the device within the kit. There's absolutely no reason to add another lancing device on the order, other than to bill the federal government for more items.
This isn't just a problem with Walgreens either. I've heard from many customers of Liberty who say that they are sent a lot more supplies than they need, and there are some other companies out there sending meters and supplies without the patient's consent. People rarely complain about receiving free stuff, so the public is rarely alerted to the fact of this going on. The problem is, it's not actually free - the American people are all footing the bill.
A little background: Medicare will pay for a new glucose meter every 5 years, new test strips, lancets, and control solution every 90 days, a new battery every year, and a new lancing device (the thing that pricks your finger) every 6 months.
Walgreens has all of its reps pushing their Walgreens TRUE Result meter, a private label meter manufactured by Nipro Medical (who also makes Liberty's meter, which in fact is the same exact meter) which they offer complimentary at no cost to medicare or the customer. Offering free meters has become somewhat of an industry standard these days; it makes it much easier to entice customers to switch over and they make a big chunk of change back on the test strips, which must be compatible to the meter. It's very similar to Hewlett-Packard selling printers at a loss but then recouping big margins through ink cartridge sales.
Most customers who sign up with the Walgreens home delivery service do switch over to the TRUE Result meter since it's pushed and offered for free. It's a kit that includes a carrying case, control solution, 10 test strips, lancets, and a lancing device. Most kits by other manufacturers come with these same items as well, whether it's the One Touch Ultra, Ascensia Breeze, or Accu-chek Compact Plus. The problem is, Walgreens has its reps adding lancing devices on orders even though they're already included in the kit they're receiving, whether it's the TRUE Result kit or any other kit. So let's say a customer gets a TRUE Result meter. They'll end up with two lancing devices: the one included in the kit, and the added-on Reliamed lancing device that the government was charged for. Does anyone need to be sent two lancing devices? Of course not. Is the Reliamed lancing device better than the one included in the kit? No, in fact we've tried them both and prefer the one included in the kit. Also, the Reliamed lancets which Walgreens is pushing are compatible with the device within the kit. There's absolutely no reason to add another lancing device on the order, other than to bill the federal government for more items.
This isn't just a problem with Walgreens either. I've heard from many customers of Liberty who say that they are sent a lot more supplies than they need, and there are some other companies out there sending meters and supplies without the patient's consent. People rarely complain about receiving free stuff, so the public is rarely alerted to the fact of this going on. The problem is, it's not actually free - the American people are all footing the bill.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Walgreens Medicare Part B Center: Purposefully slowing down sales
I witnessed some ridiculous things during my time at the Walgreens Support Center. One of them was that of management purposefully slowing down sales because of a backlog in the order audit department. For the support center, Walgreens uses software by Interactive Intelligence called Interaction Client which is hooked up to an auto-dialer that makes all the calls for the reps. With the autodialer, the sales reps make no manual calls and they have no say-so in who gets called. They simply sit and wait for the next call to come to them. Reps receive a new call about a minute after dispositioning the last call, on average. The autodialer has a useful purpose of screening out most garbage calls, such as no answer, disconnected lines, and voicemails. Such calls are never sent to the reps; the reps only receive the calls when the line is picked up by someone on the other line. This makes for a more productive work day for the sales rep, as he goes from one customer to the next, and not having to waste time with busy, disconnected lines or lines with no answer.
For a couple days at a time, this autodialer was turned off by management. Was there a malfunction in the software? No. With the autodialer turned off, the sales rep receives the customer profile and then manually dials. Which in other contexts wouldn't be a problem except in this case it resulted in reps spending all day long getting nothing but no answers, voicemails, and disconnected lines - all the garbage calls that the autodialer had been in effect screening out. Sales went down dramatically. Whereas before you'd see a bunch of tallies on the board from the day's sales, now there were only a few sales total from around 20 reps. You can't make sales to disconnected lines or when there's no answer. So why was the autodialer turned off? Specifically to stop sales. It turns out that the sales department was making too many sales and the order audit department couldn't keep up. Which made me wonder again, why are we hiring another 40 this week, and next week, when evidently we're already selling too much? If we're selling too much now how could we ever keep up with sales in later weeks?
During this time, reps were told not to worry. The decrease in sales won't count against them towards their "conversion percentage" - a ratio that shows sales productivity per calls made. But however you slice it, it did practically stop everyone's sales for a few days, and even if the conversion rate was unchanged, less sales certainly does effect commission checks that employees rely on. This is secondary though to how dumb of a business move it was. At any real sales company, to see sales drop to practically zero would have had any sales manager sweating, but here everyone walked around calmly with no concern at all that no one was selling anything. It was the result they intended.
For a couple days at a time, this autodialer was turned off by management. Was there a malfunction in the software? No. With the autodialer turned off, the sales rep receives the customer profile and then manually dials. Which in other contexts wouldn't be a problem except in this case it resulted in reps spending all day long getting nothing but no answers, voicemails, and disconnected lines - all the garbage calls that the autodialer had been in effect screening out. Sales went down dramatically. Whereas before you'd see a bunch of tallies on the board from the day's sales, now there were only a few sales total from around 20 reps. You can't make sales to disconnected lines or when there's no answer. So why was the autodialer turned off? Specifically to stop sales. It turns out that the sales department was making too many sales and the order audit department couldn't keep up. Which made me wonder again, why are we hiring another 40 this week, and next week, when evidently we're already selling too much? If we're selling too much now how could we ever keep up with sales in later weeks?
During this time, reps were told not to worry. The decrease in sales won't count against them towards their "conversion percentage" - a ratio that shows sales productivity per calls made. But however you slice it, it did practically stop everyone's sales for a few days, and even if the conversion rate was unchanged, less sales certainly does effect commission checks that employees rely on. This is secondary though to how dumb of a business move it was. At any real sales company, to see sales drop to practically zero would have had any sales manager sweating, but here everyone walked around calmly with no concern at all that no one was selling anything. It was the result they intended.
Walgreens Medicare Part B Center Hiring Practices
Walgreens doesn't hire its employees for the Medicare Part B Center directly, they use several staffing companies: Staffmark, Aerotek, and Select Staffing. The staffing companies don't just funnel them to Walgreens and walk away, they continue to be an integral part of handling the employee's "assignment". Paychecks to these employees don't come from Walgreens but are taken care of by the staffing companies, and Walgreens also has these staffing companies take care of the firing of employees as well.
Every couple weeks, Walgreens hires roughly 40 people and puts them through a training class. On one of my first days there, I found out that there were only 50 reps in the call center. It makes one wonder, how can a company hire 40 new people every couple weeks and only end up with 50 reps? I know turnover is typically high in a call center environment, but not this bad.
One thing I found interesting was that in the initial employment ad and also in what reps are initially told, the training is said to last 4 or 5 weeks. I will attach below a copy of their employment ads for the call center positions. It turns out that the training class lasts only 1 week and then the reps begin selling on the phone. The government offers different types of incentives and tax credits to businesses for training they provide to new employees. Hiring 40 people every couple weeks only to lose most of them after a month seems like a huge waste of money and time. Are they receiving some sort of kickback in return for "training" that makes it all worth it? Question: when they file to receive these training incentives, do they tell the government that they trained employees for 1 week? or 4 or 5 weeks? If the incentive amount corresponds with the amount of time training, this could artificially quadruple the amount they're receiving from the government.
The position pays $11/hour. The staffing companies obviously take some sort of cut too from their services of providing employees, but that might just be taken from the commission bonuses and not the hourly. Employees are told that a 15% fee is taken out of bonuses for the staffing companies. If staffing companies are only paid a percentage of commission and not hourly, this would make good sense as it would encourage staffing companies to work hard to find highly talented candidates who can bring in the big commission checks. But back to that $11/hour. Walgreens hires 40 new people every couple weeks and has them sitting in a training class for a week. None of the employees are producing at this time, they're all just sitting in a class. $11 x 40 hours a week x 40 employees is $17,600. How can it make sense to shell out $17,600 every couple weeks for training of employees when 85% of them will be gone within a few months?
From a class of 20 people (classes are divided into 2, around 20 per class), only around 3 employees are remaining at the end of 3 months. What happened to the rest of the group, did they all get burned out? Well throughout the course of a few months, Walgreens fires them. They don't fire them all on one day, they spread it out so for a good amount of time it goes unnoticed. And none of the employees are told that their coworkers were fired. It's made to look like they just had a scheduling conflict or moved on. Even some of the managers and "coaches" are kept in the dark.
Below is the employment ad Staffmark put on Careerbuilder.com for the position:
Every couple weeks, Walgreens hires roughly 40 people and puts them through a training class. On one of my first days there, I found out that there were only 50 reps in the call center. It makes one wonder, how can a company hire 40 new people every couple weeks and only end up with 50 reps? I know turnover is typically high in a call center environment, but not this bad.
One thing I found interesting was that in the initial employment ad and also in what reps are initially told, the training is said to last 4 or 5 weeks. I will attach below a copy of their employment ads for the call center positions. It turns out that the training class lasts only 1 week and then the reps begin selling on the phone. The government offers different types of incentives and tax credits to businesses for training they provide to new employees. Hiring 40 people every couple weeks only to lose most of them after a month seems like a huge waste of money and time. Are they receiving some sort of kickback in return for "training" that makes it all worth it? Question: when they file to receive these training incentives, do they tell the government that they trained employees for 1 week? or 4 or 5 weeks? If the incentive amount corresponds with the amount of time training, this could artificially quadruple the amount they're receiving from the government.
The position pays $11/hour. The staffing companies obviously take some sort of cut too from their services of providing employees, but that might just be taken from the commission bonuses and not the hourly. Employees are told that a 15% fee is taken out of bonuses for the staffing companies. If staffing companies are only paid a percentage of commission and not hourly, this would make good sense as it would encourage staffing companies to work hard to find highly talented candidates who can bring in the big commission checks. But back to that $11/hour. Walgreens hires 40 new people every couple weeks and has them sitting in a training class for a week. None of the employees are producing at this time, they're all just sitting in a class. $11 x 40 hours a week x 40 employees is $17,600. How can it make sense to shell out $17,600 every couple weeks for training of employees when 85% of them will be gone within a few months?
From a class of 20 people (classes are divided into 2, around 20 per class), only around 3 employees are remaining at the end of 3 months. What happened to the rest of the group, did they all get burned out? Well throughout the course of a few months, Walgreens fires them. They don't fire them all on one day, they spread it out so for a good amount of time it goes unnoticed. And none of the employees are told that their coworkers were fired. It's made to look like they just had a scheduling conflict or moved on. Even some of the managers and "coaches" are kept in the dark.
Below is the employment ad Staffmark put on Careerbuilder.com for the position:
Job Description
Walgreens Medicare Part B Call Center in West Chester, Ohio, which is part of Walgreens Co., a well established company in the Pharmacy Industry focusing on health and wellness solutions, consumer goods and convenient services, is currently seeking money motivated experienced Inside Sales / Call Center Representatives to work in a fast paced outbound sales call center environment.
Walgreens is among one of the leaders in the food and drug industry, and is ranked in the Fortune's Global 500 list for largest companies in the world.
Job Description:
Walgreens is among one of the leaders in the food and drug industry, and is ranked in the Fortune's Global 500 list for largest companies in the world.
Job Description:
- Making outbound calls to sell diabetes testing supplies to current and potential customers.
- Shift is 12:30pm – 9:00pm Mon thru Fri (Training is 4 weeks from 9:00am – 5:30pm)
- Pay is $11/hr plus eligibility for an unlimited sales incentive bonus potential!
- With incentives, potential weekly gross earnings can range from $440-$800 (+).
- This is a contract-to-hire opportunity (we are looking for dependable long term employees with a strong work ethic)
- Must be able to pass a drug test / criminal background check
Job Requirements
Candidates Must Have: - High School Diploma or GED certificate
- Proof of previous Sales Achievements and a strong dependable attendance record
- Ability to be persistent with strong persuasion skills
- Excellent listening, communication, and probing skills
- Minimum 1-2 years outbound call center experience is required (ex: collections, telemarketing, inside sales, up selling)
- Good computer skills (data entry, navigating multiple screens, etc.)
- Self-motivated and organized with great follow-up, willingness to work very hard and get the job done
- Be professional and have a great personality that works well with people over the phone
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
What is The Walgreens Medicare Part B Support Center?
Hello everyone, this is our first post. We worked at the Walgreens support center for diabetic testing supplies a couple months ago and thought it would be kind of fun to make a blog about it and see if we can have some other employees and ex-employees coming to share things as well. Walgreens has some...interesting ways of doing things that make us go "hmmmm" so we'd like to hear from others to see if we can make sense of it all.
So what is the Walgreens medicare Part B Support Center? Ok, you've all seen those commercials with Wilford Brimley telling those with diabetes (pronounced "diabeetus") to test their blood sugar and check it often, right? Well that commercial is selling Liberty Medical's home delivery service for diabetic testing supplies. They've been in business for years now signing up people who see a convenience in having their test strips mailed out to them as opposed to them having to go to the store to get it. In the meantime, Walgreens, who sells diabetic testing supplies in their stores, has seen sales lost to mail order companies like Liberty because a good chunk of customers prefer to have it delivered.
So now Walgreens is in the mail order game and has a call center in West Chester (9025 Centre Point Dr in the Contech building) to get the word out and get people switching back from Liberty and other mail order companies to Walgreens. One funny thing is that Walgreens gets its prospecting list from its 8,000 local pharmacies so the majority of people they're calling are already getting their testing supplies from Walgreens. It appears that this has caused a bit of intracompany tension being that one division is stealing sales away from its core retail side. Store managers and pharmacists are wondering why people claiming to be Walgreens are calling all their customers and in effect encouraging them away from the store. Of course, the "official policy" of the support center is to not push the service to those who are currently getting their supplies from the local Walgreens stores, but that rule must be broken by any serious rep that wants to keep their job. Again, they're prospecting from their own customer database so 90% of them are already getting supplies from Walgreens.
More entries to come, stay tuned...
So what is the Walgreens medicare Part B Support Center? Ok, you've all seen those commercials with Wilford Brimley telling those with diabetes (pronounced "diabeetus") to test their blood sugar and check it often, right? Well that commercial is selling Liberty Medical's home delivery service for diabetic testing supplies. They've been in business for years now signing up people who see a convenience in having their test strips mailed out to them as opposed to them having to go to the store to get it. In the meantime, Walgreens, who sells diabetic testing supplies in their stores, has seen sales lost to mail order companies like Liberty because a good chunk of customers prefer to have it delivered.
So now Walgreens is in the mail order game and has a call center in West Chester (9025 Centre Point Dr in the Contech building) to get the word out and get people switching back from Liberty and other mail order companies to Walgreens. One funny thing is that Walgreens gets its prospecting list from its 8,000 local pharmacies so the majority of people they're calling are already getting their testing supplies from Walgreens. It appears that this has caused a bit of intracompany tension being that one division is stealing sales away from its core retail side. Store managers and pharmacists are wondering why people claiming to be Walgreens are calling all their customers and in effect encouraging them away from the store. Of course, the "official policy" of the support center is to not push the service to those who are currently getting their supplies from the local Walgreens stores, but that rule must be broken by any serious rep that wants to keep their job. Again, they're prospecting from their own customer database so 90% of them are already getting supplies from Walgreens.
More entries to come, stay tuned...
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