Rite Aid Brand Medicine

I stopped at my local Rite Aid on Wednesday to buy some Childrens Tylenol for Marisa because she was running a fever and I wasn't 100% certain that I had any Tylenol at home. Rite Aid happens to be within a mile of my house and is relatively easy to get in and out compared to other places around here, so I chose the path of least resistance even though I knew the prices would be slightly higher.

On the shelf was a lovely box of Rite Aid Brand childrens acetaminophen for about $3.00 less than the Tylenol Brand. Being a bit frugal these days, I decided to try the store brand in lieu of buying the more expensive brand name product.

Normally I would be able to say that the store brand was just as good as the more expensive name brand product and just leave it at that. Unfortunately, I was highly disappointed in the Rite Aid brand for a couple of reasons.

First, when I tried to remove the medicine from the little foil backed capsule, the tablets crumbled into fine powdery dust. Now I'm no expert when it comes to pharmaceuticals, but it seems a tiny bit difficult to accurately measure dosage when the pill that you are supposed to be giving your child to chew upon has now crumbled into powdery dust - causing a fine layer of pink snow to envelop your surroundings. Indeed, I went through about 3 or 4 of the tablets before I managed to open one without turning it into dusty snow. By this time I was not only incredibly irate, I was also beginning to resemble some sort of bubble gum flavored SnowMom.

I happened to be in my car and on my way home when all this took place, so I called my husband and asked him to meet me at Rite Aid so he could sit with the girls while I ran inside for a bit. (Never, ever leave your kids unattended in the car...)

So I go into the Rite Aid and explain my situation to the manager. I did not have the receipt, so she said that she could only do a return on store credit. This really isn't a big issue for me because we generally stop at Rite Aid at least once a month so the money will simply go towards something else at a later time. She informed me that the product would ring up at the current price, but I was okay with that because it has only been two days since I made my purchase. Saturday tends to be the day when prices change, so I expected to receive a full refund without issue.

When she first rang up the product in the register, the price shown was $4.99 - which is what I actually paid for the box of pills. Imagine my surprise when she only refunded me $1.99 instead of the full amount. When I questioned her, she said they were probably on sale at a 'buy 1 get 1' price, resulting in the lower amount.

Now let me say again... I'm no expert, but... It seems to me that something isn't quite right here. Why did the box ring up initially at the higher amount and then lower itself when she pushed the refund button? Sigh... I have to say, I just wasn't in the mood for arguing so I took the card and left. I did ask her if she would adjust the refund amount if I found the receipt when I came home. She balked, but agreed that it would be reasonable if I returned later today with the receipt. Unfortunately for me, I actually threw that piece of paper away.

I can guarantee, though, that I will not be purchasing anymore Rite Aid brand products in the future. This experience was enough to convince me that the store brand isn't worth the hassle.